Zen Golf: Mastering the Mental Game

Product Information

By combining classic insights and stories from Zen tradition, Zen Golf helps eliminate the mental distractions that routinely cause poor shots and loss of concentration, allowing golfers to feel in “the zone” that professionals have learned to master.

Do you actually know where the golf club is when you're swinging it? Not in a technical sense but a somatosensory.

Losing the ego

Generating power and tensioning from a sub-optimal source (like any habit) is something that we can become desensitised to because when we're so used to it being that way. This overlaps with how we might approach our behavioural awareness too... Are you forever finding a new swing tip, working with it with small success here and there but really not making any long-term effective change? In the “information age” that we currently live in, we’ve become accustomed to having a lot of things clamoring for our attention. We’re bombarded with news and updates everywhere we turn, and most of us now feel compelled to share our day-to-day experiences via social networks, meaning we’re permanently attached to our smart-phones. Our brains are being re-wired. We no longer have to remember things the way we once did, and we are continually multi-tasking which affects our ability to concentrate. We’re becoming less and less “in the present moment”, which increases stress and takes away from the quality of our lives.

TITLE: Why a book about golf has value for all business leaders, regardless of whether they play golf or not! I have practiced meditation and read Zen for some time. Most people, myself included, struggle with how to viscerally feel a vision (whether the next golf shot I am about to take or next years business goals). Without living/feeling as if a vision is your reality, we all make it much much harder to manifest/create a vision. What Parent does so simply and clearly is to explain steps to getting your intellectual head out of the way and how to get those powerful feeling states engaged, increasing your ability to succeed! Well if you've been used to swinging with an early release and you start to release the golf club later then all of a sudden you might find yourself losing shots to the right or flipping to the left (inverse for the left handed golfer). Hi guys, we've recently launched our GRF Golf Travel Club winter schedule and our first trip is a return to the Gloria Golf Resort in Turkey. Exploration of your movement vocabulary to identify your capability and scope for self optimisation.Marcus wanted to talk to me about high-performance environments, my career in golf and where golf for the disabled is going. I got into some areas of my thinking that I have not discussed in public before, and because we had a ‘cuppa’ it went on for over an hour.” With that said, there are a few gems in here for actionable drills / tips to improve your golf game. I've saved those, and am sure I'll reference them from time to time. Here we're allowing the lower body to take up some of the tensioning in our swing that might have previously been distributed to less functional parts of our body.

I loved this book, and I know I'll be re-reading (listening) many more times. It eloquently reinforced much of what I've learned—but struggled to apply with consistency—about the mental side of (disc) golf, while offering many suggestions for reframing one's approach to golf. I applied some of the book's techniques to great effect, though reading the book so soon before my tournament meant I occasionally was thinking about what I'd read when I should have been focusing on my game, ironically. Extensive training with the GRFi system to develop awareness needed to recruit your optimal movement patterns. How good would it be if you could play golf without self-judgement and with a clearer, more relaxed yet focused mind? You could call this playing “Zen Golf”.

Measuring the mental game of golf

Essentially, meditation for golf gives you more control over your mind, improving your ability to stay present and not judge yourself or what is in your environment. You won’t stop the negative thoughts, you just get better at ignoring them and staying present. As you practice meditation, you’ll also notice you have more time between, “action” and “response”, which means that you can choose better reactions to misses and not let it affect your mood ahead of the next shot. Pre-meditating the golf swing with a deliberate, slow and conscious movement or having a concept of a "takeaway" can only serve to remove us from our more natural and biomechanically efficient motion. Posture isn't a static feature of our movement (as we're always in motion) and as is often the case, when the body is challenged - it'll configure a movement solution most optimised to the task.

Dr. Joseph Parent is a renowned expert in Performance Psychology and has coached the mental game in golf, business, and life for over 40 years. Dr. Parent has worked with major champions, many other top golf professionals, and amateurs at every level. He has the singular distinction of coaching both a man (Vijay Singh) and a woman (Cristie Kerr) to #1 in the World Golf Ranking. Golf Digest magazine honored Dr. Parent in their list of “Top Mental Game Experts” in the world. One thing I have found to be a huge advantage to having clients putt indoors on this green is they can’t see the breaks as well as they think they do on the course, forcing them to use more feel with their feet and less with their eyes. They actually find out how much their eyes were deceiving them on the course. We recently had the pleasure of hosting an amazing GRF Golf school @ The Golf Groove in London. We had 18 amazing students from all over the world and we saw some amazing changes in all. This is Badr who gained over 30 yards and was hitting an amazing draw from a big fade.

How do you want to improve your mental game?

In Zen Golf, Parent teaches methods for maintaining one's cool under pressure by staying in the moment and avoiding useless judgments. Patience, calm and dignity are the keys. They lead to clear-headed golf and that will improve scores. We have had our Zen Swing stage for over a year now, and it has created a whole new dynamic to what we are able to offer at the golf studio. If you don’t already know, your brain has 2 hemispheres, left and right. The left side is responsible for logical and analytical thinking, whereas the right side is more holistic, visual and intuitive. Most people are left-brain dominant, according to neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor of the Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute. Adding a Zen Green Stage has transformed my coaching and business. Offering players a dynamic environment for their training through a moving floor allows for markedly improved performance.’