Anger

Let’s talk about anger as part of your post swing routine. Is it good or bad?

Well, this is highly individual only. You have the answer to that. If anger helps you improve your focus and you play better. Great. If not, I would suggest that you look at making some changes.

The physiology of anger produces extreme arousal. Extreme arousal promotes poor performance. I have worked with some players for whom a brief period of anger helps them get refocused and their play improves. I’ve never seen a player who stays angry for an extended period play well. As long as he stays angry.

Sam Snead says he saw many promising amateurs and pros allow anger to ruin their game. He further states. One might conclude that a calm, quiet player should have the advantage. However, he disagrees with this Snead says that you have to have fire. He cites great amateurs of his era, noting they could all feel the air with clubs at one time or another. He notes that in his prime buyer, Nelson could bend a club like a pretzel or beat a Bush to death with the best of them.

As Sam Snead says, show me the fellow who walks along calmly after topping a drive or missing a kick in putt showing the world he is in perfect control yet burning up inside. And I’ll show you one who is going to lose this boy is a fake his nervous system. Won’t take what he’s handing it. If you bottle up anger entirely, it poisons your control centers. But if you go all the way in the other direction, the practice of kicking tee markers, abusing shrubbery and wrecking equipment can become such a habit that it spoils your muscular reflexes.

Sam concludes good golfing. Temperament falls in between taking it with a grin or a shrug and throwing a fit. I believe you should blow up at times if it helps, but only if you can keep your wits about you. I couldn’t beat any pro. If I couldn’t get my temper outbreak over with fast, then start thinking out the next shot. It’s like opening a steam valve for a moment. Then shutting it. The problem for many is knowing how to shut off the steam valve. If the steam valve stays open, your play will suffer until the valve is closed.

Jack Nicholas said he took an experience with anger as a young boy and realized that if he was going to play well, he would have to direct his anger constructively. I began to use my anger to motivate me first, to recover as best I could from whatever mistake I just made. Then to push me to improve my game more and more so I’d make fewer and fewer mistakes.

PGA tour player. Fred Couples was commenting on his self-management at the 1991 rider cup, he notes. He was playing a match against Christy O’Connor and was even going into number 18. He says, when he gets angry, he begins to pressure himself. He was upset with himself for chipping poorly on 15 and missing a four-foot putt for birdie on 17. He felt he should be two up going to 18. Now notice that the post swing frustration for two shots on holds 15 and 17 was carried to the 18th team by couples. Fred was not mentally on the 18th hole.

Christy O’Connor hit his shot to the green on 18 before couples, Fred said he heard the gallery cheer. And from his vantage point thought O’Connor’s ball was one foot from the pin.

Couples describes his thinking as follows. I was pissed off. Now. I’m pretty much thinking I’ve lost to this guy. I got the yardage and backed off. I tried to hit a hard nine iron instead of an eight iron. I just blocked it out to the right of the green and I chipped it to six feet. As it turned out, O’Connor shot was more like three feet from the hole. It was the only bogey I made.

Sam Snead describes an experience in 1935, where he was playing at the old dominion course in Newport news. He was on the 18th hole of the last round. If he birdied the hole, he would win the tournament.

He said he was such an unknown that even the village, it, it had more of a reputation than he. It was the first gallery of his life that he could call his own.

He was making his second shot into the par four 18th hole. The greens were hard. So he played a shot to hit the fringe and bounce onto the green.

He hit his approach shot and said, it looked so good. He thought it might go in for an Eagle too.

Then a spectator ran in front of the green and the ball hit his foot bounce, left and settled behind a bunker in trampled, rough, Sam said everything went red. I’ll kill that sob. I couldn’t turn loose of the idea of murdering the fan. Who’d wisely kept on running. Even when I stood over the ball.

Instead of hitting a nice easy recovery shot, Sam hit the ball too shallow and nudged it into the bunker.

Sam concluded at some point in every outburst of anger, if it lasts long enough, you throw yourself into reverse gear. The minute you blow a charge seems to go through your opponent and he begins to play better golf by blowing you bleed off your own energy from the job of making shots, getting sore and staying that way is hard work.

PGA tour player and winner of the 1994 Australian tournament players Championship and the Victorian Open. Patrick Burke played as much hockey as golf in his youth. His temperament, both on and off the golf course used to resemble more of that of a hockey player than a golfer. The net result for him was poor play.

He is able to recover and minimize the meltdown on the course when he practices anger management. Interestingly, his first view of success with anger management came in the car where he often displayed his temper.

He noted he was able to increase his self-control or let go of anger sooner by talking to himself rationally about the situation and discussing the potential consequences of loss of control. While practicing deep breathing.

Patrick says his anger used to get so intense. It would take him into a self-destruct mode. He said it was almost as though he were saying to himself, you think that was bad. Watch this.

PGA Tour Payer Steve Pate was referred to as the volcano, his first few years on Tour by his report, he said he could spend six to seven hours fuming or ticked off his instructor. Jim Petralia recalls playing with pate in the years past, he said, all I had to do was get him mad and his performance would deteriorate. Now that his temper is under control. He has channeled these emotions into increasing his concentration.

LPGA Tour Player and Murray Polly was playing in the 1993 LPGA Tucson Tournament. She was five under on the day when she took a quadruple bogey on number 15, she said she became very angry and determined to turn that bad break around. She proceeded to birdie 16 and 17 and lipped out a putt on 18 for birdie to finish with a 69 on the day.

Sam Snead said in Tournaments, I go by Mark Twain’s advice, which was to count four when angry and when very angry to swear once in a while, I’ll step into the woods out of sight and beat the leaves off of Bush. There’s no club throwing though, nor abusing of officials, opponents, or gallery. My practical side tells me that by slamming others or your sticks, you show yourself to be a damn fool to people who might be valuable Friends.

Patrick Burke was playing in a California mini tour event with Tom layman upon missing a shot. Tom threw a club. What Patrick described as a remarkable distance.

Patrick turned to Tom and said Tom, I think you’d better throw a provisional, I’m not sure we’re going to find that one.

• Remember former president Lyndon Johnson used to say that it’s always preferable to have someone inside the tent pene out than outside the tent pin in. If you are outside your tent, peeing in you are chipping away at confidence.
• The next time you hear yourself being critical of your behavior or play, tell yourself to get back inside the tent and pee out.

Tour Players have told me it is important to assume an internal plane posture, that it is never your fault. It’s a spike mark, not your stroke.

I’ll address this concept more in a later chapter.

there’s an amusing story. I’ve heard two or three times about a player who drove his car past the 18th Tee by the players on the fairway and on the green. He was obviously coming from somewhere off the back nine. He stopped at the water hazard on 18, removed his bag and threw bag and clubs into the water.

Five minutes later, the disgruntled player returned to the water hazard, took off his shoes and socks rolled up his pants and waded into the water, He raised his bag out of the water, unzipped it, removed his car keys and threw his bag back into the water.

• The moral of this story is anticipate the consequences of your behavior. Before you act on your frustration.

What you tell yourself about a shot will ultimately determine your level of arousal, frustration, irritability, concentration, and confidence.

If you were going to quiet, your nervous system, increase your frustration tolerance and lower your irritability level. What better place to start that in your day-to-day routine, once practiced off the course, you can easily draw up on these strategies. On the course.

Years ago, we learned that it is important to deal with anger, to get it out. The advocates of this position were referred to as ventilationist. Recent research shows that anger is magnified into increased arousal and anger. When it is aggressively expressed for the majority of players, this anger expression, hampers performance.

So what do you do well recognize that if you are angry, you will perform your best by having a rational quieting conversation with yourself, you breathe deeply and you relax your aroused nervous system through thinking movement and breathing. Now, these strategies are presented in the mind under par series routine guided practice and developing consistent performance.

In these situations, it is important that your posture be as positive as your thinking, assuming as if posture of confidence and contentment never allow your eyes to drop below the horizon, either on or off the course. If your head is high, you will be reminded to stay focused on the present and to be positive.

This posture is associated with good confidence. Temperament assume that posture and trigger these positive thinking styles.

Please continue with: Mechanical Post Swing Routine