Steve Atherton, PGA Master Professional and GolfTEC instructor called this afternoon to invite me to speak at an upcoming event in Denver, Colorado. With business dispatched, we began talking about teaching and coaching golf, and the topic of pre-performance routines came up. I shared with Steve a conversation I had with several Swedish PGA tour professionals several years about pre-performance routines.
In short, the tour pros agreed that they had routines, but they were not particularly dedicated to them. In other words, rather than following a scripted routine every time, they simply did what was comfortable to prepare them to perform at their best. Steve agreed that many of the better players he teaches also have ‘flexibility’ in their routines, and often a player can get into more trouble by paying too much attention to the routine and not enough to the performance. Steve relayed a story of an accomplished player who, while hitting golf balls into an indoor net, still spent considerable time visualizing his shot until he felt comfortable enough to step up to the ball and make the ball go where and how he had just envisioned it as if the net was not there.
Sitting at my desk a few hours later, I picked up the latest Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, and in thumbing through the Table of Contents coincidentally spied an article entitled “Developing Effective Pre-performance Routines in Golf: Why Don’t We Ask the Golfer?” The article confirmed the conversation Steve and I had earlier.
The study found that while the elite golfers all used ‘pre-performance routines’, the routines were hardly scripted. Each routine was uniquely individual, reflecting the player’s personality and background. Every routine, however, contained the following: a) focus, b) self-talk, and c) imagery.
In other words, the players found a way to put their full attention to the task at hand, talked themselves into (and not out of) being successful, and finally they pictured the successful completion of the task. The routines, it seems, were rather haphazard in nature as they were assembled from a variety of information sources, and were undertaken with minimal thought and maximum flexible. It seemed to me that there were some good lessons in this for everyone who performs regular tasks – whether it be project management, writing, customer service, instruction, strategizing, or whatever you do on a regular basis. Find a way to focus on the task at hand, talk yourself into success and picture yourself achieving your goal.
