The Others
Yes, this blog has the same title as the suspenseful horror movie starring Nicole Kidman from a while back. For those who haven’t seen it, the movie is about mysterious occurrences in a haunted mansion. Spoiler alert: “the others” is a nod to both the new family that moves in and the ghost family residing there. The living and the dead eventually clash, and both are equally bothered, viewing the other as intrusive.
While this blog isn’t about ghosts, a topic that has fascinated me recently are the numerous factors that impact golfers during competition — both real and imagined. Since as players we all have different strengths and weaknesses, I wasn’t always aware of the things that bother other competitive players until I started working with players of all abilities and backgrounds. I like to refer to these factors as “the others” for the invisible hold they seem to have over us. Here is a list of these factors and tips on how to combat them.
Playing Partners
I’m the type of person that gets deeply absorbed in activities and prefer to keep my own council while I’m playing, so it’s rare for me to be bothered by playing partners. To me, playing partners are invisible folks that I notice only when they need something. I interviewed other players to learn why they are sometimes bothered by their playing partners to better understand the reasons people are affected by this. “Slower pace of play,” some said. “I hate it when people have quirky routines,” said another. “Some people talk too much, or not at all,” was also a popular one. After hearing some of these complaints, I better understood the issue. Players who are more affected and bothered by others seem to view playing partners as very much a part of their daily competitive experience. Whether they are conscious of it or not, it’s as if they have a vision of how their ideal competitive round should look from an experiential standpoint, and if what unfolds doesn’t conform to that expectation, they are negatively affected by it.
Tip: my advice is to start using your playing partners for your own purposes. They really have nothing to do with your day on the course! Keep in mind what they are there for. Their primary function is to help you keep pace with the field, and to help keep your score as a playing marker. If you want to be social, feel free to chat. If you don’t want to be social, then you don’t need to. If it doesn’t help you to watch them, then look away while they hit. If they are playing too slow, tell them to speed up or if that isn’t your style, tell a rules official to observe them. If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. Consider what your ideal experience looks like while you’re competing, and make sure what you envision doesn’t involve how your playing partners are behaving. Then live out this vision while you are competing. Do this, and your playing partners will fade into the background, just like puffy clouds in the distance.
Gamesmanship
Some players like to play mind games with their playing partners to distract them or get them off their games. There are tales about Tiger taking more club than usual on par 3’s to trick playing partners into hitting too much club, and they often do. As far as personal experience goes, I remember one episode from when my sister and I were about 10 years old, and we were playing in a small golf event in Florida that was hosted by what used to be called the Greater Tampa Golf Association. My sister was playing in the group in front of me and there was a long wait on a par 3. While I waited by the water cooler for the human logjam to dissolve, Aree told me that one of her playing partners kept jiggling coins in their pocket whenever she was trying to hit. I was quite surprised by this since this event wasn’t the U.S Open after all. Sure enough, as Aree was getting ready to hit on a par 3, her playing partner jingled coins. Apparently I walked up to this person and asked them a simple question that made them stop the rest of the way. I guess my instincts took over as hearing that someone was intentionally bothering my sister didn’t sit well with me. I’ve told this story a few times to my friends and they just laugh as they can’t believe I actually said something to this person.
Tip: at the heart of it, golf is just a game. Because we care so much about our performance, it can feel very personal, but it really is just a game. There are also some mind games that competitors like to play with one another within the game of golf. First, realize it’s never personal, even if it might feel like it. Some cultures see mind games as a regular part of competition. What is helpful is for you to decide ahead of time how to best handle these games. Do you play back? Do you ignore it? Do you address it? Any of these responses can be reasonable depending on the situation, your style, and your personality type. Planning ahead will help you feel more prepared for these situations, because if you compete long enough, you will encounter these episodes.
Spectators
By now you’ve probably heard that public speaking is feared more than death itself. 75% of people surveyed by the National Institutes of Mental Health say it’s their public enemy #1. It’s not surprising then that most golfers, especially untrained golfers, get more nervous in front of a crowd. On pro-am days while I was touring, I used to give my amateur playing partners a pep talk before we teed off since they often appeared sheet white on the first tee. “We are just out here to have fun, and no one will remember how you play,” I would tell them. Their nerves are very understandable though — even pros get nervous in front of big crowds — what chance do untrained weekend golfer have?
Since stage fright is such a big factor for so many people, including serious juniors, amateurs, and even pros, it might be helpful to explain the physical changes we could experience from the nervousness that crowds often bring. The heart beating faster, the sweaty palms, the jittery feeling, all kinds of thoughts racing through our minds. These are all normal physical reactions to mental stress, and rather than pretending like it’s not there, you are better off acknowledging that it’s completely normal, and doing a few breathing exercises to get your body to relax, and to encourage the feeling to pass.
Tip: When you feel the nerves coming on, do a breathing exercise called the “physiological sigh” that one of my favorite YouTubers, Dr. Andrew Huberman, recommends. Dr. Huberman is a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University, and he shares science-based tools that help improve health and human performance on his channel.
A physiological sigh is done by performing a double inhale followed by an extended exhale. As shared by Dr. Huberman, it works to relax us by offloading a lot of carbon dioxide all at once. Follow this link to watch Dr. Huberman’s demonstration.
Another tip is to use self-talk to guide your thoughts and feelings to a more neutral place. Knowing which words and phrases calm you down in these situations may require some experimentation. For some it might work best to simply acknowledge that these feelings are normal. Some may benefit more from distracting these thoughts or feelings, and if so, chatting to your caddie, humming a tune, or thinking or picturing something in your mind’s eye might work best. Competitive experience and knowing yourself as a competitor, is helpful here. Regardless of what words or strategies you use, the effect it should have is to slow things down enough to let you refocus on the task at hand so you can execute your normal pre-shot routine.
Employing strategies to deal with these real and imagined factors will not only make you a better golfer, it will make the game more enjoyable, whether you are playing alone or with others, or being watched or not.
