The big day is here. It's tournament day! (It can be your golf club tournament, an open tournament,
or just a corporate tournament). The thing is, it's not going to be a regular round of golf with your buddies. You can tell, since the moment you get to the driving range, that something is different. You can feel some nerves moving around in your stomach, maybe the hands are shaking a little bit and the body isn't moving as it usually does. It gets worse when you start missing some shots with the pitching wedge, doesn't it?
Well, this happens because you are creating a bigger scenario in your mind, hence putting some extra pressure on your game. It's your brain playing some tricks on yourself. This is the breaking point: you either let yourself get dominated by those thoughts, or you get your psychological game out and manage t
he situation.
But one second, ¿what's the psychological game? To
understand it clearly, ask yourself the following question: ¿have you ever missed a straight three footer in the 18th hole to shoot your personal record? Well, that is exactly what the psychological game is: when your emotions, in this example the n
erves, get in the way of your performance. If you miss the putt in the example, your psychological game needs to be worked on.
So what a good psychological game means is: having the ability to control your emotions in order for your body to perform the way it regularly does. Controlling emotions is maintaining your level of excitement in a very low level. So, with this in mind, the big problem here is not just getting angry after hitting a bad shot. It really is understanding how you react when you feel the nerves of the tournament, and getting to a point where you can manage your feelings and emotions under any circumstance, whether it's a good one or a bad one.
I know that saying it is way different than doing it, specially in such an emotional game as golf. But there is actually a way you can practice it. The secret is trying to distract your mind with your senses. Yes, you can get your mind distracted! Who creates the stressful situation when it comes to a tournament? Yourself!! So the way to handle it comes from within.
I will leave my favorite driving range drills that have helped me to improve my mental game by distracting my mind with my senses:
It is a matter of time until you start mastering this drills and getting that mind out of the way. From my experience I can definitely tell you: you'll stop fearing those terrific shots over the water, or even more: you won't feel the nerves when you stand in front of the ball, 6 feet away of becoming your club champion