Only your potential is determined by your talent, knowledge and commitment.
Your actual success is determined by your ability to avoid internal interference and allowing yourself to play golf.
Let me put this another way.
Your golfing success is governed not by how much you know or how high your skill level but on your ability to bring that skill and know-how to the golf course.
Or another.
It doesn’t matter how skillful or talented you are, unless you can express it, you’re lost at sea with no chance of playing good golf.
And one more.
Your current golf skill and ability is more than good enough for you to play the best golf of your life. All the fumbling about and searching is only holding you back. Learn to unleash your inner talent and there will be no stopping you.
This is a revolutionary concept. The entire golf movement is focused on the wrong thing. Instead of focusing on your golf swing, skill level or technique, you should be focused on minimising interference and therefore increasing your actual success.
Each year golfers spend millions (if not billions) of dollars on lessons, books, DVD’s, new clubs and magazines in the hope of building skill level and increasing knowledge.
And every day, millions of golfers, including you, go to the golf course and attempt to put these lessons and concepts into practice.
They think they’re doing the right thing – exactly what they need to do to be successful and shoot a good score. In reality all they’re doing is what’s required to create the potential for success.
But this is where it’s wrong.
Potential doesn’t equal success.
You’re not being shown HOW to put your skill, talent and knowledge to work so it equals potential.
When was the last time you heard a golfer say,
“I want to increase my potential by 25% in the next month”
You don’t hear it. But you’ll always get these,
“I want to hit the ball further”
“I want to reduce my handicap”
“I want to play better”
“I want to win this week”
This is golfing success and what this webpage is all about.
All the quick tips, lessons and just about everything else you’ve tried in the past has been aimed at improving your potential. Potential is a myth. It doesn’t hit the ball for you. What you need is,
A new strategy for bringing your golf game to the course each time you play
Tell me. Have you ever hit a good shot? Maybe it was on the practice fairway or on the golf course some time. Chances are you’ve hit plenty of good shots – probably under pressure when you needed them most.
The problem isn’t your good shots. I’ve rarely seen a golfer that hasn’t had the potential for better golf. You have the potential – you just haven’t been shown how to use your potential.
The first step is to stop working on potential. Forget about swing changes and improving your skill level.
My philosophy isn’t about building the perfect golf swing – it’s about showing you how you can achieve golfing success with your current abilities and maximizing your potential.
I would put my last dollar on the fact that if you could bring your current A-game to the golf course right now, you would easily be able to reduce your handicap and play golf that’s worthwhile.
But you can’t.
And it’s not because you don’t have talent or any skill. You have an abundance of that – highlighted by the fact that you can occasionally hit a long drive, sink good putts and make the infrequent pressure shot.
You can’t play good golf because you keep filling your mind and system with too many thoughts, rules and regulations (I call this interference) on how you think you should be playing. Your mindset is all about improving your potential and not on how to play.
Let me use this story to explain…
A golfer I know started playing golf by hitting balls in a rugby paddock. He went back and forth with the objective of hitting the ball between the uprights. After a week or so he was able to successfully clear the goal posts more often than he missed.
What may even seem more remarkable is that thoughts of style, swing, stance, grip and alignment didn’t enter his mind. He was focused on achieving a goal – on success.
In fact, he didn’t think his achievements were all that special – after all, hitting the ball between the goals was what he was trying to do.
It wasn’t until he started playing with others that he ran into difficulties. Despite playing better than his friends, they suggested that he change his style and remodel his swing. In what he describes as a “fiasco” he heeded their advice and destroyed his swing completely. Not long after this he lost interest and quit the game for over 15 years.
This golfer quite naturally found an ideal golf game. He had a clear mind and objective that allowed him to learn a functional golf swing. Golf was fun and he was on a fast learning curve.
But this is not always enough. By disrupting the process and allowing interruptions to get in the way he lost the magic. Despite having all the golfing potential in the world he lost the lot. He was left with nothing.
Potential and skill doesn’t guarantee performance. Golf results depend purely on your ability to avoid mental interference. When you understand this and apply this to your game, you can start to play better golf and maximise your chances of playing remarkable golf.
Here’s another common story that I see regularly:
John has been playing golf for years. He plays most Saturdays and is keen to perform well. Last month, while warming up he struck a purple patch. Each shot felt fantastic and the ball sailed long and true.
This was where the magic was lost. He stepped up to the first tee and tried to replicate his practice fairway form. He became stiff and tight and had a nightmare round.
He allowed internal interference to get in his way. Despite hitting the ball well during practice, he lacked trust to bring that swing to the golf course. John paid the price and rarely experiences good golf when it matters.
Even though it seems like the right thing to do, working on your golf swing or trying to replicate a good swing is not going to allow you to play your best.
You can invest time and energy on trying to improve your potential but experience nothing. Your time is wasted because interference will still hold you back. The real problem is not the swing but in not understanding how you should be performing.
Here’s the good bit: When you learn to reduce the interference amazing things start to happen. You relax and your body performs the skill to a higher standard. This is known as automatic or natural learning and is how we perform all day to day activities.
When your subconscious performs the skill, your confidence soars, your skill level improves (naturally) and you shoot better scores. The game appears easier and you have a lot more fun.
You’ll even hit the golf ball further. Instead of straining and busting your gut for extra distance – the removal of inner interference will unleash your inner power reserve. It’s extra power without trying harder or increasing the chance of injury.
The main point is, that once you learn to remove interference, everything falls into place. When once your talent, skill and application yielded disappointing results – they suddenly begin giving you the results you’ve always dreamed of.
The moral of the story: If you’ve been playing golf for any length of time your skill level and talent is good enough. Trying to improve your skill level is fine; but if you can’t perform that skill without interference, then your efforts will never pay off.
Look at it this way. Your skill level is not the most important part of your golf game. It’s only a small part. You can only be as good as your weakest link, and if that link happens to be your ability to actually play golf, all the skill and talent is not going to help you.
So you need to remove the interference that is holding you back. Do that and your natural talent, potential and skill level will gel together, giving you the kind of performances you know you’re capable of.
Sounds obvious, right? Not at all! Think about this for a second. When was the last time you made an effort to work on a part of your game that wasn’t related to your golf swing, skill level or building potential?
I’m going to bet that you never have.
And it’s not just you. I’m guilty of letting distractions and interference affect my performance. Despite enjoying successful years on the golf course, I recently let self-doubt and distractions get in my way during an important round
After few bad shots my mind wandered. I started to think my swing was off and it needed fixing. Try as I might the round slipped away. I lost a match I should have won easily.
The thing is there was nothing wrong with my golf swing. The distractions of my mind led to self-doubt and fear setting in. I forgot to play golf and paid the penalty. There was no need to try and fix my swing or give it any thought.
I let internal interference affect my performance.
But I learn quickly these days. In the next game I played free from fear and interference and followed my worst round of the year with one of the best; a 5 under 67.
Normality had been restored.
My real issue was believing there was an error in my swing. As soon as I stopped controlling (and removed the interference) I was able to play one of my best rounds of the year.