How To Improve Golf Confidence

March 27, 2015
Mark Walker

Improve Golf Confidence

By Understanding How To Optimise It

What is confidence?

What is confidence in golf? At the basic level, my definition of golfing confidence is how strongly you believe in your ability to execute a golf shot and more broadly how much do you believe you can play great golf and win.
Golf confidence comes from many areas including past performances, training, and preparation. We each have our own reasons for feeling “golf confident”.If you want to improve golf confidence useful to get clear about what your reasons for feeling confident are . Confidence is not the same thing as expecting to win, which can lead to reducing our confidence if we don’t win. Golf confidence is not at all linked to your self-esteem so don’t mix the two up. Golf confidence is simply related to your belief in your golfing ability.

We are going to approach this in two parts

Part 1

How to improve golf confidence.

This involves one of the biggest mistakes that golfers make when it comes to their confidence.
Many golfers allow their confidence to be dictated by events that they don’t control.
The main example of this is the way that many golfers let their confidence be linked to how well they are playing on any given day or even on a given hole.
This is a bad mistake and can be easily rectified when you know how. Here is one way.

Pick sources of confidence that you can control.

Avoid having external sources of confidence that are not in your control.

The weather, the quality of the greens, the type of grass or the type of golf course you are playing. The perceived level of your opponents.

How well you played the first few holes.

Examples of sources of confidence for golfers under our control

The amount and quality of practice you are doing. The quality of your pre-game preparation. How much you think about your past success and past great shots.
The quality of your equipment. Your skills and qualities that help you to play great golf.

Action steps to better golf confidence

For the next few rounds make a conscious choice to know that your confidence will not be dictated by how well you played the last shot or the last hole. Instead, you will rest your confidence on the more solid platform of all the years of golfing experience you have and all the success you have had.

It’s about making a mental shift inside.

Have a simple phrase to say to yourself that sums up his new attitude towards your confidence.

“Confident golfers believe in themselves whatever the quality of their current game is.”

“A few bad holes or shots is not an issue for me.”

“I have deeper reasons to believe in my abilities no matter how I am playing today.”

(see key 2 below for more info about your deeper reasons.)

In order to apply these techniques to your game over the next few weeks, you will want to access yourself.

Here are a few simple questions to ask yourself after each round of golf.

How was my confidence before during and after the round?

What did I do well to keep and improve my confidence today?

What could I do better that would help boost my confidence?

What actions do I need to take to help me improve my confidence?

Part 2

Manage your golf confidence killers

Take note of what typically kills or reduces your confidence.
Examples Negative self-talk, judging your warm up, worrying about results, setting high expectations and comparing yourself to them while you play.

I would just like to focus on one of these in this article.

Negative self-talk.

Do you ever call yourself bad names on the golf course? If you are like many golfers then you probably do.
How does this affect your confidence?
I suggest that you make a conscious choice to STOP the negative self-talk. The intention is usually to help you to play better golf by giving yourself a kick up the bum. My question for you is simple. Does it work ? For nearly all of us the answer is NO.

So what do you do instead?

Action steps

STEP 1

Start to notice when you are talking negatively to yourself. Make a list of your common negative self-talk phrases.

For example : I am so stupid, how could I make such a silly mistake, I can’t putt , I can’t chip, Mental midget.

STEP 2

Create a new positive phrase to counter your negative phrases.

A good way to do this is to write out a list of all the negative phrases you say to yourself. Then come up with a positive phrase to replace it.
so if your Confidence killing phrase is ” how can I be so stupid to 3 putt this hole?” you might come up with a new positive phrase. Ok put that behind you I will focus on my path to the hole for the next put and this will help me.

STEP 3

Practice using your new positive phrases while out on the golf course. It may take a while to shift your patterns but it is definitely worth the effort as it will really help you to keep your confidence up throughout the round no matter how well you are playing.

Next steps

These are just a few of the great coaching tips and tools that can really help you play to your full potential.
Don’t you think a great swing deserves a great mental game?
Why not take action today to improve your game.