Stress Inoculation

Video Transcript

What am I doing here with a club that is obviously much smaller than a normal club? This is a 7-iron and this is a normal 7-iron, and you can see from the size of the clubs that the first is much smaller. Why would I want to use a technique or strategy that makes the whole process more difficult for me? This is a lesson especially for players who have established a good swing, perhaps the middle or low handicap player, and what they need to do in order to improve to the next level. The idea here is stress inoculation. Give yourself a strategy, a technique, a series of drills that are harder than the ones that you will see on the golf course. If you can consistently strike this smaller golf club on the center then you will consistently strike your regular golf club in the center. You can drain yourself of the worries about specific positions in the golf swing, the technical and mechanical aspects, and focus more on what is important, the target and the feeling locked inside our body of a good golf swing. We do this especially around the greens. We have also used techniques such as this: a little insert for the hole to make the hole much smaller than it actually it is. If you can make 10 of these from 10 feet before you go home, it is very stressful and very hard, but you will own the confidence and technique to raise your game to the next level.

Dr. Fran Pirozzolo
Baylor College of Medicine
One Baylor Plaza
Houston, TX 77030

Fran Pirozzolo is the mental coach to many PGA Tour Pros and is a performance coach for the New York Yankees. He is also the author of The Putter's Pocket Companion.

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