Q:Be.Do.

I just got back from a business trip to Denver, and even though I didn’t need my laptop I wish I had taken it with me. I would have been able to make the three or four posts I wanted to, instead of piling them all into one big post here, now.

I flew into Denver on Friday, and had a round of golf scheduled that afternoon. Last week I purchased The Inner Game of Golf, and by the time I checked my golf bag and set foot on the plane I had completely committed to giving Gallwey’s methodology a shot.

Gallwey’s premise is simple, but powerful: we operate with two “selfs” at work. Self 1 is the inner voice that tells you how to get stuff done. Self 2 is the self that gets stuff done. More often than not, Self 1 is a hindrance, especially in golf. Gallwey has a simple exercise for learning how to tune out Self 1 on the golf course, and lays it out in his first chapter. From there, he goes into great detail about the ways we best learn, and how best to learn how to play golf.

I was going to have little practice time before our 3:20pm tee time at Red Hawk Ridge in Castle Rock, Colorado. I was nervous, but figured any help shutting out my Self 1 would be a big help. My inner monologue is brutal, vicious, unrelenting, and often spirals out of control when allowed to tap into my fount of anger. One bad shot can ruin a whole round for me, when I brood, explode and then go thermonuclear.

Over the years I’ve also found that I perform at my best when I can not think about what I’m doing. I remember a high school wrestling match where I was whipping up on a guy, all the while thinking about what movie I was going to watch that weekend. And the inverse is true, as well. If on the tee I think, “Don’t slice” I’ll probably slice. If I try to focus on “coming from the inside out” I have a 50-50 chance of doing it, depending on how far along my inner monologue is that round.

Gallwey promotes feel, and feel I understand. So I’ve opted to follow his teachings. Making a change is always easier in concept than practice. And so I discovered that my first hurdle with Gallwey was simply drinking the Kool Aid. What he teaches sounds too good to be true, but requires some major buy-in.

My first task was to let go of focusing on outcome, and start learning to focus on feel instead.  No small feat. But Gallwey’s introductory method for this is to simply replace all swing thoughts with a proclamation of “da” at four crucial points in the swing: takeaway, complete backswing, once the ball has been hit, and at the completion of the follow through. “Da. Da. Da. Da.”  Not to be spoken as verbs, mind you, but nouns. Announcement that the takeaway has started. Announcement that the top of the swing has been reached, and so on.

I managed to hit a wee bucket of balls before the round, and found that the “da da da da” was working for me. As long as I could keep my mind focused on that, and not worry about what might happen, I hit clean shots at the range. Some epic shots, in fact.

The round of golf turned out to be one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever played. My hosts, Suzanne, Bill and Chris were great company. Red Hawk ridge is a beautiful, challenging course, without the same shot twice. But the best part was how much fun I had once I shut my inner monologue down. Never given a chance to get started on the tee, I never got rolling on berating myself for bad shots. By focusing on feel instead of technique, I could feel when I got a little too excited and tried to do too much off of the tee and could let it go at that.

The next shot would usually be a wonderful recovery from that. Or at least unencumbered by the psychological baggage I’d throw on top of a bad shot.

Coming into the last hole I had an honest chance at shooting my best round ever, and I knew it. Standing on the tee of the magnificent par-5 closer, I let my inner voice speak, and the fucker doomed me. Out of bounds off of the tee, approach shot into the lake, second approach shot missed the green, chip on, two putt.

But I still shot a 99, one stroke off of my personal best. And most importantly, I had the most enjoyable round of golf I’ve ever played. It is amazing how much fun that walk in the park can be when you choose not to spoil it with over analysis.