The mental side of golf is not the exclusive preserve of a specialised professional. Rather, it’s a key component of a PGA Professional’s skillset, say Dave Collins, Steven Orr and Howie Carson in Part 1 of a three-part series.
Everyone involved with sport acknowledges the importance of the mental side. Indeed, our research shows that this is even more important in getting to the top, where navigating a range of challenges is inevitable. Without the right mental skills, leading to the right attitude and full exploitation of the opportunities provided, so-called natural talent will often fall by the wayside.
The nature of golf makes the mental imperative even more important. The necessity for fine motor control over precise technique, coupled with the need for cool thinking, sound decision making and performance under pressure, make this game an absolute heaven for psychologists.
Importantly, however, any good psychologist will stress the importance of the skills being taught by, with and through the coach. In other words, the mental side of the game is absolutely not an exclusive preserve of a specialised professional. Rather, it’s a key component of a PGA Professional’s skillset too. Accordingly, in this piece, supplemented by two further follow-ups covering golfers of different ages and stages, we hope to provide some insights into the essential components for PGA Professionals to address with their players.
These articles are focused on coaches coaching at county level and above, and dealing with players who aspire to high-level achievement. In short, what might be thought of as those on a performance pathway. We start by considering the essentials for the player: what they need to be able to drive their own progress.
As such, the 10 skills represent a ‘hand of cards’ from which the player, supported by coach and perhaps psychologist, selects and deploys appropriately to solve each particular conundrum.
As a third consideration, recognise that each challenge (because it is personal) will require a particular combination of skills.
Furthermore, not only is that combination specific to the individual (the same challenge is usually best addressed by different combinations of skills for different players, even between identical twins) but also the optimum combination is very likely to vary as the player progresses and the challenges differ.
In summary, your selection of which cards to play will be justifiably individual and age/stage specific.
Recommended reading at the end of this article should provide you with some information on how to incorporate this mental approach into your normal coaching process and subsequent articles will look at how these skills can be operationalised and deployed as the player progresses.
Our psychological characteristics of developing excellence (or necessary essentials)
- Commitment
- Focus & distraction control
- Realistic performance evaluation
- Self-regulation
- Role clarity
- Planning & self-organisation
- Goal setting
- Quality practice
- Effective imagery
- Seeking and using social support
What YOU need to encourage
Even if the PCDEs have been taught, it is important to recognise that, just as with any other skill, practice in application is also needed. Furthermore, this practice needs to be increasingly challenging. Indeed, if the PGA Professional can work with significant others to encourage application of the PCDEs to other environments (e.g., schoolwork, lifestyle, etc.) then the player is likely to end up with a stronger and more adaptable set of skills.
To illustrate how these PCDEs can be deployed in practice, the table below presents an example of addressing a common issue—pre-event anxiety—through planned application of these principles.
Table 1: Addressing an issue through planned deployment of PCDEs
A possible solution (remember these are likely to be individual, depending on the context, players skills, etc)
| Player issue |
Identified PCDE(s) |
Identified player behaviours |
Coach behaviours |
System behaviours |
| Pre-event anxiety |
Self regulation
Goal setting
|
Letting thoughts pass (diffusion or distraction)
Break the round down into small chunks
|
Work through a post-event reflection process with player
Help player set small manageable goals
|
Create pressure scenarios in training
Players in squad learn basic mindfulness training
|
There are other factors which become increasingly important as the player progresses. These are likely to be factors which the coach starts by leading but, with age and progress, responsibility (and increased autonomy) moves to the player.
The first three relate to the skills of quality practice, realistic performance evaluation, goal setting, planning/self organisation and self-regulation.
The last three form what we call the R3 (role cubed) characteristics of role. Taken as a block, they describe the structure which the PGA Professional will build and increasingly require as the player progresses.
Environmental and organisational features of effective development environments
Notice how these characteristics of the environment are based on and grow from the PCDEs
- Careful planning and consequent programming
- Work ethic
- Positive standards (appropriate perfectionism)
- Role clarity (what is needed)
- Role acceptance (I’m willing to do this)
- Role reinforcement (my significant others understand and encourage this)
How this varies with age and stage
It should be clear that the use of these personal and structural factors will vary as the player progresses. At a young age and early stage, things are likely to be led and taught directly by the PGA Professional.
As the player progresses, there is an essential move of responsibility so that the player increasingly recognise that they are in control. After all, it is way too easy to blame your poor performance on the golf gremlins!
Furthermore, just as we emphasise the existence of ‘getting there’ pressures against ‘staying there’ pressures, there will clearly be a subtle but discernible difference between ‘getting there’ skills and ‘staying there’ skills.
The latter will kick in once the player has hopefully reached and started to establish themselves at their desired peak level – perhaps as a tour pro.
Even then the game of life has a few potential double bogeys to overcome! We have often seen thirty-something players who, having achieved well until then, seem to lose their mojo and, frustratingly, are apparently unable to return to their previous levels of performance. It is important for us to emphasise that, with certain specific exceptions, this is not down to an inevitable consequence of ageing.
As the final stage of most people’s careers, there is the move to Senior golf; a challenge which comes with its own set of demands and consequent skills. Here, we suggest our five-stage model which will form the basis of the next two articles in this series, which will also be featured in PGA Monthly.
The five lives of the high-level golfer
- 5–10 years building the base
- 11–17 years equipping for the journey
- 16–21 years reaching the peak/ getting on Tour
- 21–35 years staying at the top
- 45+ years the move to Seniors golf and living at the top
Implications for PGA Professionals
We will present more ideas on how to do it in the next two articles and through training courses which will be made available through The PGA. For the moment, however, there are a few important first principles which need to be applied.
Firstly, PGA Professionals need to build mental factors into their planning and then incorporate above-the-neck development into their programme with their upwardly mobile players. This will make use of an integrated or ‘nested’ plan which prioritises needs for immediate change, nested within longer term objectives.
As with normal planning procedures, this will often work backwards from the problems they see as likely to limit progress; that is, what are the biggest mental challenges their players face? For example, this could be pre-event anxiety. How then could the coach deploy the PCDE hand of cards to solve/improve this problem?
For the PGA Professional, this will involve a wider and more comprehensive thinking about the player and what they need. Referred to in psychology as ‘case conceptualisation’, good coaches will already be doing this, albeit with a more limited scope. Our aim is that, given an accepted recognition of the importance of mental factors, discussion and sharing of practice will become the norm.
In short, coaches will pursue a T-shaped expertise, extending from the upright bit – the deep technical and tactical knowledge – to the outer arms, representing a developing knowledge and skillset into aspects such as mental, physical and lifestyle.
Finally, reflecting the ideas in the second block above, that players will experience development and take increasing responsibility for their own progress. In short, a cognitive development. For the time being, we hope to be pushing on an open door, or at least one which has now been taken off the latch! We look forward to working with you.
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