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FOCUS MARK HARMAN
FOCUS –
FOCUS –
THE KEY INGREDIENT TO SUCCESS
THE KEY INGREDIENT TO SUCCESS
olf teachers are renowned for their ability
Gto teach the mechanics of the game.
David Leadbetter ushered in a new era of the
golf guru with his work with Sir Nick Faldo in the
mid-1980s. Faldo went from a leg-driven swing,
resulting in a reverse-C finish (ala Johnny Miller
and other greats from the 1960s and 1970s) to
a rotary motion. He spent countless hours hitting
tens of thousand of balls for two years in order to
hone his new action. But were mere mechanics
the key to Faldo’s success in winning six major
championships?
In a 2012 interview with the BBC, Faldo
noted, “The best 15th club in anybody’s bag is
self-belief. You have to look after yourself and
deal with the whole emotion, the whole intensity,
and the nerves – that's the key.” While the
value of sound mechanics cannot be ignored,
undoubtedly there were dozens of other top
golfers at the time with equally fundamentally
sound swings as Faldo’s. What set Sir Nick
apart from the others who couldn’t achieve his
success is the self-belief he described.
When someone has self-belief, it becomes
much easier to focus in on the task at hand.
In golf, that means executing one shot at a
time in the most optimal mental state. When
a champion golfer is over the ball ready to hit,
they are completely focused on what they must
do in order to successfully execute the shot.
Outside distractions are not part of the equation.
You have probably achieved great focus
in your own games at times. Have you ever hit
a shot and then have a playing companion
apologize for making some loud noise of which
you were completely unaware? That’s the
ultimate in focus, and likely your shot turned out
to be pretty good. Then there are days when
you hear everything – a case of “rabbit ears.”
What is the difference between having or not
having focus?
Sometimes it’s inexplicable, but most often
the answer lies in the level of preparedness.
Golfers who practice a certain amount of hours
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are more apt to achieve focus than golfers
who barely practice. The mind can wander if
the preparation was lacking, and often results
in having a hard time feeling what their proper
swing should be, not to mention a loss of
clubhead awareness.
Then there is focus on the big picture. Golfers
who have a long-range goal must focus on the
requirements needed to achieve these goals.
Professional golfer James Hahn said for two
years he went to the golf course every day and
spent 10 hours there. Talk about focus on the big
picture! Hahn is a two-time winner on tour, and
his focus on his career led him to work extremely
hard. Surely, there were times when he must
have questioned whether it all was worth it, but
in the end his hard work was rewarded.
Most of our students aren’t going to be
playing high-level tour golf, but many of them
like to compete. It can be hard to keep focus on
a long-range goal, so a better course of action
for the recreational player is to focus on short-
range goals. For example, let’s say one of our
students has a hard time making putts outside of
two feet (approximately 60 cm). They can focus
on a practice goal of making a three-, four-, and
a five-foot putt consecutively a certain number
of times. When they are successful at achieving
this goal regularly, they may then move it to a
three-, five-, and seven-foot putt, for example.
In other words, their focus should be on an
achievable goal that doesn’t take months or
even weeks to achieve, and they can make a
different goal once the initial one is realized. And
the reality is that this type of focus on short-term
goals can help in the long run.
Focus is something that needs to be
developed. We just can’t will ourselves to focus
unless we have put in the time and effort. Focus
on the golf course itself can be developed
through a proper practice regimen, and focus
on long-term goals can be achieved through
focusing and succeeding on short-term goals. w
Golf Teaching Pro ®