Confidence Kills!

WHAT IF EVERYTHING YOU’VE BEEN TOLD TO THINK IS WRONG?

- Sam Weinman

MOST GOLFERS HAVE SELECTIVE MEMORIES. Ask us to recount our best shots, and we can tell you the club we hit, where we hit it, and whatever it was we just had for lunch. It’s everything else that tends to be a blur. The implication of needing just one great shot to “bring you back” is that you’re choosing to repress all the mediocre shots that came before and after. Even the best in the world can filter the game this way. Consider the eventful September that Billy Horschel had in 2014, when he won the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship, which also meant the FedEx Cup and its $10-million bonus. A lucrative hot streak made all the more impressive considering what had immediately preceded: The week before the BMW, at the Deutsche Bank Championship, Horschel hit one of the worst shots imaginable under pressure when he chunked a 6-iron into a hazard on the final hole and lost by two to his theory. “People will say skill is most important, but I know plenty of guys on the range who have skill and who don’t believe, and I know guys who don’t have as much skill but who believe. I know who I’m taking on tournament day.”

Here’s an often-quoted maxim from golf’s greatest champion, Jack Nicklaus: “Confidence is the most important single factor in this game.” But even Nicklaus says confidence has minimal value if it means suppressing the most valuable information.

“Somebody saying you’ve got to always be positive and eliminate all the other things in your mind and then hit a shot sounds good, but it isn’t an ideal approach,” Nicklaus says. “The realm of hitting a golf shot to me is, to be able to stand up knowing the shot I want to hit and knowing the problems I’ve had so I can then be positive about playing that shot. I want to know all the factors. I want to know all the negatives so I can create a positive.”