News | Wednesday, 11th November 2020
Talk isn’t cheap: How a golfer’s internal voice will be their best friend or worst enemy at the Masters 2020
The way golfers talk to themselves can affect their putting success by 66%, say sport psychologists
The Masters at Augusta kicks off this Thursday and is one of the few significant sporting events to go ahead this year. After a seven-month delay, golfers including Tiger Woods, Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy will make their way to the green. Dr Martin J Turner and Professor Marc Jones discuss the silent, suspenseful moments that make or break tournaments and careers, and how positive self-talk alone, isn’t enough.
Picture the scene. You’re at the Masters, on the green at the 18th, standing over a seven-foot putt. As you approach the ball, your competitors look on with anticipation, and the world watches through their TV sets. Then, as you prepare to bring the club back, a voice in your head starts filling the silence with a cacophony of thoughts: 'What if I miss? Don’t mess this up, just focus!'.
Even Nick Faldo had doubts in the 1996 Masters, sharing his internal voice: “The wheels are going to come off every minute… No, no, no. Don’t you believe it. Just focus on what you have to do. What shot do you want to hit here? I want to hit a solid drive, a touch of fade. Fine, good. That’s more like it… Now, where exactly do you want to land it? Left side of the fairway.”
Faldo is recalling what he was saying out loud when standing on the first tee of the final round of the Masters in 1996 when paired against Greg Norman. Faldo won the Masters of course, and the final round is remembered more for Greg Norman losing a six-shot lead, than Faldo’s brilliance under pressure. But this quote demonstrates that it wasn’t all unabashed positivity and confidence. Faldo had doubts but was able to combat these doubts by talking to himself. He was able to control his psychological state and remain focused.
Avoiding the extreme
Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University found there might be specific ways in which golfers could talk to themselves, also known as ‘self-talk’, that could be particularly helpful for performance.
In an award-winning paper published in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise, we found that in a pressured golf putting situation, when the golfers used flexible, logical, and non-extreme self-talk, their putting performance significantly improved by 66% on average. When they used this flexible self-talk, they performed better than when they used rigid, illogical, and extreme self-talk.
So, it makes sense for golfers to use flexible, non-extreme, self-talk when lining up for a pressure putt. But what does this flexible self-talk sound like? Before each putt, the golfers were encouraged to say the following to themselves in their heads:
- I want to sink this but that doesn’t mean I must
- If I don't succeed in this task, it will be bad but not awful
- If I don’t succeed in this task, I will not like it, but I will be able to stand it
- If I fail to sink this putt then I will have failed, but that would not make me a failure
What is particularly noticeable, is that the self-talk isn’t positive thinking. It isn’t 'you can do this'. Thinking in this flexible way may help performers face pressure with helpful emotions that increase the likelihood of fulfilling their potential, but this way of thinking about pressure may seem very matter of fact and unappealing at first glance. Even so, research is showing this flexible and logical way of thinking can enhance sports performance and is linked to greater psychological wellbeing.
Some of the most high-profile golfers use this way of thinking as part of their approach to golf. Take Justin Rose for example. Rose has said in the past: 'I don’t think you can ever play perfect golf' and 'Great golf, is how good your bad shots are'. In an evocative short-film about his 2013 US Open win, he talks about his attitude to pressure:
“You are leading the US Open, so what? There are 500 million people watching on TV, so what? If I ever felt myself getting out of that what mattered, what was going to impact hitting a good golf shot, my attitude was, so what? And I think that when it came to the moment on the 18th tee, it was like ‘yeah you’ve got a great chance to win the US Open’. So what? I accept that golf is a game where you are gonna win some, you are gonna lose some...I knew that this didn’t have to be my time. I’ve accepted I’m gonna win majors, and I’m gonna lose some majors.”
Rose’s language here is remarkably similar to the flexible self-talk used in our study. The idea that you don’t have to win. The idea of acceptance and gaining perspective are present in how Rose thinks about golf, and in the new study, but Rose isn’t the only golfer to have adopted this rational approach to golf.
In 2011, Rory McIlroy had a four-shot lead after the first day of the Masters. However, he bogeyed the par-four first on Sunday, and then squandered his chances of a first major victory over the space of four holes. He triple-bogeyed the 10th, recorded a three-putt bogey from less than 10 feet at the next, before taking four putts to double-bogey the 12th. McIlroy then landed his drive at 13 into Rae’s Creek. He closed at eight-over 80. Charl Schwartzel took the Green Jacket.
You can choose to reframe a bad memory, and it is a fact that one poor performance on the golf course does not make you an inferior golfer, or a complete failure.
What were McIlroy’s reflections after this collapse? He said: “There are lot of worse things that can happen in your life… Shooting a bad score in the last round of a golf tournament is nothing in comparison to what other people go through”.
He reflected on his then-recent commitment to charity work: “You’ve just been in a place where millions of people have no clean water, and millions of kids get no education, and you’re nervous about hitting a golf ball into some water!". McIlroy went on to win his first major (US Open) in resounding fashion, shattering the tournament scoring record and winning by eight strokes.
McIlroy now appears to have moved on completely from that Masters collapse, stating: “It’s the screensaver on my laptop. I love that view down the hill on 10. It’s my favourite spot at Augusta”. Rather than being the scene of a nightmare, it’s becoming the scene he likes the most at Augusta National.
It’s a wonderful example of how we can reappraise adverse events and create new meaning, instead of forever dwelling on those experiences. Indeed, you can choose to reframe a bad memory, and it is a fact that one poor performance on the golf course does not make you an inferior golfer, or a complete failure.
McIlroy revealed his philosophy behind putting, saying: “I think it's just the mentality of not really caring whether it goes in or not. If I hit a good putt, great. If it goes in, wonderful. If it doesn't, I've done all that I can do. It's a philosophical change, a psychological change. I'm trying to get back to feeling how I did as a kid, where your instinct takes over."
The sentiment of this approach is similar to the flexible self-talk used in our study, and supports much research suggesting that skilled golfers perform better when they do not try to consciously control the physical movements when executing a shot. Of course, under stress it is often what golfers, regardless of their experience, will sometimes end up doing and as a result their performance suffers: famously known as ‘the yips’.
For both Rose and McIlroy, there is a sense of perspective. A truth that golf is not life and death, and an ability to reduce self-pressure through logical thinking. The golfers about to compete at the Masters this week are of course wanting to perform well at this important and prestigious event, but perhaps the key to performance under pressure is to remain logical, think flexibly, and recognise that win or lose, golf is not a matter of life and death.
