Mind Games (sports psychology) Just Knowing "What" is Wrong is Not Enough by Dr. Rick Jensen You're casting the club from the top!" "You have a reverse weight shift." "You take the putter back too far inside." "You lay the club off on the backswing." "Your swing is too steep on the downswing." Players must know "how" to take their game from the practice range to the course. How many times have you been told what is wrong with your swing? In the lifetime of your golf game, how many different swing errors have been pointed out to you? How many different fixes have you attempted? Input about "what" is wrong with your golf swing is plentiful and the sources of these fixes are even more prolific. Causes and cures of golf swing errors may come from your instructor, another teaching professional, a well-intended playing partner, an instructional article, or the Golf Channel's Golf Academy Live. Has the expanding accessibility of knowing what is wrong with your golf swing really made you better? Only you can answer this question. For some, I'm sure it has. For others, too much swing error input has created confusion, lack of focus, and a cycle of gains and losses in their golf skills that has resulted in minimal long term improvement. "More" is not necessarily better in the game of golf. Paradoxically, "less is more" for most golfers. Players improve significantly once they understand "how" to practice correctly. The golf industry, however, is not about giving us less. As consumers, we do just that &endash; we consume. Like other industries, the business of golf responds to our needs, or should I say perceived needs. If what we think we need is "quick fixes" and high tech, space-aged equipment to hit the ball straighter and farther, the industry responds. Invariably, products appear in the golf market that promise to give us exactly what we perceive we need. Although it is good business, it doesn't necessarily make it good for performance. If we haven't seen much improvement in our game over time, what or who is to blame? Is the golf industry to blame? Maybe we could blame our instructors for not being better teachers. This strategy is used by many, as evidenced by the propensity for club players to jump from instructor to instructor looking for the answers to their swing flaws. Maybe we could blame our equipment. This excuse also seems to be popular as there certainly seems to be no shortage of "super-duper drivers" or "miracle putters." Of course, we could blame our golf swings or our putting stroke. We could label them as unreliable, inconsistent, and below standard. If we can place the blame on the mechanics of our swing, we can effectively divorce ourselves from taking responsibility for any poor performances. "It wasn't me who hit that ball in the water, it was that @#$% over-the-top move that I haven't been able to get rid of." In actuality, our golf swings and our putting strokes are probably the most likely reason why we don't shoot lower scores. However, we must ask ourselves "Who is responsible for them?" That's when our mirrors come in handy. We must take responsibility for building better golf skills &endash; not our instructors, not the golf media, and not golf equipment manufacturers. Unfortunately, many of us are convinced that the cure to poor mechanics is to spend hours and hours and dollars and dollars in search of what is wrong with our golf swing. We search and search but never seem to find the answer. Possibly, the question we are trying to solve is not the right question. Possibly there is another question that is much more significant &endash; WHY AM I CONTINUALLY SEARCHING? Rather than continually searching for the answer to "What is wrong with my golf swing?" maybe we should be asking ourselves, "How come I haven't been able to fix it?" Unfortunately, knowing what is wrong is not enough! In addition to knowing "what" is wrong, you must know "how" to go about improving the error and how to make sure that the error does not reoccur. When it comes to golf improvement, the process is equally as important as the content. Just because we have been told what is wrong and given a drill to fix it, doesn't make the error go away. If that was the case, we all would be playing great golf by now. Ask yourself, "Is the issue that you don't know what the error is (i.e., the content) or that you don't know the process of how to stop doing it?" Many golfers prefer to think that they still have not found out what is REALLY wrong with their golf swing. They prefer to doubt the diagnosis or instruction provided by their teaching pro and thus stay in an endless cycle of searching for a better diagnosis, a better instructor, a better swing thought, or a better lesson. This search can be never-ending, and so can the lack of improvement. When I started my golf enhancement business 10 years ago, I didn't recognize how little golfers knew about the process of how to get better in the game of golf. After conducting hundreds of seminars and working with thousands of golfers at all levels, I have concluded that lack of knowledge, faulty diagnoses, and poor instruction are not the reasons why most players do not shoot lower scores. More often, the reason involves the process of how they go about getting better. Specifically, this process includes skills such as: ¥ How a player finds the right teaching pro; ¥ How a player works with their teaching pro; ¥ How a player creates their plan for getting better; ¥ How a player practices; ¥ How a player gets appropriate feedback while practicing; ¥ How a player develops feel in the short game; ¥ How a player uses performance data to improve; ¥ How a player takes their game from the range to the course. Obviously, knowing "what" is wrong with one's swing is a critical variable to improving one's swing. However, if a player cannot master the "how's" to getting better listed above, does it really matter if he or she knows what is wrong? Knowing "what" is wrong is not enough! Dr. Rick Jensen is President of the Performance Enhancement Center at Polo Trace Country Club and the Director of Sport Psychology at the Academy of Golf, PGA National Resort and Spa. He works extensively with touring pros on the PGA, LPGA, Senior PGA and Nike Tours, and is a frequent speaker at golf clubs nationwide. He can be reached at 561-852-3603.