Although the USGA’s handling of Dustin Johnson’s apparent rules infraction cast a long shadow over the final nine holes on Sunday at Oakmont, the one-stroke penalty after D.J.’s ball shimmied on the fifth green had no effect on the outcome, as he won by three clear shots instead of four.
Controversy around whether he should even have been given a penalty was rife, and criticism came from fans, TV commentators and the best in the game, including Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth.
However, Johnson kept his nerve, held his focus and maintained his rhythm, even though he had to play his last seven holes, knowing he had a possible rules infringement to face after the round.
Officials took well over an hour to determine from video footage that DJ “caused the ball to move”, while his playing partner Lee Westwood immediately said that DJ “hadn’t addressed the ball” which stressed the fact that the ball moved without Johnson causing it to.
Anyway, all of this confusion aside, it’s worth remembering what the greatest player of them all, Jack Nicklaus has said about winning, and that is that majors “must be won” – and while the rest of the field self-implode, the winner plays only the course and himself – always his greatest adversary!
Image: PGA.com
Here are a few tips to help you perform your best, next time you’re under pressure:
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If your game starts to break down, the first thing to go is not your mental game nor your swing, but your nervous-system, which controls both.
Contrary to popular myth, performance deterioration is not a psychological phenomenon but rather it results from a dramatic change in bio-chemistry.
This change produces an increase in adrenaline, which gets you rushing your shot preparation, causes you to feel anxious, and results in increased mental interference, followed by the inevitable collapse of technique as the mind~body connection is all but destroyed.
Yet anxiety itself is the result of chemical changes in the brain and nervous-system which can in fact be halted by controlling the ‘stress response’ and restoring the bio-chemistry to a state of calm neutrality, known as the ‘relaxation response’.
Both these states are hard-wired into your physiology and just as you can unravel under pressure, so too do you have the ability to take control of your state and re-establish your equilibrium.
When things start to come apart and you find yourself playing a run of poor shots, the best thing to do is bring yourself back to the present experience of ‘me, here, now’ – a meditative state of relaxed concentration, also known as ‘the zone’.
This mindful attention, which is aided by focusing on the breath, should be applied each time you address the ball, as it is the relationship between your mind and body in the moment that precedes motion that will determine the quality and outcome of your shot.
Psychologists have identified the ‘now’ experience as being approximately 12 seconds long; that’s 12 seconds in which you can focus completely on the present, giving your full but relaxed attention to the task in hand.
At address, allow yourself 10 seconds to prepare for the shot and 2 seconds to swing using the following actions to achieve a state of relaxed yet alert readiness:
- Loosen your shoulders and relax your chest, letting go of tension
- Focus your awareness (and your breathing) on your navel area (chi-core)
- Feel your weight sinking into your footprints for greater stability
Each of these subtle, internal actions are performed sequentially with the aid of a few deep breaths, noticing that as you focus on your body and breathing your internal dialogue ceases and your mind becomes quiet as a result.
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