The Only Swing Thought You Need

I haven’t said much about this recently, but those of you who have read my books and followed my blog for enough time know that I am not at all a fan of swing thoughts. Instead of helping us, they cause us to doubt ourselves at a time when the completest confidence is needed.

But still, your mind is awake and has to be thinking about something. You can’t turn it off.

There is one, and only one, thing that should be on your mind while you’re hitting a golf ball, from drive to putt. I go into length about it in my book, The Golfing Self, but I’ll give you its flavor in this post.

When your mind is calm, it is moving very rapidly. A spinning top or a gyroscope achieve their stability by the speed they rotate. When they slow down and stop, their stability vanishes.

Our mind is the same. The faster our mind moves, the more stable it is. This should not be confused with the mind jumping from this to that at breakneck speed. That state of mind is definitely unstable.

What I mean is the mind is stable when it is dynamic and has a sense of movment so rapid that the feeling of movement turns into one of great calm, but with this solid foundation.

Before your shot, you evaluate your options, pick one, pull a club, take a practice swing, and step into your stance. At this point, everything you need to know for the shot has been dialed in. You don’t have to think about it any more.

What you do need to think about is the feeling of calmness based on the infinitely rapid movment of your mind. Feel that and maintain that feeling without interruption from before takeaway all the way through the finish.

If you can learn to do that, I guarantee your shotmaking will be the best it can be because doubt has no room to enter your mind and do its damage.

Work on hitting different shots. You need them to get the ball around the course, obviously.

But work on your mental game, as well. Work on this one thing. Whenever you hit a ball, using any kind of stroke, get your mind moving before you take the club away and maintain that feeling all the way to the completion of the stroke.