I f you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat these two imposters just the same. If you have ever followed the tennis at Wimbledon you may be familiar with those words. It is a quote from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, ‘If, and it is inscribed over the entrance to the centre court at Wimbledon. It has given many a competitor food for thought. You will notice that Kipling was referring to human endeavour rather than tennis, and what he wrote also applies to you on the golf course.
Many golfers, professionals and amateurs alike, for one reason or another, find great difficulty meeting disaster, or for that matter triumph, with any degree of composure. Like most aspects of the inner game, you have probably experienced similar situations yourself at some time. You notice that you are playing well. You work out that if you continue to play this way you will probably win the tournament or medal, and even accept the prize. Of course, your concentration has now changed from the way it was when you started playing and you are less likely to play well. Or you might get concerned about what will happen if you cannot maintain the same form. The prospect of triumph is just too much.
Maintaining composure in the face of disaster can be even more difficult and certainly is more common. Our reactions to disaster can include anger, frustration, and disappointment. We tighten our muscles in order to keep control of ourselves, but all that does is lock us up. It is as if we are semi-paralysed, unable to produce the movement we want. When we dwell on and off through the day on how awful disaster can be, we can become almost semi-conscious. We hit the ball but do not remember doing it, we do not have any enthusiasm and the prospect of playing today just makes us want to stay in bed.
How you deal with triumph and disaster is often the measure of how much of your inherent abilities you will eventually use. Acceptance of those ups and downs is one of the key factors in performing at your best. Beware of thinking that this means being complacent because nothing could be further from the truth. Let us get a little more specific.
If you are unwilling to accept a score of, say, 90 you are likely to find it much more difficult to break 80. Your concern about your score approaching 90 makes you overtighten your muscles as you try harder. Over-tightening of muscles, as we well know, will cause an error which takes you closer to 90 and consequently makes them tighten even more. The more unwilling you are to accept a high score the more difficult it becomes to have the loose muscles required to shoot a low score.
You need to be willing to accept that you will shoot a high score sometimes. Accepting those high scores changes the way your body responds, allowing your muscles to stay looser and making the possibility of shooting 70 much higher. Your unwillingness to accept a score of 90 is likely to limit you to not getting below 80. Conversely, being willing to shoot 100 can give a freedom that allows you to break 80.
In attempting to be more accepting of triumph and disaster, it is often useful to take a look at the choices available to you in these situations. What seems to be the easiest option is to get angry and frustrated. In a sense, you allow negative thoughts to take over. Imagine that another golfer is your negative thoughts and he is standing next to you all the time you are playing golf. All he ever says to you are things like: How can you play like that?”; “Now it’ll be more difficult