Be as Mentally Tough as Jason Day!
Be as Mentally Tough as Jason Day!
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Golf Blog by the Mel Sole Golf School.
David MacKenzie of Golf State of Mind is one of the finest Sports Performance Coaches on the planet. His insight into Jason Day's mental techniques and what it took for this young man to breakthrough, can help your game as well! Being mentally tough is like every other part of your golf game. It takes practice and perseverance to overcome the obstacles and become good at this skill. Read on and learn these tips for preparing yourself mentally for your best game ever!
“A lot of people would be saying that I couldn’t finish.
You get to a breaking point in your golf game where it can go either way. You go, ‘OK, I’ve had enough, and I just need to sit down and chill out.’ Or you go, ‘no, stuff that, I’m going to push through it, and I’m not going to quit until I win.’” – Jason Day, 2015 PGA Champion
For anyone who’s been following professional golf for the past few years, Sunday’s major championship win for Jason Day feels like a huge relief. During most of the final round, I heard my inner voice saying, “Surely it’s not going to be another top 5 in a major without a win?!”
Before sinking that final putt on the 18th green at Whistling Straits, Jason had the second-highest number of top-10s in a major without a win (9 to be exact). So after being in so many final pairings on a major championship Sunday, the question of whether he had the mental game to handle the pressure and get the job done was being asked. Jason was even beginning to doubt himself, and if he hadn’t sealed the win, he wasn’t sure he would have recovered:
“Not being able to finish, it would have been tough for me mentally to really kind of come back from that. Even though I feel like I’m a positive person, I think that in the back of my mind, something would have triggered, and I would have gone, `Maybe I can’t really finish it off.’”
But Jason Day is a fighter.
He’s overcome many adversities throughout his life – from losing his dad at the age of 12 and being a poor teenage tearaway, to more recently, suffering several injuries and illnesses.
Undeterred by these various setbacks, he said before the PGA at Whistling Straits: “Look, if I keep doing what I’m doing, I’m going to win one of these.”
And he was right.
Working on his mental game.
Since joining the PGA Tour in 2006, he’s developed one of the best all-around technical games out there, but, as anyone who’s played the game of golf knows, it’s only half the equation of success. Jason knew it was his mental game that needed just as much work to get him to major-winner status.
“The game of golf is so mental, and if you don’t have everything in the right order, it’s tough to win golf tournaments.”
So how does Jason Day prepare and manage his mental game?
Visualization for golf
You probably saw Jason closing his eyes during his pre-shot routine. What he was doing there was visualizing himself hitting the perfect shot. It’s like seeing a color movie of what he desires right before it actually happens for real. It only takes a couple of seconds, but it can greatly affect how well you play a shot.
Be as Mentally Tough as Jason Day!
Not only does he visualize individual shots, but he also visualizes the future attainment of his goals. As a 14-year-old, he wrote his goals down on a sheet of paper and read them aloud before going to bed every night. These included becoming World No. 1 and winning major championships. Most of those who listened thought he was kidding himself.
More recently, after his PGA Tour win at the Farmers Insurance this year, he said:
“I visualized myself winning and holding the trophy before the week.
I tried to visualize it over and over…That’s what I did in the match play, and that is what I did this week, so obviously, that tells me that I need to do that a lot more.”
Goal setting and visualizing future success might not mean that you will achieve it. But it’s proven to increase your self-image, which is a big factor in whether you do or not. In fact, the great Jack Nicklaus said that he attributes 50% of his success in golf to imagining it happening before it actually did.
To check out the rest of this interesting article on Jason Day's mental preparation, go here!
Source: David MacKenzie Golf State of Mind Mel Sole Golf School
Pictures: Keith Allison
Thanks for reading - Be as Mentally Tough as Jason Day! Work on your visualization to make things happen in your golf swing!
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