Mental Plans

After learning how to increase your confidence, concentration, and composure through skills such as self-talk, imagery, and relaxation, its time to put it all together into personal working mental plans. The previous chapter has already discussed one of these plans in regards to preparation (pre-competition plan). This chapter will teach you how to make tactical plans as well as competition focus and refocus plans.

The Tactical Plan
Professional players always go into a tournament knowing how to play each and every hole. They make a tactical plan about what strategies to use for each shot. Amateurs, however, rarely plan ahead. They just take the driver out of the bag whenever they can and try to hit the ball as far as they can. You see people getting into trouble all the time because they failed to plan on how to play each hole. The purpose on a mental plan is to let you adopt strategies that will give you the best chance of scoring well by playing on your strengths and minimizing any weakness in your game.

First, examine the course youll be playing and plan how you would like to play each hole. Make a plan regarding landing zones, target and club selection, and hazards to be avoided. Every pro does this, and so should you. If youve never played a course before, then youll need to improvise, but you can always look at the distances and diagrams on the scorecard, and ask playing partners about how each hole should be played if theyve played there before. Make up a plan at each tee. Its better than no plan at all.

Having a good tactical plan avoids any unnecessary risks and will put you in a better position to score well. You dont need to use your driver if you cant reach a tight par 5 in two. Its sometimes better to hit a 3-wood or an iron off the tee for better accuracy. Play to your strengths. If youre not comfortable with approaches under 100 yards, then leave yourself a full pitching wedge instead by selecting the appropriate club on your previous shot. Theres no use on hitting a driver 60 yards from the pin when you can hit a safer 3-wood or 2-iron 100 yards from the pin. Be aggressive, but adopt a conservative strategy. Always play for wide areas of the fairway and be realistic when youre in trouble. Instead of going for the green by trying to squeeze the ball through branches and get yourself into more trouble, pitch it out on the fairway to have a clear approach. Play smart.

Finally, your game plan should also include different scenarios for changing course and weather conditions. You might play a hole differently under wet/dry conditions or under calm/windy conditions. Maybe youll approach certain holes differently depending on how you are playing. If you feel extremely confident and decide to go for it, always weight the risk and benefits.

The Focus Plan
The purpose of the focus plan is to give you a structured approach to carry your focus through the whole round or competition. Its kind of like a recipe that tells you what to do to adhere to the 6 basic principles outlined in Chapter 10. The focus plan can really be nothing more than just a few key phrases that will allow you to get into the right frame of mind during important moments in your round. You dont have to lose your spontaneity or be mentally rigid to make a plan, but you dont want to leave your performance to chance neither. After all, thats what mental training is about. Just like anything else, the contents of the focus plan will depend on your needs and preferences.

The first step in designing a focus plan is to identify critical situations during a round of golf. These act as checkpoints to ensure you are still playing at an optimal level, mentally and physically. For example, some of the critical situations in golf can be: the first tee, after the front nine, after a string of birdies or pars, after a couple of double-bogeys. At these critical moments or checkpoints, you can scan your body for muscle tension, check anxiety levels, redirect attention on relevant cues with self-talk, and use confidence building strategies.

Exercise 16.1: Critical situations
What are your critical moments? Write down any situation that you feel is important and critical to your performance in a round of golf. It can be when youre on top of the leader board, when there are people watching, when youre behind by a couple of strokes, towards the end of the round when you feel tired, or any other situation you find is important for you to remind yourself to stay focused.

Exercise 16.2: Critical Cues
Now that youve identified some of those critical situations, its time to define what needs to be done during those critical moments. Should you include a body scan for muscle tension? What are the anchors that will help you deal effectively with those situations? What do you want to think about or say to yourself?

It might also be useful to have a general cue that you can use to maintain your focus and stick to your game plan throughout the round. Go back to previous chapters on self-talk, composure, imagery, concentration, and confidence to refresh your memory about what you can do to get you into an ideal state of mind.

In sum, think about how you want to feel, focus, and function during the various parts of a round. Then, work out a plan (it can be chronologically sequential, i.e., from hole #1 to hole #18) to make it happen. Use the information gleaned from chapter 1 as well as from your evaluation forms and psychological scorecard (Chapter 13). Remember to continually rehearse and refine your plan as you learn more about yourself.