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Old 07-30-2010, 04:52 PM   #5
jinnsamys

Join Date
Oct 2005
Posts
418
Senior Member
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The thing about psychology, as it applies to golf, is that your psychological makeup stays with you wherever you go and “who” you are does as well.

For instance, if you’re the type of person who freaks out when things go wrong, your most likely going to freak out over an unexpected occurrence on a golf course. Or if you’re the type of person who holds a grudge or “can’t let go” of a bad experience, you’re most likely going to have a tough time forgetting about a bad shot.

The whole idea of “Sports Psychology” is somewhat silly because the term implies that there is some type of conditioning available to modify one’s behavior as it applies to a particular sport as if that activity can somehow exist separately from the rest of one’s life.

A person’s psychological makeup is not something that can be worn or removed as a golf glove or a pair of spikes and only applied to a particular endeavor. The thing is that you carry your brain around with you wherever you go and thus you carry your personality with you all the time as well. I don’t believe that behavior can be turned on and off like a light bulb and so I don’t believe it’s possible for a person who panics in a crisis, for example, to suddenly become “Mr. Cool” out on a golf course.

The point is that if a person is seeking to change their behavior on a golf course, they need to modify “who they are” in all aspects of their existence. I don’t think it’s possible for someone to “train” himself or herself not to be upset when they hit a bad golf shot only to come home and completely lose it because someone ran over their garbage cans. One either handles situations calmly or one doesn’t but either way that reaction has to apply across the board.

So the bottom line is that rather than wasting a lot of time reading books about how one “feels” on a golf course or contemplating one’s navel over specific golf-related behaviors, I think that time would be better spent modifying their behavior as a whole person and in the end, the “golf thing” will take care of itself.



-JP
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