Tiger Focuses on the Moment to Make History
By Kevin Rhoads | September 24, 2007 | 2:49 AM | 1 Comment
We are a couple of months removed from the year's final major, The PGA Championship at Southern Hills. I wish it hadn't finished yet, as we'll have to wait until April of next year to watch Tiger in another major. His thirteenth professional major victory was yet another study in the brilliance of the man. We are able to watch history being made with every tournament he wins. No one has ever won majors at the pace that Tiger has, and yet he is still five shy of the all-time record. Five. Five majors would be an extraordinary career for anyone, let alone stacked on top of thirteen already won. But because of the pace with which he has won them, and his stated career goals, each major in which he plays is not looked at as a single tournament, but as a stepping-stone to an end goal. We as fans have the luxury of looking at things in this fashion, and it adds excitement to every major in which Tiger plays.
How has he done it? In an age where everyone has improved, Tiger continues to separate himself. Why and how is he different? Tiger is different in so many different ways. In attempting to pick out why Tiger has separated himself from all of his peers, it's tempting to pick just one superlative. Is it his physical prowess?
With respect to Gary Player and a few others who were ahead of their time in terms of physical conditioning, Tiger was the guy who made it not only acceptable to hit the gym hard, but made it a necessity for anyone pursuing the top levels of the game to condition properly so as not to fall behind. In the past, there was a concern in most circles that if you worked out, you would lose touch or flexibility, and therefore most people chose not to pursue it. Once the best player in the world showed that you could have it both ways, and sustain that performance over a long period of time, working out got the green light. Tiger's most recent performance at Southern Hills with temperatures in the 100's again confirmed this point. Not only was his stamina good enough so that he felt the same on the 72nd hole Sunday as he did the first hole on Thursday, his strength also allowed him to hit irons off of many tees, thus keeping the ball in the fairway on the tree-lined and rough-bordered holes. These are sound arguments for why his physical conditioning is his most important asset, but his technical game is so sound as well.
Tiger is one of those athletes that just looks great doing what he does. Some athletes are just like that. But in golf, that doesn't just come because of the innate way that someone moves. It has a lot to do with technique, and in golf that correctness of movement comes from lots of hard work done right. And it's not just one area of Tiger's game. Pick any area of his game, and he has developed it to the point that he just looks beautiful performing that skill. Not only does the overall technique then look aesthetically pleasing, it is also functional. Tiger has the record to prove it. And he has had this unprecedented success with different overarching techniques. He has gone through at least two well-publicized "swing changes," and has been wildly successful with both systems. This speaks not only to his skill level and innate ability, but also to his superior mental acuity. Tiger's mental game is the last area that I'll speak about.
Many people have offered the explanation that Tiger's mental game is the area that sets him apart. Indeed, it is one if his greatest assets. But what does that mean, and what can we learn from him? Let me highlight two areas. First is his ability to go through the swing changes mentioned above. As all who have tried to improve their technique can attest to, going through swing changes can be a humbling and frustrating process, one which some top-level pro's have never recovered from. Tiger has gone through this process at least twice as a pro -an unbelievable feat for someone who does unbelievable things! I believe the fact that Tiger has worked with good teachers since he was young gave him a comfort working on mechanics. It also allows him to understand the process well. This means a couple of things: 1) He trusts himself implicitly. If you don't trust yourself and have faith that the process will work, it won't. 2) He trusts his coach. He has access to any instructor in the world, but has picked ones that gel with his personality and philosophy. Once he has carefully gone over information he's getting from his coach enough to understand why he should employ it, he trusts the information completely, and therefore frees himself to progress. 3) He works hard, but patiently, until the changes become his new habit.
Along with the "trust in the process" of working through swing-changes mentioned above, one other facet of Tiger's mental game that we can learn from is his ability to stay in the present. It is one of the most-used clichés in golf, but being able to take things one shot at a time is the ultimate performance tool. People understand this, but employing it all the time is a complex endeavor. To be like Tiger requires a very agile but also a very disciplined mind. Agile because his mental capacities need to get used in so many ways; disciplined because one has to be totally in the correct mode at the right time, without mixing up the two. Tiger obviously employs long-term planning. From the career goal of besting Nicklaus's eighteen professional major record, to the strategy of hitting mostly irons off of tees that he employed both at Southern Hills in this year's PGA and at Royal Liverpool at last year's British Open, Tiger is able consider ideas with long-term ramifications and come to productive conclusions. But he is also able to shift gears to being completely in the moment when he's hitting a given shot. And he does NOT mix the two modes when it doesn't suit him.
My favorite recent example of Tiger being totally in the moment was in the final round at Southern Hills. Tiger was pushed in that round by both Woody Austin and Ernie Els. By the 13th hole, Tiger's lead was down to a single stroke, and a birdie on the par-5 would have been really come in handy. Tiger faced an 86-yard approach to a back pin - a shot on which he could certainly capitalize. Instead, he hit the shot farther than desired, and the ball ended short-sided in the back bunker. The commentators spoke over and again about how the bunkers at Southern Hills were not allowing the players to spin the ball, and thus Tiger's was in a very precarious position.
Most players in this situation would have self-destructed. They would have put so much importance on that wedge-shot given the circumstances, and if they did not execute, they would not have been able to shake off the disappointment. This could have led to a bogey on the 13th, to losing the lead, and maybe even to losing the tournament. This downward spiral has happened to a number of golfers, and it tends to have long-term ramifications. Instead, Tiger did what he did all week, and has done for his entire career. First, he didn't look like his confidence was shaken by the wedge shot, indicating to me that he hadn't placed any more or less importance on that one shot, despite the context. Second, he instantly moved on to his next job: again, it was playing the shot at hand - the bunker shot. Third, he was able to execute the bunker shot to perfection, saving par and holding on to that slim lead. I'm not saying that because you are in the present that you will always execute the shot that you would like. But you will give yourself the opportunity to execute properly if you are totally in the moment, whereas if you are looking at what already happened, or projecting forward to what may or may not happen, you surely won't be hitting your present shot at full mental capacity.
So, back to the forward-looking approach. We, as spectators, have the luxury of projecting forward to what Tiger may or may not do. Tiger has also stated his long-term intentions, but I believe that is only used as a roadmap for what to work on, and as fuel and motivation to continue to work hard in order to make those goals a reality. But as a performer, once he has the chance to make history, i.e. by playing in an actual tournament, he switches gears with singular focus onto the task at hand: playing the shot that he is facing at that very moment, and no other. Hopefully we can all work on this skill, along with our physical conditioning and technical proficiency, in order to maximize our personal potential.
With questions for Kevin Rhoads, please send email to Kevin@rhoadsgolf.com
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