Putting Out Of Your Mind

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Billy grew up in Phoenix. From the time he started playing golf, he enjoyed putting. He had little choice. His parents weren't wealthy and when they dropped him off at a municipal golf course called Papago Park, they couldn't give him money for greens fees or range balls. The only thing a kid could do for free at Papago Park was putt and chip around the big, crowned practice green. Without it, you might as well stay on the practice range, because your real game is hitting balls. It isn't playing golf. Golf is a game of scoring. If you want to score, you must putt. If you want to score well, you must putt well. It's as simple as that. Don't be stupid and listen to people who say you should always try to putt slightly past the hole: you should be trying to MAKE each putt!

This book is okay. I'm pretty new to the golf self-help literature, but even I can tell that there are no startlingly different ideas here. This audio edition is an abridgement of the text version, and I feel no need to go read the real book to find out what was left out. Rotella reads the text himself, and he is not a dynamic speaker (as most authors are not!). I can sort of see the necessity here, though, since he's saying how "I told semi-famous golfer 1 this," "I made semi-famous golfer 2 do that," etc. This old adage is especially resonant with Dr. Bob Rotella, the best-selling author of Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect, and one of the foremost golf authorities today. In Putting Out of Your Mind, Rotella offers entertaining putting. He reveals the unique mental approach that great putting requires and helps golfers of all levels master this essential skill. You drive for show, you putt for dough'. This old saying is familiar to all golfers and Bob Rotella, one of the foremost authorities on golf today, is a firm believer in its truth. In Putting out of Your Mind, he reveals the unique mental approach that great putting requires and helps golfers of all levels master this essential skill. I never thought about golf that way, in part because I came to golf after years spent in other sports. As a kid and a college student, I played basketball and lacrosse. As the director of sports psychology at the University of Virginia, I coached athletes in the gamut of intercollegiate sports. Twenty years ago, when golfers started coming to me and asking for help with their game, I was able to look at golf with relatively fresh eyes. Billy had the wisdom, as he paced about and continued to inspect the green, not to let anything change this solid first impression. Instead, his observation only strengthened his initial read.

put out of one's mind

I knew that in any sport, there were fundamental skills that good coaches emphasized in their teaching and insisted their players execute. In basketball, for instance, I knew that every great team had a good attitude, rebounded well, played defense well, and shot free throws well. Those skills separated them from the merely good teams and the less-than-good ones. A merely good team wins on nights when its shooters are hot. Great teams win on nights when they don't shoot well, because they always play defense, rebound, and shoot free throws. And they always take the floor with a good attitude. I see this syndrome threatening many of the successful professionals I work with. Typically, they made it to the PGA or LPGA Tour by first learning how to get the ball in the hole. Many of them, like Billy Mayfair, spent much of their childhood hanging around a putting green. Dottie Pepper tells me that when she was a girl, she'd get on her bike on summer mornings just after dawn. She'd go to a golf course near her home called McGregor Links and go out to the 16th green. She knew that the first players wouldn't tee off till the sun had been up for an hour or so. They wouldn't reach the 16th for several hours after that. That gave her lots of time, and she used it to chip, putt, play sand shots, and putt some more. When the first golfers reached the 16th tee, she raked the traps and took off, only to return hours later for more putting in the twilight. All of that history was on my mind as I watched that Nissan Open play-off begin. I think it was on Billy's, too. Billy did. He went on to win his first Tour event in 1993 and to build a solid career for himself. He won the Tour Championship in 1995 at Southern Hills on some of the fastest greens in the country.

I offer this assurance to you: If you can absorb the principles in this book and put them into practice the way Billy Mayfair did, you are going to become a much better putter than most of the people around you, unless, by chance, the people around you are the other members of the Ryder Cup team. You're never going to putt worse than decently. And on your good days, you will putt very well indeed. It’s been said that golf is 10% physical and 90% mental. This is something that most club golfers inherently know...but aren’t good at executing. Better golf comes from a better (positive) mindset. Even then, it was all but assumed that Tiger would win the play-off, which began on the same par-5. Tiger hits the ball much longer than Billy, whose length off the tee is about average for the PGA Tour. Even those who understood that good putting is much more important than length off the tee found reason to favor Tiger: Billy Mayfair has a very unorthodox putt-ing stroke, the kind of stroke that television commentators love to criticize, love to say won't hold up under pressure.If you wonder whether this describes you, let me ask a clarifying question. How often do you look at a couple of three-foot putts and find yourself saying to your opponent, "Good-good?"

One reason, Billy now thinks, is the way Tour courses are equipped. Every one of them has a big practice range with grass tees. On every practice range there is an unlimited supply of fresh golf balls -- real ones, not range balls. For a kid from Papago Park who could never afford to hit all the balls he wanted, this was all but irresistible. Billy started to spend more of his practice time working on his full swing. Much like Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect and Golf Is a Game of Confidence, Putting out of Your Mind is a resonant and informative guide to achieving a better golf game. While most golfers spend their time trying to perfect their swing so they can hit the ball further, Rotella encourages them to concentrate on their putting, the most crucial yet overlooked aspect of the game. Great players are not only aware of the importance of putting, they go out of their way to master it. And of course mastery begins with an understanding of the attitude needed to be a better putter. Rotella's mental rules, which have helped some of the greatest golfers in the world to become champion putters can now work for golfers everywhere. You don't get too many chances to beat Tiger," he told me. "And when you do have a chance, you want to take it." You drive for show, you putt for dough. This old saying is familiar to all golfers and Bob Rotella, one of the foremost authorities on golf today, is a firm believer in its truth. In Putting out of Your Mind he reveals the unique mental approach that great putting requires and helps golfers of all levels master this essential skill. Very few people manage to maintain that sort of attitude throughout their golfing careers. A lot of kids seem to have it. But there are socialization pressures at work in golf that want them to become cautious, careful, and eventually fearful about their putting. Over the many years of a golfer's life, it's easy to succumb.I love the way Billy handled the situation. He wanted to beat Tiger Woods. But he was able to discipline his thinking enough to shove that thought out of his field of focus, along with all other distracting ideas. He thought only of seeing the target he wanted and letting the putt roll. That was why he made the putt. But this only puts more pressure on their putting. They can't help noticing that just as much as it did when they were juniors, putting determines success in professional tournaments. Most of them boil down to putting contests. They realize that putting is almost the only culprit keeping them from the success they've dreamed of since they were kids. This can poison their attitude toward putting, turning them from a kid who naturally putted well into a middle-aged man, like Ben Hogan became, who makes sour remarks about someone else's putting success. I knew Tiger would have an advantage on a par-five," he told me later. "But then he drove into the rough and I knew he wasn't going to be able to reach it in two. That meant the hole was probably going to be decided with wedge shots and putts. I thought to myself, 'Okay, Tiger. The game's on my court now.'" Much like Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect and Golf Is a Game of Confidence, Putting Out of Your Mind is an informative and valuable guide to achieving a better golf game. While most golfers spend their time trying to perfect their swing so they can drive the ball farther, Rotella encourages them to concentrate on their putting—the most crucial yet often overlooked aspect of the game. Great players are not only aware of the importance of putting, they go out of their way to master it, and mastery can only begin with the understanding of the attitude needed to be a better putter. Rotella's mental rules have helped some of the greatest golfers in the world become champion putters and, for the first time, are now available to golfers everywhere.