How McIlroy Overcame Putting Woes
Your mindset, or your attitudes and beliefs about your ability to perform in a wide range of circumstances, shapes everything concerning your golf game.
Mindset affects how you play when you are: under pressure, leading a tournament, facing adversity, injured, having a bad day on the greens, etc.
A negative mindset may make it easy to write off a tournament, or even part of a season when one part of your golf game is struggling.
When you are consistently leaving putts short, pushing putts or misreading putts, you can easily conclude that you are not good at putting… and that mindset will keep you trapped in your putting woes.
A negative mindset may cause you to label yourself as a poor putter and nothing you do can change that self-given fact.
You might even buy into the idea that you have the putting yips if you miss enough short putts.
Your mindset will remain unchanged unless you challenge those erroneous self-beliefs and adopt a different mindset, or an alternative way at looking at things.
Rory McIlroy has experienced all the ups and downs that all golfers experience.
McIlroy had an excellent amateur career and won seven PGA Tour titles between the years of 2012-2014.
McIlroy experienced a dip in performance by his standards and claimed injury and fatigue as the culprits.
Earlier this season, McIlroy missed the cut at the PGA Championship and sounded down but not out.
After calling his putting ‘pathetic’ at the major, McIlroy was not about to give up.
Many golfers would just give in reciting, “I’m just not good at putting,” but McIlroy chose a different approach… a new mindset geared towards finding a solution instead of conceding to a faulty conclusion.
McILROY: “I need to do something… I just need to figure out what to do on the greens. I need to have a long hard think about that… I need to go back to the drawing board and see where we go from here.”
McIlroy’s positive mindset created the impetus to search for ways to improve his putting game instead of buying into a false belief that he is incapable of putting effectively.
McIlroy’s positive mindset was the key in his ability to overcome a two-shot deficit after the third round… It was McIlroy’s mindset that put him in position to force a playoff with Ryan Moore and Kevin Chappel and win at the fourth playoff hole for the Tour Championship victory and, ultimately, the FEDEX title.
McILROY: “I’ve always benefited from low points. I always feel like from a low point you can work yourself back up, and you can really assess what you need to do. I think it was blatantly obvious what I needed to do after Baltusrol, in terms of trying to fix my putting or to at least address some issues in it.”
McIlroy went on further to dive a great piece of advice for golfers struggling at some aspect of their game…
McILROY: “Just the margins are so small in this game. So it was nice to just set the reset button after PGA. You have goals, you have ambition, you have drive to work hard for something else, and I really wanted to work hard to try to at least give myself a chance in these playoffs.”
Tips for turning weakness into strength:
Use McIlroy’s reset analogy – Tell yourself, “RESET” and imagine yourself hitting the mental “control, alt, delete” buttons to end those negative programs running through your head.
If you buy into negative self-labels about your putting, confidence is very hard to obtain.
Next, identify what needs to improve in your putting: mindset, green reading, stroke, touch, etc. If you can improve one of more of these putting competencies, how will this improve your putting?
Since actions speak louder than words, get right down to work.
Learn how to putt, chip and pitch freely and enjoy playing golf again!
Discover How To Break The Yips Cycle!
Golf coaches and instructors would also be wise to teach “Breaking The Yips Cycle” principles to their players who struggle with tension in their swing or the full-blown yips. This program is perfect for any golfer who wants to improve performance by swinging freely again…
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Breaking The Yips Cycle Video and Workbook program is ideal for any amateur, collegiate, junior, and tour professional golfer.