Mental Focus in Your Golf Game

Let's take a closer look at how to improve mental focus in your golf game. This area underpins many areas of the inner game. Improving mental focus is the doorway into playing at your peak. Without it you are playing in the dark.

How do we know when we're focused? What are some obvious signs that our mind is clear and our attention is on target? Ahhh, that last sentence had the answer inside the question! Our attention is on target. On target meaning whatever we place our mind on is receiving all of our focus.

Those of you who've read my book know my philosophy of the game is this: golf is a movement toward a target. This begins with your mind, of course. Being clear and centered on what is most relevant in any moment is the provides evidence of how well honed your mental focus is.

Mental Focus: Where the mind travels the body follows...

This is a powerful insight. It is a very high level principle of how the mind/body relationship operates. If your mind wanders aimlessly as you play you can rest assured your full potential is being left behind. The enormous power of a focused mind is awesome.

Let's say you're standing on the tee box of a 457 yard Par 4. It has a fairway bunker down the right side starting at 240 through to 310 yds from the tee. A long creek runs along side the green, starting across the fairway in front of the green and wrapping around the entire green. Two strategically placed bunkers frame the medium sized, 2 tiered green that slopes to the left.

Ok, your mind followed along and created a vision of what this hole might look like. You used your mind to draw a picture and direct your attention. Now here you are, ready to tee it up with the this knowledge of the hole to consider. Many players don't even provide this info to themselves prior to hitting.

Yet let's assume you've done at least this much. Where should your focus be? Directly on your desired target. So if this is the left side of the fairway, pick a specific spot. Once you are ready for your approach shot do the same.

What you focus on you get more of

This mental principle will greatly accelerate your mental game from development toward mastery. If you take it to heart and apply it consistently. Do you seriously want to learn improve your mental focus while you golf? Then spend some time, lots of time, meditating and contemplating the above headline.

If you channel your attention toward your target, whatever that might be, your mind will magnify it. It will give you more of what you focus on. So when you allow your mind to wander to what you don't want, what are you going to get more of?

Exactly. More trouble. More OB. More hazards. Poor swings. Worse scores. If your attention is habitually fixated on "scoring badly" then you are directly generating more bad scores. The mental game is such a challenge for most every golfer since they don't understand these powerful mental game principles.

These distinctions literally transform your game from that of being merely half decent to one that's exceptional. By guiding your mind toward what you want you are actively instructing your unconscious on what you believe is real in the moment.

Take some time the next round you play to notice where you tend to place your attention. From standing on the tee all the way through the green. When your score is worse than usual and when you're on auto pilot. Monitor your mental focus and you'll improve steadily.

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