Free Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game by Dr. Gio Valiante

golf. Almost in a connect-the-dots manner, each man’s approach to the game was pointedly similar. So much so, in fact, that it is difficult to see where Hogan’s hawklike gaze ends and Nicklaus’s intense stare begins; where Jack’s wholehearted consumption with the game ends and Tiger’s unflinching dedication to the sport begins.
    Nicklaus’s teacher, Jack Grout, was the assistant pro where young Ben Hogan caddied. Hogan and Grout played the Tour together and, when he inherited the young Nicklaus as a student, Grout often used “Bennie” Hogan as the model toward which Nicklaus should strive. Similarly, Tiger Woods was in awe of Nicklaus (he grew up with a poster of Jack on his wall) and patterned his own career after Jack’s. A study of the three men is like watching waves in the ocean—impossible to isolate where one wave ends and the next begins. Regardless of similarities and differences in practice habits and swing mechanics, their mental approach to the game is unmistakably mastery oriented. They are not only master golfers, but mastery golfers. In fact, they are master golfers
because
they are mastery golfers.
    Here is a great illustration of this point. Back problems almost prevented Jack Nicklaus from competing in the 2002 Memorial Tournament. A friend urged Jack to play because it would give the fans a thrill. Jack’s reply suggested a unique bond between the legend he imitated (Hogan), and the legend who imitates him (Tiger). Jack said,

    I don’t want to go out there, shoot 85, and wave to everybody with a false smile on my face. That’s not me. I’ve got to be able to play because I get my enjoyment from playing golf, not waving. People are great, but I can’t go out and play for them. I’ve got to play for me. That’s the only way I can play. If I play for me and I do well for me, then I’ll do well for them. And certainly that’s what I’ve always done. Now maybe that’s selfish. I don’t know. But it’s the way that I think if you’re going to be a golfer, you got to play golf. You’ve got to do that. That’s the way I played all my life. I think Tiger plays that way. He has to play Tiger’s game and do what he does. That’s how Hogan played as well.

    Compare that with what Jonathan Byrd said about his reasons for playing.

    When it is all said and done, it is more fun the hours I’ve had practicing until dark when it is just me and my instructor and the game. It is just so much more satisfying. Those times are much funner than standing in front of a crowd and them all seeing you and cheering you on . . . that’s great too, but the hours working on it when nobody is there is more satisfying. I hope to always stay that way—you never know if you will because money and stuff changes people—but I don’t think I will ever not enjoy that. Part of it is that purity. You know I can’t say—I mean I love to compete and winning is a lot—but I enjoy the process of making my swing more perfect, purer, shots more pure . . . everything from the sound, the speed, the club how it hits the turf is so exciting. It is not just get the ball from point A to point B . . . it is more about making it all purer and more perfect.

    Because mastery golfers play the game for the personal challenge it provides rather than for the recognition they receive from others, their concentration is invariably on the golf course and not on the other golfers, the gallery, the scoreboard, or even on their own score. While watching his pursuers falter on Sunday as Tiger won the 2002 Masters, Jack Nicklaus insightfully observed,

    They [other golfers] were playing Tiger when they should have played the golf course. I think it was quite obvious that they were trying to do things that they shouldn’t be trying to do. And they found themselves all of a sudden trying to do things, instead of playing the course and playing their game, they’re looking at a leaderboard trying to play somebody else. Tiger played his