Regaining Lost Confidence
By Sean Rea

To quote Bob Rotella, “Golf is not a game of perfect” (a great book on golf psychology if you like to read). This being said, confidence is a huge part of the game. Because golf is not a game of perfect there are many opportunities for your confidence to get shaken. According to Orlick (2000) confidence is one of the three cornerstones to excellence, in other words if your confidence gets shaky it affects your whole game.

How to regain lost confidence is one of the toughest areas to counsel athletes on because everyone is completely different in this area. First, practice, practice, practice, imagine yourself in a situation where your confidence has crumbled and then see yourself successfully rallying. Recreate in your minds-eye times when your confidence was shaken and you were successful in dealing with the situation and rallying.

Remember times outside of golf that this happened to you and the strategies you used to successfully deal with the situation. Try to transfer the skills from outside sport into your game. This practice will set up your ability to handle times that your confidence is shaken. By practising mentally for these time you will find that you handle the situation easier or that it is harder to shake your confidence.

Also practice what I refer to as living in the moment. This means not allowing stray thoughts to enter into you mind. Lack of confidence is usually caused allowing thoughts of poor performance or doubts to enter into your pre-shot preparation and actual shot. When you commit to doing something do it with 100% focus. This takes practice but can be achieved by realising what your triggers are that cause you loose focus and creating strategies to deal with it. Teach yourself to replace negative thoughts with positive self-affirming thoughts.

Remember each shot is brand new, do not view each hole as a series of shots linked together, take one at a time. By linking the shots together you are future thinking and not staying in the moment. Pick your target (something small and precise) and hit the target. This is not to say don’t plan how you are going to play the hole, plan and then execute each step as a separate unit. This allows you to make small gains that will boost your confidence, and also allows your confidence to take less of a hit if one shot is bad.

For short-term fixes on the course try:
- Think in positive ways about your abilities.
- Act as if you can do it…the physical/mental connection works both ways, usually by acting confidant you will regain your confidence.
- Remember all of your successes from practice and prior games.
- Always draw out lessons after each game in order to continually improve your game.
- Imagine each shot as being on the practice range/green, there really is no difference. In this case play like you practice.