Mental Mondays: Play Quickly

I used to tell my high school golf teams that there are two felony offenses in golf: being a slow player, and being a bad player. The key is not to commit both offenses at once. People will forgive a slow player if he’s hitting greens in regulation and sinking birdie putts. And they’ll forgive a bad player if he keeps the ball moving along.

Most weekenders aren’t hitting greens in regulation and sinking birdie putts.

Playing quickly accomplishes more than speeding up a five hour round. From observation of my golf teams and personal experience, I remain convinced that playing more quickly leads to better scores. All of those extra waggles, practice swings and whatnot serve only to break rhythm and clutter up the mind with swing thoughts and doubts. Far too often slower players are the victims of paralysis by analysis.

PGA Tour pros aren’t doing amateurs any favors, either. Far from being an example to emulate, the pro’s laborious pace of play is a trap for weekenders. And sometimes, it’s a trap for the pros themselves. Sergio Garcia’s game famously suffered a precipitous decline when he started gripping, regripping and waggling twenty and thirty times on each shot. Tiger Woods has been observed to deliberately slow down the pace of play to gain an advantage over a competitor who is closing in.

Playing quickly does not, however, mean that you should rush. It isn’t about speeding up your swing. And playing quickly does not require that you play carelessly. The secret is to play purposefully, with focus.

Playing quickly means being prepared to take your shot as soon as it’s your turn. Check your yardages and select your club while others are playing. At the same time, find your line and go through your preshot visualization routine. Then, when it’s your turn, take a practice swing, step up to the ball, align and go. Moving quickly through a short routine will prevent all sorts of contradictory and unhelpful thoughts from leaking into your brain. Get into a playing rhythm and stay there.

Practice swings should be limited to just one. Any more and you’re going to fall into the trap of playing “golf swing,” and not “golf.” The course is not the place for working out swing flaws. Play with the swing you have that day and work out your issues on the range.

A friend of mine is notorious in the golf league for his slow play. Jeff’s first practice swing never “feels right.” So he makes an adjustment, and that doesn’t “feel right.” Then another adjustment, and another practice swing; and another adjustment and another swing.  Finally, he declares “that was a good one” and steps up to the plate. He fiddles with his alignment, stance and grip, pumping his knees and waggling his club until finally it feels right, and unleashes a mighty blow—typically to little good effect.  What’s particularly funny about this sequence of events is that any knowledgeable golfer would observe that Jeff’s first swing typically is his best. It’s almost as if each successive practice and adjustment takes him further from his ideal swing.

There are a lot of Jeffs out there on the tee boxes and in the fairways.

Nowhere, though, does paralysis by analysis hit more golfers than on the greens. Following the lead of the Tour players, weekenders get into catcher’s crouches, Spiderman crawls, plumb-bob, stalk the hole, and generally agonize endlessly over the putt. And all the while, contradictory swing thoughts and doubts begin to seep into their brains. And how many have you seen that, having made an analysis worthy of a quantum physicist, can’t get themselves to pull the trigger?

I wonder as I watch yet another plumb bobber miss a short stroke: How is it that an eight year old can complete a pass to a moving receiver without thinking, and yet an adult golfer after looking at all the angles, analyzing the break and grain and practicing stoke after stroke can still miss a three footer?

I once heard a television golf analyst—I think it was Johnny Miller, but won’t swear to it—talk about a young golfer who was having a particularly good week putting. “He’s absolutely fearless,” Miller(?) said. “He just steps up and putts. He knows the ball is going in the hole.”

No endless deliberations, just take a look at the line, and make the stroke. It’s like throwing a ball into a catcher’s mitt. You don’t think. You just do.

One last bit of advice that teachers offers students taking multiple choice quizzes—and yet is relevant to golf. On every question, eliminate the ridiculous choice and then go with your first instinct. Don’t agonize over the choices. If you read wrong answers enough times, they will soon seem plausible.

Think about it.

This tip is an excerpt from The Five Inch Course: Thinking Your Way To Better Golf. The complete book is available in Kindle format at Amazon.com.