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Golf Comfort Zones

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29. May 2009 member

Dr Karl Morris

There have only ever been three amateur winners on the European Tour - and two have been this year. Dr Karl Morris explains how golfers are getting better at playing outside their comfort zones.

“Winners are bred from losing,” the great Tom Watson once said. “They learn they don’t like it.” That may have been true for Watson, who blew several impressive positions before claiming his first Major in 1975. But try telling that to Kiwi Danny Lee and Ireland’s Shane Lowry, who this year became only the second and third amateurs to win on the European Tour.

In winning February’s Johnnie Walker Classic, Lee became the Tour’s youngest ever winner. As for Lowry, his Irish Open triumph in May came in his very first Tour event.

Over the past decade more and more players have felt able to win on Tour… and yet the competition has got tougher. How is this happening?

The answer is that players today are better equipped than ever at playing outside of their comfort zones. In golf, as in life, we crave familiarity; It’s reassuring and safe. It’s why we always order chicken korma at the Indian despite the other 94 dishes on the menu. It’s why a salesman used to making £30,000 a year, having made 25 grand by July, finds a way to make only five in the next five months. Clever people call this homeostasis, the notion that we have an internal regulator, almost like a thermostat, which wants to keep things the same.

When things break away from the familiar, we feel anxiety, and both Lee and Lowry went through this on the way to victory. The feelings they felt - knots in the stomach, tension, tightening-up - are no different to the ones a 10-handicapper might feel having shot level par on the way out. But they managed to avoid sabotaging themselves by obeying a couple of simple rules, widely used on Tour.

1 Accept the fact you are going to feel uncomfortable. Nicklaus thrived on butterflies. “Give me that feeling on the back nine of a Major,” he’d say. “That’s what I practise for.” Those same feelings were interpreted by David Feherty as horrible, and a contributor to why he took up the mike. Carly Simon stopped singing live because of stage fright. When Bruce Springsteen read what she described as stage fright, he said “God, if
I don’t get those feelings I can’t sing.”

They’re the same feelings, but framed in a different way. Nicklaus and Springsteen decided it was okay to feel nervous. 2 Pay attention to your speed of play. It’s one of the first things that will change; Greg Norman got horrendously slow in losing the 1996 Masters. Others speed up. Either way, it costs you the rhythm that put you in such a great position in the first place.

Graeme McDowell faced this situation at the Irish Open. Eight under after 8 in his second round, he began to think of that mythical 59. His mind wandering, he made a bogey; but he rallied to shoot a course record 11-under-par 61. “What got me back on track was to refocus on my routines,” he told me afterwards, “the things I was focusing on each and every shot. I know it sounds boring, but all you can do in that situation is keep doing the things that got you to that great position in the first place.”

Routines remain the most effective way to retain your rhythm. Sticking by them may not win you a European Tour event, but they go a long way to stop you shooting yourself in the foot the next time your golf takes you out of your comfort zone.