Zen Golf

In this ground-breaking approach to golf instruction, Dr Joseph Parent, both a noted PGA Tour coach and a respected Buddhist teacher, draws on this natural connection to teach golfers how to play with more consistency and less frustration, and consequently how to lower their scores.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: A Different Perspective
Empty Your Cup
Four Kinds of Students
Thinking Outside the Box
Par for the Course
Cover the Roads with Leather
How Big is Your Mind?
You Are Not Your Thoughts
Basic Goodness
Unconditional Confidence
Clearing the Interference
A Perfect Swing
Part 2: The PAR Approach Preparation
What is Your Target?
Your Mind’s Eye
The Vividness of the Moment
Where is Your Target?
Don’t Hit It in the Lake
Be Decisive
Bacon and Eggs Breakfast
More Curious than Afraid
Natural Commitment
Avoid the Anyway’s
Dive Under the Waves
Cool, Calm and Collected
Listen to Your Intuition
Center of Gravity
Remember to Breathe
Intensify and Release
Cultivating and Strengthening Awareness
Action
How to Get from the Practice Tee to the First Tee
Transitions
Synchronizing Body and Mind
Give It Time to Sink In
Never Keep More than a Hundred Thoughts
in Your Mind During Your Swing
During Your Swing Is Not the Time to Give Yourself a Lesson
Give up Control to Get Control
You Produce What You Fear
Hitting the Target 10,000 Times in a Row
In Golf We Trust
Can You Put a Cat in a Box?
To Care or Not to Care
How to Make Every Putt
Putt with Imagination
Don’t Count Your Money
The Slow Motion Walk-Up
Not Too Tight, Not Too Loose
Beware of Trying for a Few Extra Yards
Nothing Special, Nothing Extra
Response to Results
The Post-Shot Routine
Thanks for the Memories
The Angry Guy
How to Make a Flower Blossom
Pebbles in a Bowl
Untie the Sandbags
Fire Your Evil Caddie
Isn’t Where You Have to Play it from Punishment Enough?
Accentuate the Positive
Uplifted Body, Uplifted Mind
You Can’t Stop the Waves, But You Can Learn to Surf
Why Are You Still Carrying Her?
These Things Come and Go
Overcoming Self-Sabotage
Patience Pays
Take Your Medicine
How to Enjoy a Bad Round of Golf
Who Knows What’s Good and What’s Bad?
Part 3: A Game of Honor
Chi Chi’s Prayer
Shambhala Golf
A Warrior’s Dignity
Gentle, Inquisitive, Fearless

Index of Exercises
References and Recommended Readings
Zen Golf Lessons

Dr. Joseph Parent is a widely known coach of PGA Tour golfers and corporate business executives. He has a Ph.D. in psychology and has been a teacher of Buddhist meditation and stress management for more than twenty-five years. He lives in Santa Barbara, California, where his company, Mental Game Mastery for Golf, Business, and Life is headquartered.

How to Get from the Practice Tee to the First Tee

The most challenging transition for many golfers is expressed in this lament: "Why can't I hit it on the course the way I was hitting it on the range? It feels so frustrating!"

There is an abundance of reasons, all of which tell us a lot about our state of mind on the golf course. Let's start with purpose: what are we trying to accomplish when we hit balls on the range before a round? It usually has to do with getting comfortable with the swing, seeing how it feels that day, looking for some swing key, and so on.

Once we're on the tee, we usually have a very different purpose. It is about performance: getting a good result of the golf shot, avoiding making a mistake, and making a good impression on the people watching, especially our playing partners. With such different purposes, it's not surprising that we make different swings on the first tee than we did on the range.

Another difference is consequence. On the range if you hit a shot that doesn't go where you expect it to, there's no penalty. You rake another ball over and try again. However, you don't get to do that on the golf course. The only time you replay a shot from the same spot on the golf course is when there is a penalty involved (lost ball, out-of-bounds, etc.). Fear of making a mistake introduces tension. The possible consequence of not meeting expectations--our own or those we imagine others have of us--also creates tension that we didn't feel on the range. Tension interferes with our tempo and the freedom with which we swing.

Hitting the same club from the same spot over and over until you "get it right" doesn’t necessarily mean you've "found your swing." You may be making subtle compensations to get the ball to go where you want it to, with that club, from that spot. When you get to a different setting, especially the first tee, that special version of your swing may not work so well.

Often we don't use our complete swing routine on the practice tee. We just set up and hit, then rake another ball over and hit, rake and hit, usually without a specific target. When we get to the first tee, it's very different. Now we have a place we want to send the ball, and we need to aim and address the ball. That’s a totally different way of starting the swing.

For all of these reasons, using our swing routine at least at the end of our warm-up session, with different clubs, specific targets and good images, will give us our best chance for a successful transition to the golf course. Also, understanding the factors that make the first tee different, we can accept that our swing may not be exactly as the same as on the range, and therefore not be so frustrated by a less than perfect shot. Give yourself time to warm up to the course, no matter how well things went on the practice tee.

Willie was a tour veteran who wanted to tune up his game. As I watched him hit balls on the range, one nice drive after another, I said that those shots looked just fine. He said, "It’s easy to get into a rhythm on the range. But it's different out on the course." Later on we looked at some of his past rounds. He often struggled a bit through the early holes, then started to play better. We agreed that he was a "rhythm player," and I suggested how he might get out of his "range rhythm" and into his "course rhythm" before he got on the course.

The rhythm you develop on the range happens while you're hitting shot after shot with the same club from the same spot, often to the same target. On the course it's completely different, almost never hitting the same club twice in a row from the same spot. It takes time to switch from the practice-range rhythm to the playing rhythm.

Almost every tour pro warms up their full swing before a round in a similar way. They hit a few balls with each club, starting with wedges and working their way up from short irons to long irons to fairway woods and finally the driver. Then they hit a few partial wedge shots to finish. I asked Willie to try something different: play a few imaginary holes at the end of his warm-up.

To do this, picture the first hole (or any hole on the course). Create the imaginary boundaries of the fairway using flags on the range. After hitting a tee shot, determine how far you’d be from the green. Picture the green out on the range and play an iron for an approach of that distance. You can include a pretend par-5 and hit driver, three-wood, wedge. For a pretend par-3, tee up the ball and hit a long iron. Willie has included "playing a few holes" on the range in his warm up and goes to the first tee in playing rhythm. His scores on the first few holes of a round have improved considerably, including one round in which he birdied the first six holes.

Concluding your pre-round warm-up this way will make you feel like you've already played a few holes when you get to the first tee. You'll feel like you’re already in the rhythm of the golf course.

Copyright 2002 by Dr. Joseph Parent

“The lessons in Zen Golf make the mental game seem so simple. Dr. Parent has given me very effective methods for working with thoughts and emotions, and for taking the negatives out of the picture.”
-Vijay Singh, Masters and PGA Champion

“Soothing and enlightening, Zen Golf exposes us to the storm-tossed waters of the golfer's psyche, but in short order, Dr. Parent has us bobbing easily amidst the waves.”
-Guy Yocum, Senior Writer for Golf Digest

“There’s no other book like this one. If you want to know what has gotten in the way of playing better and what you can do about it, look no further.”
-Mike “Radar” Reid, PGA Tour Winner

“Doc’s unique teaching methods helped me to concentrate and to go from the range to the first tee in a way that gets my round off to a much better start.”
-Willie Wood, PGA Tour Winner

“Dr. Parent’s use of golf as a metaphor for business is full of great insights that have helped our staff grow as people and professionals.”
-David Hausdorff, Vice President, Merrill Lynch, Private Client Group

“Here is a roadmap to inner confidence, self-awareness and the feel of a purely struck golf shot. This approach to learning and life is a wonderful and powerful expression of the future for golf instruction.”
-Fred Shoemaker, author of Extraordinary Golf and co-teacher of Golf in the Kingdom seminars with Michael Murphy