How would you cope with the 17th at Sawgrass?

Yesterday’s post, with the Derren Brown video, graphically illustrated just how important the control of negative emotions is within golf and how this control became central to my challenge.

The 17th hole at Sawgrass in The Player’s Championship is a classic example of just how equally affected the guys on tour are. If you’ve ever seen a tour pro (or indeed any very low handicapper) hitting short irons at the range you’ll know just how incredibly accurate these guys are and the level of consistency they can produce is astounding. The dispersion between a bucket of balls hit with a wedge is very small indeed.

So what is it that makes so many great golfers crumble at the 17th at Sawgrass?

Ernie Els ruined his round on Thursday and undoubtedly Paul Goydos lost the tournament on the playoff by hitting it in the water just as much as Sergio won it. Granted this is an extreme example of nerves, the like of which none of us are likely to ever encounter on a course, but it still shows just how important this control is. Ultimately, just like you and I, some of these guys are thinking:

“don’t hit it in the water, whatever you do, don’t hit it in the water”

and the more they think that the more likely they are to stick it in.

Likewise it was Sergio who held his nerve over the seven footer at 18 to force the playoff in the first place and again how likely would he have been to miss that if he had thought back to all those missed putts from his past? What if he had been thinking:

“Don’t mess it up like last year at the Open”

But in his own words he just smiled and felt good about it. Clearly all the work that Stan Utley has been doing with his short game has paid off and hopefully those demons from the past will be banished.

Overall it was about as graphic a demonstration of the power of control of negative emotions as I’ve seen in a long time and my ebook (available later this week will show you exactly how to control these types of thoughts)