Golf is our recreation, our hobby, our happiness. Unless you play for money, that’s all it is.

Every now and then, I play with a golfer who tells me that he used to play with too much intensity, and would get so upset after a bad shot, and so on, and that he finally stopped doing all that. The game got a lot more fun, he enjoyed his company more, and for sure, his company enjoyed him.

After your round is over, ask yourself these three questions. Are you happier than you were before you teed off? Did your playing partners enjoy having you in their group? Are you at peace with how you played? If you can say yes to each of those questions, you had a good day at the course. If you shot a good score, so much the better.

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After a round of golf, what do you think back on? Do you talk about the score you could have had if only you had done this or that? Most people do. How about the good shots? Do you spend much time on them? I think we tend to take our best shots for granted, even the 45-foot putt that we had no business making, but in remembering the good shots lies the key to better golf.

The bad shots happen. Let ‘em go. Remember only the good shots. You have the ability to hit them or you wouldn’t have done it. Build on them. Remember what they looked like, and most importantly remember what it felt like, not just physically, but mentally, as you were hitting them. This feeling of mind is what will lead you to hitting more good shots just like them.

You might say “How can you remember a feeling,” but just as the image of the shot persists in your memory, so the does the memory of your mental state during the shot. That might not be something you’re used to remembering, but it’s there. You just have to look for it. Don’t worry, it’s not hiding. Just start thinking back and you’ll find it right away.

Why is this important? It’s because the mind leads the body. The state of the mind directly influences the state of the body, and thus its performance. The difference between a good shot and a bad one is a matter of mind, not of technique.

When you have a clear idea of the state of your mind when you hit good shots, you can then teach yourself to repeat that state of mind at will. How? Before you hit any shot, in practice or in play, retrieve that feeling of calm confidence, then hit the shot. Constant repetition is the key to developing your mind in this way–it’s not there for the asking.

By doing this, you will develop good shot-making skills much faster, and you will achieve the mental consistency you need on the golf course.

The second thing to review is the mental decisions you made. Affirm your decision-making process when it led to you to the right decision, and correct it in review when there was a flaw–not for the purpose of saying, What if, but to get it right the next time. This is teaching yourself to think like a golfer.

The last thing to do in your review is look for shots that keep your score up because you don’t know how to hit them–chipping out of the rough might be an example. Then fix them. If you had a headache, you’d take an aspirin right away, wouldn’t you? So if part of your golf game is giving you a headache, get a lesson. Right away.

The scorecard in your hand is a blueprint for how to play better if you look at properly. It’s not about “What I did,” but “What I’ll do.”

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You hear athletes talk about The Zone all the time and about the two or three times in their career they were in it. You night think this experience is available only to elite athletes, but anyone can get in.

You’ve been in The Zone many times (OK, I’ll stop capitalizing it now). Have you ever had a 20-foot putt that you just knew was going in before you hit it? You felt as good about this one as a 6-inch tap-in? Or an iron that you knew before you hit it would go straight for the pin? That’s the zone. You have those moments all the time.

Here’s another one. You go to the range, do a bit of stretching to get warmed up, then hit the first ball with your pitching wedge using a lazy, getting-loose swing. The ball takes off right where you were aimed, high, and far — the best PW you could ever hit and you hit it without thinking about it.

There’s the catch. You weren’t thinking about it. What it means to be in the zone is that your mind is quiet and the movements you have trained your body to do just come out.

Here’s another one. You’re on the practice green having indifferent results, and you decide to do something different. It could be anything, like changing your stroke, your grip, your setup, anything. And what happened but you drained three 10-footers in a row, dead center.

Now you thought that this one thing you did was the key to the kingdom, but as soon as you thought that, you started being your old self again. That’s because the thing you did differently took your mind off what you had been thinking, and temporarily gave it nothing to think about. You were in the zone. Then, after the third putt, you started thinking about something again, and bye-bye zone.

So that’s the zone, which I know you’ve been in many times, and you know, once it’s pointed out to you, what it is. The questions that remain are how to get into it at will, and how to sustain it once you’re in. Not so easy to do and not so easy to explain. All I can say is that it takes deep spiritual training which must be continuously renewed. I would recommend reading my book, The Golfing Self to find out how. Good luck.

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I put “practice swing” in the title because that’s what everyone calls it, but a better name for it is a reminder swing. You’re reminding yourself of how you want your swing to feel, and hopefully you can step up to the ball and copy that very swing.

The other thing you’re reminding yourself of, and this is even more important, is to stay calm and just let the shot take care of itself. You’ve programmed distance, direction, shot shape, trajectory, all that, into your subconscious mind. That part’s done. Now just let it all go and remind yourself how to swing with a mind that isn’t all balled up in calculation, and is unconcerned about results.

Let me point out that the feeling of how your body should move through the swing and the feeling of swinging with a calm mind are one feeling, not two. The mind and the body operate as a package. Use your reminder swing to remind yourself of that.

The reminder swing is also a lie detector. If for some reason this doesn’t work, in that your mind just won’t settle down when you take your reminder swing, it’s a sign that you have picked the wrong shot, the wrong destination, or are using the wrong club. Your conscious mind can talk you into anything, but your subconscious mind knows the truth. Step back, look again on a subconscious level, without analyzing, and let what you see tell you what to do. Then make the change you need to make.

Your subconscious mind also knows that it’s time to get your copy of Better Recreational Golf. So what are you waiting for?

A while ago I read a piece about what professional athletes think about when they’re competing. They go through drills, plays, teamwork exercises, and all of that in practice. They learn everything they can about what might come up during a game and what they should do when it happens. That needs to be in their head. Actual play, though, is different.

John Stockton, the legendary point guard for the Utah Jazz, when asked about how he analyzes what’s going on during a game so he can take advantage of how he had prepared himself, said, “I never think about that stuff. I just play basketball.”

This is what everybody keeps telling us as golfers, and it’s what we find so hard to do. Stop thinking about your swing technique, and just hit the ball. Stop running through your repertoire of shots. Look at what’s facing you and hit the shot it calls for.

Just play golf. All of what you have practiced and learned is in there. Let it come out on its own.

For example, you’re on the tee and, of course, you want to put the ball in the fairway. Instead of thinking about your swing technique that you know makes you hit the ball straight, see where you want the ball to go and let your subconscious mind take over. That’s the mind you can’t have a conversation with, the one that doesn’t talk to you.

Look at the shot, get connected to the shot, and hit it. That’s all there is to it. That’s what happens when I play well. There’s no reason, if you discipline your mind, why that can’t happen every time you play, and on every shot.

The philosopher Krishnamurti said that life is complex, but it must be lived as if it were simple. Golf is the same way. Get the complexities worked out during practice. On the course, keep it simple. Just play golf.

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So much is said about the mental game these days, but I have read all the books and none of them get to the real point. The real point is to calm your mind and not let outside influences disturb it. That’s it. It is the only mental skill you need. If you can do that, everything else is an application of that simple principle.

Remember the time when you were looking into the green with a 7-iron in your hand and you knew, just knew, that the shot would be sweet and the ball would land close to the hole, and it did? You didn’t think about swing technique, or what could go wrong, or what you wanted to happen, you just hit the shot. Nothing else. That is what I mean by having a calm mind.

There are techniques that teach you to calm your mind at will, but they require personal instruction and steady practice on your part over time. This is not something easily gained. By knowing what a calm mind is, though, and you do, you can practice attaining it in every phase of your life so that whenever you need it, on the golf course, or on the job, at home, conducting personal business, it’s there for you.

But this blog is about golf, so let me give you a few ways you can apply the calm mind on the course.

First, look at the shot you have to hit. Unless you face a shot with forced carry over a hazard of some kind, you can hit the ball any place you choose, right or left, short or long, or dead center. It’s your choice. You’ve played long enough to know that some choices are better than others. Looking at the shot with a calm mind will help you pick the right one — the one with the greatest chance of success in taking the next step in getting the ball in the hole as quickly as you can.

Second, you have to hit the shot without thinking of all the things I mentioned before. Take a practice swing, but let’s call it a rehearsal swing instead. Then step up to the ball and concentrate only on repeating the feeling of what that rehearsal was like. Nothing else. Just repeat what you did a few seconds ago. When you’re at the practice range, work on this with every shot you hit.

Third, after you hit the shot and see where it ended up, let it go. Forget about the result, good or bad. Do not judge it, especially a shot that was less than you were hoping for. Put your mind immediately on the next shot. There’s a time to get upset by your bad shots and to congratulate yourself on your good ones, but that time is not when you’re out there playing.

The mental game is simple, because there isn’t much to it. It’s hard, because you can easily be pulled away from the right frame of mind. Work on getting the feeling of a calm mind at will, and it can be done. It is worth at least four strokes, and I mean it.

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Yesterday morning I was at the range. The assistant pro and I were on the putting green. We got to talking about this and that, and the conversation got into the time when he was an aspiring tournament player. In comparing the difference between his game now, and what it was at that time (he was +4), and he is still a young man, he said it came down to two things: desire and focus.

There was a time when he was practicing and playing every day, because he had the desire, and all that time with a club in his hand gave him the focus to play his best every time he hit a golf ball. That’s what it took to be good on professional terms.

It seems to me, that’s what it takes to be good no matter what your goals are. Probably none of are going to become +4 handicap golfers, much less scratch or even single-digit. Talent aside, we don’t have the time. But to become the good golfer we wish to be, we must have the desire and the focus it takes to get there. If you have that, no matter how much, or how little, time you have to practice and play, you can get the most out of it. Quantity of practice counts, but the quality of your practice is just as important.

You could start with practicing at home. There are always spare moments you can devote to the part of the game that is troubling you, and just a little practice, frequently done, goes a long way. A two-hour trip to the range once a week is enough time to practice everything – putting, chipping, pitching, and your swing. If you can practice more than that, even better.

The important thing, though, is to apply desire and focus to your practice throughout the session. That means you practice because you want to get better at golf, not because practice is an enjoyable way to spend some time, or some such reason as that. Your motivation for even picking up a club is that you want to get better.

Being focused means that every time you hit a golf ball your mind is fully engaged on what you’re doing. If you have ten golf balls, hitting every one is a unique event. There’s no hitting the first one and doing that again nine times. Every time you address a new ball you start over, with your grip, your setup, and especially with your mind.

In order to play your best golf, your mind must be in the right place as you hit the ball. Practicing that is every bit as important as practicing your technique. If you’re practicing technique, by all means, take as many practice swings as you need to be satisfied that you’re doing it right. But when you step up to the ball, your mental task is to let go of any thought of technique and let your habits take over. A major part of any practice session it to practice having total confidence in what you have trained yourself to do, from address to follow-through.

That’s focus. It’s hard to come by unless you practice it. If you do, you will get the most out of what you have learned, every time you play. To learn that focus, well, it’s hard work. You have to want to. That’s desire. Put those two together and you’ll be a good golfer — one who gets everything out of his or her talent and technique, regardless of the score that gets made.

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Normally, or at least hopefully, you begin your round fully focused and mentally ready to play your best golf. And, for the first four holes or so, you do. Then the trouble starts. Your focus wanders and you have a few bad holes and wonder what happened. You were playing so well and then it just fell apart.

You failed to maintain your focus. The complete attention you gave to your previous shots got lost. You went through the motions of making a shot, but your mind was not on the task.

The way to avoid this let-down is to make yourself see every shot fresh. Treat every shot as if it were the first shot of the day. Re-engage your concentration every time you step up to the ball. How?

When it’s time to hit the ball, your mind needs to be on figuring out the best shot to hit from where you are. This is no time to congratulate yourself on the great shot that got you there, or kick yourself for the bad shot that put you where you would rather not be. Your attention needs to be on this one thought: from here, what is the best play I can make?

In other words, given my skills, where should I play the ball so I’m in the best position for my next shot? Take some time to figure this out. Set your mind, even, to playing two or three shots in advance.

For example, say my drive ends up on the right side of the fairway on a par-5 hole. Getting to the ball, I can see that the pin is on the right side of the green, tucked behind a bunker. If I play straight for the flag, I’ll have to pitch over the bunker for my third shot.

But I also see that if I play my next shot to the left side of the fairway, the green is fairly open and even if my pitch is short, it will still be on the green. So I hit my ball up the left side of the fairway.

Getting to the ball, I can see that the pin is in the back of the green on ground that is fairly level. The front portion of the green slopes toward me, so I’ll have an uphill putt if my pitch is short. Better to err on the long side with my pitch. And that bunker is now on the right, so best to be a bit left with the pitch. Left and long is the shot.

It’s thinking like this before every shot that will keep your mind actively engaged with the game.

Finally, go through a pre-shot routine before each shot. That routine can take any form. There is no sequence of steps that is more right than another one, nor any required elements except for making sure you’re aimed correctly and that your mind is focused on what you’re doing.

What you’re doing, by the way, is literally that. What you want to have happen, what you don’t want to have happen, whether you might not be able to do it, these thoughts are not included. Put your mind on being confident that the stroke you’re about to make will be the good stroke that you know is in you.

The last step is to accustom yourself to keeping this process going for a four-hour round. It’s not easy, and it will take work. Good luck.

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