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Staying in the Zone – How to Leverage your mind for Your Golf Game

Staying in the zone. A saying you here time and time again especially in all kinds of sports.

Is there something like “the zone” in golf? Can you stay in the zone for a whole round of golf?

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Can you deliberatly try to enter the zone? I want to address these kind of questions in this short article. In my personal experience there actually is a state of mind where everything with your golf game seems to work out on it’s own.

The pieces just fall together and you have the feeling that you’ve figured the game out. Well, we all know that these moments don’t last very long which makes golf so challenging.

There’s always a next step. [clearboth]

The Zone / The Flow

A very good book that addresses this specific state of mind is “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

The state is called flow in the book and includes other areas outside of sport too.

But basically Csikszentmihalyi talks about the experience of being in the zone.

If you haven’t read the book yet I strongly recommend you to do so.

Even if it’s just the first couple of chapters. He describes specific rules for achieving the state of flow aka getting into the zone for a specific task:

  • There must be clear set of goals and actions which are needed to overcome obstacles.
  • You must get immediate feed back to see if what you are doing is working or not.
  • The task must be hard enough to be demanding but not too hard to be frustrating.
  • Once a goal is achieved a new goal must be available.

You notice when you where in flow state / in the zone by several indicators: Usually the sense of time is distorted.

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Time flies just like that. You highly enjoy what you are doing. Stressful situations won’t impact you and you overcome them with ease.

The fun part is that if you look at the rules for the flow state golf seems like an ideal environment.

It’s a challenging task with specific goals where you can always improve.

I think the hardest part is not getting frustrated which kills your flow state immediately. So what can we do to stay in the zone during a round of golf?

Staying in the Zone

Trying to be in the zone for a whole round of golf seems impossible to me. I think that’s a time frame that is just too big with too many distractions in between your shots that ultimately matter the most.

In golf you have to treat your state management more like a wave pattern. You get into state and out of it on a regular basis during a round of golf.

Timing is everything you don’t want to be out of state when you have to perform an important shot. So first of all you have to develop somewhat of your own power to enter the zone on purpose prior to each shot.

A preshot routine helps immensely. When you are always doing the same things before each shot you can teach your body to get into state naturally. Being able to let go is also important.

Each shot needs your full concentration. If you are thinking of your last bad shot while stepping up to the next you will probably miss hit that one too.

I already described in another article 7 Mental Tips to work on these things.

The most important fact in my opinion is to appreciate each moment when you were in that state of mind and performed a great shot. This will nourish your state management and make it easier for you to develop a wave pattern that will get you into state before each shot.


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