The Mental Side Of Golf: Part 5 The Importance Of Winning (Video) - by Pete Styles
The Mental Side Of Golf: Part 5 The Importance Of Winning (Video) - by Pete Styles

As any sportsman would want to do, a golfer is always trying to win, but because there’s so many golfers playing in the field and there can only be one winner, even when Tiger Woods was having his most dominant spell, he was winning around 45% of his tournaments. But as a football team if you're winning 45% of your games, you wouldn't be classed as the best team in the league; never mind the best team in the world.

So, as a golfer, we have to understand that winning is not something that happens all the time. For the player in a club competition, a good successful player within the club might only win two or three weeks out of an entire year. But it doesn't mean that he is not good, it's just that there’s so many other people trying to win the same tournament. A footballer who finished at the top of the league or win and considered the best in the area or in the league, are probably winning 70 or 80% of their games. So, a golfer the win percentage is just far, far lower.

But don't allow yourself to get down because you're not winning all the time. Try and set yourself small targets. Maybe winning is beating your playing partners or winning is playing to your handicap or under your handicap. If you focus on trying to beat everybody in the field, it can really start to have negative effects in your game because you start trying to shoot 8 or 9 on the par every single round in the golf and that simply isn’t achievable. Certainly, a handicap would come down very quickly if that was achievable, but it's never realistic to expect yourself to improve your handicap every single round or shoot on the par.

So, try and have smaller process driven goals, noticing that if I make the right process in my swing, I'm going to hit nicely onto the fairway, nicely onto the green. So, win might be did I increase my fairways hit percentage a win might be, did I improve my greens and regulation percentage, and win might be did I play under my handicap. If I played two, under my handicap but there is a guy in the group behind me that plays four in my handicap, there’s not a lot I can do about his school.

So, I have to focus on what I can achieve and if I can have a little win for myself, the fact that he has beaten me in the grand scheme of things in the tournament, I can't do a lot about that. But certainly, the more I practice, the more I play, the more I focus on my little wins, the bigger wins will come. But you can't focus too much on that big target straight away. So, don't go out there with a hundred people on a Saturday morning and try and beat everybody in the field. It's simply too much pressure to handle. Go out with that focus on the nice processes, the nice resource of greens, fairways, try and get it around the handicap and the big wins will eventually come to you as well.

 2012-06-11

As any sportsman would want to do, a golfer is always trying to win, but because there’s so many golfers playing in the field and there can only be one winner, even when Tiger Woods was having his most dominant spell, he was winning around 45% of his tournaments. But as a football team if you're winning 45% of your games, you wouldn't be classed as the best team in the league; never mind the best team in the world.

So, as a golfer, we have to understand that winning is not something that happens all the time. For the player in a club competition, a good successful player within the club might only win two or three weeks out of an entire year. But it doesn't mean that he is not good, it's just that there’s so many other people trying to win the same tournament. A footballer who finished at the top of the league or win and considered the best in the area or in the league, are probably winning 70 or 80% of their games. So, a golfer the win percentage is just far, far lower.

But don't allow yourself to get down because you're not winning all the time. Try and set yourself small targets. Maybe winning is beating your playing partners or winning is playing to your handicap or under your handicap. If you focus on trying to beat everybody in the field, it can really start to have negative effects in your game because you start trying to shoot 8 or 9 on the par every single round in the golf and that simply isn’t achievable. Certainly, a handicap would come down very quickly if that was achievable, but it's never realistic to expect yourself to improve your handicap every single round or shoot on the par.

So, try and have smaller process driven goals, noticing that if I make the right process in my swing, I'm going to hit nicely onto the fairway, nicely onto the green. So, win might be did I increase my fairways hit percentage a win might be, did I improve my greens and regulation percentage, and win might be did I play under my handicap. If I played two, under my handicap but there is a guy in the group behind me that plays four in my handicap, there’s not a lot I can do about his school.

So, I have to focus on what I can achieve and if I can have a little win for myself, the fact that he has beaten me in the grand scheme of things in the tournament, I can't do a lot about that. But certainly, the more I practice, the more I play, the more I focus on my little wins, the bigger wins will come. But you can't focus too much on that big target straight away. So, don't go out there with a hundred people on a Saturday morning and try and beat everybody in the field. It's simply too much pressure to handle. Go out with that focus on the nice processes, the nice resource of greens, fairways, try and get it around the handicap and the big wins will eventually come to you as well.