How Mental Coaches Prepare Golfers to Win

Performance 101: 

Preparation for THE BOX

“I learned at a young age that when the door of opportunity opens, only those who are prepared will walk through before the door closes.” --Earl Woods


Prepared to Compete

On the eve of Tiger’s professional debut two-time US Open champion Curtis Strange interviewed him and asked what he expected when he teed it up as a professional for the first time. Tiger repeated what he had already said—that he entered every tournament to win.

“You’ll learn,” Strange told him.

Tiger shrugged off Strange’s skepticism. What Curtis didn’t get was just how prepared Tiger was for the competitive environment of professional golf. Because of his training, Tiger knew what to expect and what he was capable of. 

When it came to the mental game, Tiger had two coaches early in his life—his dad Earl and Dr. Jay Brunza.  As if taking a page from Brad Stulberg’s Peak Performance playbook, Earl was intent on growing Tiger’s mental capacity to remain calm under pressure by introducing the perfect combination of stress plus rest.  Earl would introduce things into Tiger’s life to try to make him feel insecure and Brunza, a mental coach who specialized in helping children suffering from cancer and other life-threatening illnesses and diseases, would help Tiger to feel calm in the midst of the discomfort.

Earl’s philosophy was simple: prepare Tiger to face every possible moment he might have to deal with in golf. “It was psychological warfare,” Earl wrote in his memoir. “I wanted to make sure he would never run into anybody who was tougher mentally than he was, and we achieved that.”  Tiger had Earl and Jay to thank for the mental preparation that led to his extraordinary achievements.

In 2017, at age forty-one, Woods said this about the experience of being prepared by Earl: “I needed him to push me to the edge of not wanting to continue [a feeling I’m sure the pediatric cancer patients Brunza worked with felt at times] because I had to learn to block out any feeling of insecurity.”  Tiger later explained, “He taught me to be completely aware of my surroundings, while maintaining complete focus on the task at hand.”

Working with a Performance Coach

As a mental coach, I work with golfers whose livelihood is ultimately tied to the degree to which they master their competitive environment, moment by moment. One of the main things I work on with my players revolves around a philosophy of preparation I call The Box. Far too many players have no structured way to think about preparation. The Box is above all a structured way to think about your game and the process of getting better.  It offers you not only a consistent and effective way to fit the various pieces of preparation into a whole but also a chance to trade in frantic searching for settled focus and gameplan. 

So ask yourself, Do I speak the same language with my team when it comes to preparation and performance? When I say box, my players know I’m talking about an experience with a beginning and end. A golfer enters the box at the beginning of the first pre-shot routine of the day and exits the box when the final stroke of the day is holed. When I ask, “How was the box?” or “How did you work the box?” they know I’m asking, “How did you manage the moments of your personal competitive environment?” or “What skills did you execute in each moment or challenge?” Preparation in my system isn’t a mystery: the ability to be calm in stressful situations comes from being prepared both mentally and physically for the box.

At Jarvis Coaching, we identify and talk about how to optimize the performance that matters to you. Tune in for my next piece where I’ll elaborate on the 3 specific moments of the box each competitor must successfully navigate.   For now, as Kobe Bryant recently explained in a podcast with Lewis Howes, the process of getting better is worthy of it’s own language rooted in proven strategy. Reach out and let’s get started today mastering your BOX in life changing ways.