As a student improves their mechanics in golf, they must also train their mental game. Training golf's mental game takes practice just like training your mechanics.

We all have suffered the total mental collapse on the golf course. Whether it was needing a par on the last hole to shoot our best score, or playing a career front nine only to have a disastrous back nine. When this happens we like to use the words like choked, gagged, collapsed, and fell apart. I like to look at it from a different perspective, if you have never been in that situation before how are you supposed to know how to handle it. You must prepare your mental game for these situations.

As kids we played games, pretending that we were on the last hole of the US Open with a putt to win. Or that we had a foul shot with no time left on the clock to win a big game. These types of games prepare us for the real situation. In golf we must practice our mental game in order to perform at our best. We need to get our nerves all jumpy and our heart pounding, then learn to hit good shots. We need to accomplish this in practice and in casual rounds. I get most of my information on the mental game from reading books by Dr. Bob Rotella .

Dr. Rotella is the leading sports psycologist in golf and works with many players on the PGA Tour. His latest book, "Your 15th Club" , deals with training your mental game. It is a fantastic book. If you have never read any of Dr. Rotella's books, or seen any of his dvds, you are missing out. His approach is simple to understand and makse sense. I recommend all of his books and dvds to my students, but if you just want a few, I would recommend reading "Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect"  and "Your 15th Club"  in that order. I would also recommend his dvd set titled "Rotella Speaks" .  Start training your mental game and start shooting lower scores.