This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect" by Bob Rotella. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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How can you boost your confidence in golf? Why is it important to set goals during a game?
Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect by Bob Rotella suggests developing and maintaining confidence in your skills as a golfer. To build confidence, Rotella recommends that you set and commit to lofty goals, work to overcome your fear, and take advantage of selective memory.
Find out how to build your confidence in golf so you can be the best player.
Build Confidence to Make the Most of Your Skill
Once developed, a high level of confidence in golf will enable you to make better decisions and better swings. Confidence helps you avoid second-guessing and fully commit to your choices, thereby improving the quality of your decision-making. Confidence also enables you to think less while swinging and instead rely on the muscle memory and golf skill that you already possess.
(Shortform note: Rotella argues that confidence is a major factor in athletic success. However, there’s still debate on how much confidence impacts performance. Some studies have shown that while confidence improves performance, it’s only by a small amount. Not only this, but the relationship between confidence and performance is understudied in certain demographics, including women and middle-aged athletes.)
1. Set Ambitious Goals and Commit
Rotella argues that the first step in building confidence is setting ambitious goals. When you set an ambitious goal, like winning a tournament, you’re saying that you believe you have what it takes to accomplish your goal. This inner affirmation of your potential helps to establish confidence and can help motivate you to continue to improve.
(Shortform note: While it’s good to set ambitious goals, avoid setting unattainable goals. Unattainable goals are goals that you lack the time, resources, or commitment to actualize. Experts note that setting unattainable goals can lead you to become demoralized when you inevitably fail. This kind of failure can stunt your confidence, leading you to perform poorly.)
Once you’ve set your ambitious goals, commit yourself to a program of improvement. What this program looks like depends on your goals and your schedule. If you’re a professional athlete with no other major commitments, it might make sense to commit 40+ hours a week to improving your game. However, if you’re an amateur golfer with other commitments, you might only be able to devote a few hours to practice each week.
(Shortform note: As you set up your practice schedule, consider committing to multiple short practice sessions a week. Research shows that due to the limits of your attention span, you learn more efficiently in multiple short sessions than in a single long session. To take advantage of this phenomenon, consider committing 30 minutes or an hour to golf each day instead of, for instance, practicing for four hours once per week.)
Regardless of how much time you’re able to devote to golf, focus on nothing but golf for the duration of your allotted practice time. It can be tempting to take a break from practice to scroll social media or answer emails, but allowing yourself to become distracted robs you of your practice time and can reduce your motivation.
(Shortform note: In Deep Work, Cal Newport argues that to deeply focus on a task you need to create an environment that’s free of distractions. This can be difficult in golf because you’re unlikely to find an environment with no distractions. However, there are steps you can take to minimize distractions while practicing golf. For instance, you can try to move away from areas of the range where golfers are socializing or let others know that you won’t be available for work calls or emails while you’re practicing.)
2. Overcoming Fear
Once you’ve set your goals and committed yourself to working toward them, the next step in building confidence is overcoming fear. You must learn to overcome the fear of hitting bad shots and playing bad rounds because such fear can have a disastrous effect on your golf game. According to Rotella, fear disrupts your muscle memory, leading you to hit bad shots. In response to hitting these bad shots, your fear deepens, leading you to hit even more bad shots, and launching a vicious cycle that can ruin a round of golf.
Rotella notes that fear is distinct from nervous excitement. While fear is a mental struggle, nervous excitement refers to your body’s natural response to stressful situations. When you enter these situations, your body increases your heart rate and releases adrenaline in preparation for you to exert yourself. In some cases, the physical characteristics of nervous excitement can actually improve your game.
To avoid succumbing to fear during your rounds, Rotella recommends focusing on the processes of playing and improving and not the results of individual shots and rounds. When you’re focused too narrowly on the results of your shots, bad shots and round scores feel exceptionally demoralizing. However, when you zoom out and focus on your overall commitment to improving your game, bad shots will feel less significant and less painful when considered in the context of your overall upward trajectory.
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Here's what you'll find in our full Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect summary:
- A framework for improving the mental side of your golf game
- Why thoughts, confidence, and strategy are more important than your swing
- Techniques for choosing the right thoughts, goals, and shots
