Karzmer: Mental game big part of golf

My first column this year asked for feedback for future columns. I’m glad to say that Brian Bisson from The Lake Club immediately stepped up with a good idea: how to get over a “mental block” on a specific hole.

To come up with a “mental block” solution, I guess we first need to have a clear problem.

In my mind, a mental block could be a lot of different things. Here are some: one hole (“number 9 gets me every time!”); one specific shot (“I hate that tee shot on 3!”); one type of shot (“I never draw it when I need to”); one regular shot (“I can’t chip!”); down to the dreaded all-encompassing problem, the shanks.

Personally, I’m 100 percent sure I’ve encountered each and every one of those issues throughout my career, including the shanks!

And when I think about how to overcome them, there are really only two possible answers — mentally or physically.

Now I know I’m nowhere near smart enough to try to explain how to fix the actual mental part of this problem. I can say that Dr. Bob Rotella’s book “Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect” was a great tool for me. I think it was published in the mid-90s and has been highly touted ever since. If you’re looking for a true mental breakthrough for any of the issues above, that book is a great place to start.

My solution, however, is a more physical two-parter. Part one is “change the objective”. Part two is “physically repeat it over and over again.”

To explain these, I’ll use a personal example from my playing days at Kent State. Hole seven at Windmill Lakes is a short little par 4. It’s tight, with out-of-bounds left and water right. But at 300-350 yards based on the tee placement, it’s a definite birdie hole.

For everyone except me.

I don’t know what the heck it was with that tee shot, but in the fall of my freshman year I literally hooked it out of bounds there about 80 percent of the time. And it wasn’t just with a driver.

I tried everything — three wood, two iron, four iron, all the way down to a six or seven iron. They all had the same result.

Hook. Hook. Hook.

I’m trying to compete for a spot on the traveling team of a pretty darn good D1 golf school and I’m spotting the other guys three-to-four shots a round on one hole. It was brutal.

Finally, my coach came up to me and in his infinite wisdom he got me to “change the objective.” Rather than try to squeeze one in the fairway and make birdie, he told me to take out my driver and hit it as far up into the water on the right as I could. I’d get a drop about 80 yards from the green and would save par probably half the time.

In other words, as my friend Jimmy Showtyme says now: “5 is less than 6.”

The other part of my solution is to “physically repeat it over and over again.” As my troubles on Windmill No. 7 continued, I made an effort to drive out there every day for about a week straight. Each night before sunset, I’d take a cart out and hit about 50-100 tee shots just on that one hole. The more I saw the ball go straight, the more I “tricked” my mind into thinking I could actually do that over and over again.

And you know what? It worked. I don’t know what the actual fix was, but I stopped making triples and eventually got to the point where the hole became a birdie opportunity for me as well.

Now extrapolate that across the different issues I brought up above. From rough holes and tough tee shots to bad chipping and even the shanks, try looking at your objective from a different angle.

And once you wrap your head around the “objective,” get out there and practice the shots. Nothing actually makes us better than when we dig the results out of the ground with some good practice.

Mr. Bisson, I don’t know if I answered your question about overcoming a mental block for a bad hole or not? But I certainly appreciate your input.

Jonah Karzmer is a former golf professional who writes a Sunday golf column for The Vindicator. In his spare time he sells commercial insurance and loves getting feedback on his weekly columns via email at Jonah@thekarzmerinsurance.com.