Improving the Mental Game

For those of you that haven’t realised, Golf is not necessarily about physical prowess…

There are enough different types of shot and golf hole to equalise any strength differentials there may be. There are obviously also rules in place to even remove a certain element of skill factors when you consider the handicap system.

Compare Golf to most other sports and it really is pretty unique. Being fit helps of course - the best golfers are ones spending time in the gym nowadays working on their strength and flexibility. However, there aren’t many sports where you spend most of the time playing against yourself.

Even when in a competition, the main thing you are competing against is the course. The course is designed to test you, but the biggest test is actually mental, not physical. This is where golf really is different compared to other sports.

In team sports, you have other members of the team, the coaching staff etc. In a lot of individual sports, it can be similar, with coaches there to help you during events. With golf, unless you are lucky to have a caddie, this isn’t the case. Most of the time, it’s just you vs the course and the course is DESIGNED to test your mental strength.

Those bunkers are placed strategically. So is that water. I once had a conversation with the owner of Kingsnorth Golf Club (my home club at the time of writing this) where he stated that as it was a relatively small course, they used the rough to provide the challenge that other features provided.

This meant that they deliberately let the rough grow to knee height in specific spots where the majority of wayward shots take you. For example, on the 2nd tee, you are presented with a simple shot to get to a corner for your approach. However, immediately on your left are trees which psychologically makes you shift your aim right. If you then happen to even slightly slice, there is a mound that has a knee length rough “hair cut” that literally catches your ball and 9 times out of ten swallows it…

So if the mental game is so important, why do so many golfers ignore this? A lot of the time, it’s the same reason why the majority don’t spend time on the range and when they do they just smash balls. Lack of time and education - or just bad luck…

Something that I stumbled on was Imagine golf, an app that tries to address the fact that so many of us ignore the mental game and then struggle on the course as a result. For me, I came across this through an Instagram recommendation.

Imagine golf is not cheap. It costs £49.99 per year at the time of writing this. However, I truly believe it’s worth every penny.

Imagine golf believe that the mental game is just as, if not more important than any other thing you apply on the course. The app is split into a few sections - Daily Drive, Coaching and Learn.

In the Coaching section, there are several audio courses from Pro’s, including a couple of courses focusing on swing drills and putting drills.

The learn section has a few small courses on a variety of topics such as Goal Setting and how to take decent photos on the course. There is also a useful introductory course for the whole concept called the Golf Driver’s Licence Course.

Which leads me into the main section - Daily Drive. The reason this is called the daily drive isn’t what you think. It actually refers to the journey we are all on. Imagine that you are on a car journey lasting a long time. Every day, you have to travel from A to B and your encounter various problems that may cause you to deviate, but through course correction you will always get to the destination.

The idea of this app is to provide you with a daily check (just like checking for your keys before the journey begins, or like checking your mirrors or sat nav during the journey). The theory behind the app is that by flexing our mental muscles once a day, our handicaps will come down as a result.

On the Daily Drive, there is a lesson every day, with 7 lessons per subject. The subject? A different book each week. So there is an element of Imagine golf effectively affiliating pro golfers’ books. But I don’t see that as a bad thing.

You get snippets from the book that are super useful. Without this app, I would approach my game in a completely different way. Before I started using this, I used to beat myself up over bad shots, make significantly worse decisions and had never even heard about visualising anything!

I use the app slightly different to the intended approach. They have a library of every lesson ever recorded, so I alternate between the current group of lessons and an older set. I still always listen to 7 in a row, one a day, but some of the older lessons are amazing.

I’ve added this into my morning routine and noticed a significant shift in handicap from when I started using it. My original target had been to reduce my handicap from 31 to 28 but I’m currently on 25 at the time of writing, so smashed the original goal.

The combination between this app and the coaching I receive in person is, for me, fundamentally making golf more enjoyable, so I couldn’t recommend it enough.

For those that are interested, here is a link to the apps website:

Imagine golf