Zen Golf: Mastering the Mental Game

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Advanced training with the GRFi system and GRFi Vector Map to further reinforce your new skillset and provide the framework for progress and self development moving forward with your practice. Over the past few years, I’ve been practicing meditation. Zen Meditation has been used for thousands of years by Buddhist monks, but more and more people are taking it up each year as a way to reduce day to day stress and feel happier. Here at Sinclair Golf we installed a 20x8ft Zen Green Stage along with PuttView in our new Putting Bay earlier this summer. It is fantastic! The putting surface is the best I have ever seen. The ability to change the green and give the client the experience of any putt they may face on the golf course is key. The double breaks make this green stand out over others we looked at. There is no issue with standing on the green with my clients and it moves quietly and seamlessly. It has been hard to get the clients to want to work on their swings! Mushin is achieved when a person’s mind is free from thoughts of anger, fear, or ego during combat or everyday life. There is an absence of discursive thought and judgment, so the person is totally free to act and react towards an opponent without hesitation and without disturbance from such thoughts. At this point, a person relies not on what they think should be the next move, but what is their trained natural reaction or what is felt intuitively. It is not a state of relaxed, near-sleepfulness, however. The mind could be said to be working at a very high speed, but with no intention, plan or direction.” – Wikipedia

Place your attention on where the swing takes you to (FINISH) and let your swing self-organise through reverse engineering your swing. Next time you’re on the course, I’d like you think about how you feel and what you are focusing on from the time you start walking into the ball until you hit it. Training yourself to get better at keeping the mind quiet will help you make a better swing. Meditation is one technique that will not only help with this, but it will improve your stress management and focus in general. You’ll be more in the moment, and playing Zen Golf. We recently had the pleasure of hosting an amazing GRF Golf school @ The Golf Groove in London. We had 18 amazing students from all over the world and we saw some amazing changes in all. This is Badr who gained over 30 yards and was hitting an amazing draw from a big fade. Preparation- Do you have a small, decisive target on every shot you hit? Could you tell me your pre-shot routine without thinking about it? Do you ever hit a shot even though you had the wrong club? Do you fear o.b. stakes and ponds? Do you visualize in your pre-shot routine? All of these things and more are covered in the preparation phase of the PAR approach. They will be small group coaching days limited to just 4 players per day to ensure quality personal 1-2-1 with myself supported by Jonathan.amentals. This process elicits a much deeper understanding on a somatosensory level which invokes a sense of competence and more importantly confidence. For lesson bookings please follow this link.... To watch this and more of my lesson videos follow this link to Robin Matthews Williams YouTube channel. There's plenty of info and ideas on how to access your natural swing 💡💡💡🏌️🏌️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ A Different Perspective- This section of the book will take you through various topics about how your attitude and perspective sets you up for success or failure before you ever step foot on a golf course. This first part is more about you as a person, and how well you fare in the areas of learning, open-mindedness, criticism, confidence, and awareness of thoughts. Even if you are not a golfer, this part of Dr. Parent's book could greatly impact how successful you are in life. In my opinion, the first part is an extension of the author's studies with meditation and mindfulness. Extensive training with the GRFi system to develop awareness needed to recruit your optimal movement patterns. There's a big difference as one method is restrictive and inhibiting of a functional sequence and the other method is free flowing, more in alignment with an effortless, powerful and repeatable kinetic sequence.

The PAR Approach- Broken up into the following three categories, the PAR approach is the core of the book, and goes into many of the common mental problems that a golfer will face throughout a round. It focuses on the importance of having solid routines before, during, and after a golf round. We finished the on course session off by sharpen his short game skills. Luke had lots of excessive tension in his arms, preventing him to fully use the momentum of the club head to transfer energy. A highly original and groundbreaking book from a noted PGA coach and Buddhist instructor • “The lessons in Zen Golf make the mental game seem so simple. Dr. Parent has given me very effective methods for working with thoughts and emotions, and for taking the negatives out of the picture.” —Vijay Singh, Masters and PGA Champion Exploration of your movement vocabulary to identify your capability and scope for self optimisation. Are you moving your upper body/arms for the rest of the body to react to? Or are you moving the body and the arms are reacting?

Response- Often an overlooked part of the game, but your reaction to hitting a ball in a pond is critical to developing confidence in golf. Do you get mad, emotionally attached, or fed up with your game when the ball goes in the water? Well, you might need to read this section. When alpha oscillations are prominent, your sensory inputs tend to be minimized and your mind is generally clear of unwanted thoughts. When your brain shifts gears to focus on a specific thought—in either a positive or negative way—alpha oscillations tend to disappear and higher frequency oscillations begin running the show.” – Christopher Bergland, The Athlete’s Way

As I have incorporated these same technics in to my professional practice with business owners/executives, I have heard repeatedly, from my clients that they feel more confident in setting a vision and that it will result in achieving the goals they desire. When you’re “in the zone”, you are what’s called “synchronized” – that is, there’s a balance and harmonization between your left and right-brain. Having selected the best shot using your left-brain, your cognitive thinking is turned off and replaced by relaxed-concentration. You’re totally aware, but non-judgmental of the things that are going on around you. It’s just you, and the target. This state of mind, could also be thought of as Zen Golf.Golf's so highly variable that the better able we are to get to grips with the fundamentals (as we would refer to as) simple things like where is the golf club is space? Can we swing it around our body, upright, somewhere in between? What does that feel like and more importantly are we aware of it when it do (or don't) change something? I first came across Marcus in 1996, when my wife Sue and I ran the Professional’s Shop at Newark Golf Club, near Nottingham in England. I was the Head Club Professional and we were looking for another member of the professional team. Marcus applied, and we thought there was something about the then 19-year-old. I could not have predicted then where Marcus would take his career, but I recognised that he had a special sauce that made him stand out.

This book is now a little bit dated due to some of the references and because knowledge of mindfulness practices is becoming more commonplace. Still, this is a good read for anyone who loves golf or who wants to think about how mindfulness can support a fitness, sports, or competitive practice. I wrote a review of this book for the Brilliant Legal Mind blog here: In Zen Golf, Parent teaches methods for maintaining one's cool under pressure by staying in the moment and avoiding useless judgments. Patience, calm and dignity are the keys. They lead to clear-headed golf and that will improve scores. Awareness training to access these innate movement chains to discover your most efficient sequencing and release patterns. This elevated level of awareness shifts the mindset to enable you to action the potential that is discovered. This book is all about the mental game of golf, specifically how you can apply mindfulness/Buddhist principles to golf. Not only did I find the many lessons in this book helpful for my golf game, but I found that they also applied to much more than just golf.

One thing I have found to be a huge advantage to having clients putt indoors on this green is they can’t see the breaks as well as they think they do on the course, forcing them to use more feel with their feet and less with their eyes. They actually find out how much their eyes were deceiving them on the course. I have practiced meditation and read Zen for some time. Most people, myself included, struggle with how to viscerally feel a vision (whether the next golf shot I am about to take or next years business goals). Without living/feeling as if a vision is your reality, we all make it much much harder to manifest/create a vision. What Parent does so simply and clearly is to explain steps to getting your intellectual head out of the way and how to get those powerful feeling states engaged, increasing your ability to succeed! Marcus wanted to talk to me about high-performance environments, my career in golf and where golf for the disabled is going. I got into some areas of my thinking that I have not discussed in public before, and because we had a ‘cuppa’ it went on for over an hour.”