How to make a mental map

Golfers gather plenty of information about where the ball is, but not many collect enough information about where the target is. It's ironic that in a game where hitting the target is all that matters, many golfers hardly give the target a glance.

I teach my students to treat the ball with as little respect as they can muster. Like the houses in the board game Monopoly, the ball is just a marker that tells you where you are on the course.

Golf balls have no outstanding features: They all have the same weight and dimension, and they have no personality whatever. Yet they are so in control of the golfer's mind that a book written a few years ago argued that everything wrong with golf starts with your golf ball.

So it is that most people stare at the ball and glance at the target. I would like you to get in the habit of glancing at the ball and staring at the target. In fact, you need to practice producing a mental map of where the target is and how to get there, a map in which the ball plays only a small role in the picture.

If the ball takes a second-class position in your mental map, then it follows that the trouble on the course would too. Making a trouble-free map is what Aaron Baddeley does when he closes his eyes before taking a shot, and I have mentioned before that a 6-year-old Tiger once told his dad, "I see where I want to hit it, Daddy." This is as it should be because, by nature, humans are mapmakers, surveying the territory and making a virtual map in order to survive.

Insider Takeaway: My point is that this instruction simply takes you back to the things you already know how to do well. You can't do any better than being human - all you have to do is let it happen.