Putting Out Of Your Mind

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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.

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?" Billy drove into the fairway and hit his second shot about eighty-five yards from the green. Tiger couldn't reach the green from the rough. He left his second thirty yards away. In fact, when Billy first came to see me in 1991, he told me he had developed a case of the yips. His scores were going up. He was in danger of losing his card.All too many players feel a sense of dread as they walk toward a green, much as they might if they were walking into a dentist's office. They think that nothing good can happen to them there. If they've reached the green in regulation figures, they worry about three-putting and wasting the good shots that got them there. If they have a good birdie chance, they worry about blowing it. If they've struggled just to reach the green, big numbers float through their brains.

Billy Mayfair reaffirmed, in that moment, his knowledge of one of the abiding truths about putting. The challenge of making a putt to win, to set a personal record, is what golf is all about. That's why professional golfers practice putting as much as they do -- because they want to savor the joy of meeting that challenge. The best and smartest of them realize something else as well. Putting is fun. As the last twosome approached the 72nd green of the 1998 Nissan Open, not many people in Los Angeles gave my friend and client Billy Mayfair much chance to win. Tiger Woods, playing a group ahead of Billy, had just birdied the final hole to take a one-stroke lead. Tiger was charging. He had birdied three of the last four holes. This kind of thinking can afflict even the greatest of players. Ben Hogan was one example. When he was winning tournaments, Hogan wrote and spoke of putting with equanimity, as an integral part of the game that could be handled with the right measures of practice, concentration, and relaxation. But as he got older, and his ball striking became virtually flawless, Hogan's attitude toward putting changed. He began to see it as an injustice that putting counted for so much in tournament golf. He began to loathe putting. Once, late in his career, Hogan played a pretournament practice round with the young Billy Casper, who was one of the best putters of all time. During the round, Hogan played his usual immaculate shots from tee to green. He made nearly no putts that mattered. Casper, meanwhile, was all over the golf course with his long shots. But he putted brilliantly. When the round was over, Casper had something like a 66 and Hogan something like 71. Hogan owed Casper some money. As he paid off his lost bet, Hogan sourly told Casper, "If you couldn't putt, you'd be selling hot dogs behind the tenth green." 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.

Customer reviews

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! 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.

All I really thought about," he told me later, "was making sure that I did my routine and saw my target well. I let the putt go." Hogan, perhaps, thought he was putting Casper in his place, thought he was making the point that he had a much better golf swing than Casper. What he was really saying was, "I can't play this game anymore." Any golfer whose improved ball striking becomes an excuse for hating to putt is in danger of wasting all the time he's devoted to his full swing. 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. As you would expect this book is all about putting - what to do and what not to do mentally. In a nutshell the key points are; trust yourself, go with your first instinct, that generally poor putting is not a result of a poor stroke, and you will improve as a putter if you commit to improving. My job, with the players I work with personally, as well as with the readers of this book, is to make sure that doesn't happen. It's to help you develop a great putting mind if you've never had one and to help you preserve it if you grew up being a fine putter. It's to help you embark on a lifelong love affair with putting. With such a mind, you can become an excellent putter.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. Rotellas mental rules, which have helped some of the greatest golfers in the world to become champion putters can now work for golfers everywhere. 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. 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. 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. 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 spend their time trying to perfect their swing so they can drive the ball farther, Rotella encourages golfers 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 understanding the attitude needed to be a better putter. Rotella's mental rules have helped some of the greatest golfers in the world to become champion putters. Now they're available to golfers everywhere.

With everything from true-life stories from some of the greats to dozens of game-changing practice drills, Putting out of Your Mind is the new bible of putting, and is sure to bring about immediate results for anyone who plays the game. 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.'"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. 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. So Billy did, five days a week after school. He developed into a very good putter. Even though he never hit the ball enormous distances, he won a lot of junior tournaments. He won the U.S. Public Links. He won the U.S. Amateur.