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In the first of a series of columns about Golf365, the mental coach Duncan McCarthy he says we need to remember that mental, physical and technical factors all determine how we score
We all want to play our best at all times but how often do we play on our A game? How often does that actually happen? Not as often as we would like or expect.
I will always look at it as having our A, B or C games as, in most cases, we will probably produce our B game at some point. So we play OK but there will be a few bad pictures in there. This has a lot to do with any standard of golf, from the tour player down to the club golfer, and it’s where most of us play our golf from.
It is important to accept here and have the understanding that the B game will be there more often than not, the A game will show its face again and again but, equally, we must know that sometimes our C game can show its head.
When we think about a round we will put things in the way we swing and how we hit the ball. But when we break it down, performance is made up of our mental, physical and technical abilities – and in no particular order.
Just because we have a technical game one day, that does not mean that the body and mind must be C. So, if we’re not really hitting it hard and rating this as a C, it’s about bragging about the mental performance of an A game. We will have a good idea of how good we are before the round but we can also look at how we were able to eat and drink over the 18 holes and how our body is throughout the round.
Some days we’ll be A technically and we’ll be hitting really well but we won’t match that with the A’s mental game. We should pride ourselves on finding the best in each of these three areas. Obviously if we’re swinging well that’s going to contribute to taking a few shots and, equally, if we have our B game, let’s just try to drop it in the middle of the green. It is always worth remembering that the middle of the green never hurt anyone.
If we have our C game technically it means the fairway is good, the green is good and around the green is good – let’s get rid of the worst case scenario and put the ball in those smart spots.
Talk about good things and be proud
We are probably told from our school days what is wrong and what we have done wrong. We don’t spend enough time on how well we did something. Part of my job is to identify where the player can improve but we have to talk about the good things we are doing and the progress we are making.
We don’t choose our memories wisely and it’s important that we start using the past a little better and go Okay, this is what I’m proud of in my past and these are the lessons I want to bring out in my present. and the future. And if we start using that a little bit better, then we can get a lot out of ourselves here and now.
We will be able to count the times when a tour player will have his perfect A game on the fingers of one hand. There are a few exceptions, like Scottie Scheffler, and any Absolute A play by a tour player is unbelievable but it can be on the other hand and that’s not underplaying or being bad.
I’ve talked about this with one player about having C’s spiky game and B’s getting us closer to contention. Then our A game gets us into contention and hopefully we cross the line more often than we win.
But remember that each game is built mentally, physically and technically so we are talking about everything that works well there. We may have our A game mentally and physically but technically our B game and that can still put us in contention.
Learn from Tiger
Tiger Woods won 82 times on the PGA Tour and, as an amazing player, he didn’t have his technical game all those weeks but mentally he will be there.
As a club golfer we can mark the end of the round rather than going out and counting how many putts we took and leaving it at that. And make this distance over 18 holes and not just in our emotional reaction to the last few holes.
Everyone is different but we can rank out of five in our mental, physical and technical performance. Performance is a mixture of those three things and is the ability to pull all those three skills individually together on any given day to perform.
About Duncan McCarthy
Duncan works with golfers across the tour including Marcus Armitage, Erik van Rooyen and women’s British Open winner Ashleigh Buhai
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