Got a noisy head and a misbehaving putter? Quiet your eyes
And the promised gory details on my Substack silence
This is my second post after a two-week absence from Substack. Yes, I’m sure you were worried sick about me.
I think it’s worth sharing what the hell happened because, well, my experience seems like a common modern dilemma.
On July 4, I couldn’t log in to my Substack account. I got a message that a code would be sent to my inbox. Never arrived. I tried a few more times. Checked junk. Nothing.
I sought Help on Substack and ended up in an AI chat, which told me—surprise, surprise—that I’d get a code. No code-enriched email showed up. Then the very nice chatbox told me that an agent—a real live person—would be in touch. Hooray! I soon received an email from Landry from Substack that they were working on the problem. OK!
Then nothing, and more nothing. I tried to find a phone number for a Substack human. Couldn’t find one. Fired off another email: “This is the eighth day I have been unable to access my account. Pls advise.” No response. Sent another on the ninth day.
My emails were restrained, but the dialogue in my head was raging: “AI can’t replace people! Shoddy service is the norm these days! Why does no one care? If I ever get a hold of a person, I’m going to tell them what for! You’re screwing with my ability to deliver to my subscribers! Come on!”
On the 10th day, I remembered: Oh shit! That about five-six weeks ago, I created an “Incoming Substack” folder in my inbox. I raced up to my office. Oodles of emails brimming with codes awaited.
The moral of this tale? When I run into a problem in parts of the world that I don’t understand, such as say, cars, software, or Republicans, I fulminate, catastrophize, and conjure up theories about what’s wrong with the world.
This little episode reminded me that I’m not unlike millions of people in the world who annoy me with their vitriol, castigations, and theories.
The other reminder is that I have options: I can pause, maybe thinking this through a little bit, ask what role I might play in this unfortunate situation, and what responsibility am I willing to take to rectify it?
Other than gaining access to my account again, there’s one other thing I’m pleased about: I didn’t fire off angry emails. * That saved me from the embarrasing business of groveling. That would have sucked.
*When I taught communications to golf course superintendents at U of Guelph, I shared this rule about writing angry emails: Write the angry email, save it in your drafts, open it the next day, and then delete it.
Putting should be the easiest part of golf. But it’s ironic how that little wee stroke can create big-time “I’m-gonna-quit-this-game” level anxiety.
It’s embarrassing. Nudging a ball along a near-perfect surface of groomed grass into a hole a few feet away should be a snap for God’s sake.
But putting can seem impossible, causing us to question our competency and commit physical violence to clubs and to the pristine perfection.
On our latest Swing Thoughts podcast, Howard Glassman and I revisited two brilliant putting exercises that allow people to putt with far less mental stress, but also far greater accuracy and pace control. (For that discussion, fast forward to 15:10 of the podcast.)
The conversation started when Howard told about an email he received from a friend.
In the email, the fellow recounted his putting struggles from about three years ago. Even though his friends and instructors told him that his stroke looked “great,” he said his putting was “so bad.”
“I developed anxiety the closer I got to the green where my heart was pounding out of my chest inside from two to five feet,” he said.
The man came to me for a lesson at Blue Springs Golf Club where I coach. Indeed, his stroke looked fine and we left it alone. I began putting him through a couple of exercises that I learned from Fred Shoemaker.
One exercise is called the Retinal-After Image exercise in which you gaze at a spot on the ball, stroke it and maintain your gaze on the spot where the ball was. For a few seconds, you will see a round after-image on the green. (I demonstrate the exercise in the following video shot indoors during COVID.)
Howard’s friend wrote: “We just did this mind body stuff and Tim tried to convince me that my body knew what to do.
“All of it reduced my anxiety. Golf became fun again. Our session allowed me to move forward without fixing my stroke which I would have thought impossible.”
In his email, he said I “saved his golf game.”
The bulk of the credit goes to Shoemaker, who introduced me to a coaching approach that changed my game and my own coaching. All of the putting exercises that I use are described in Shoemaker’s brilliant book, Extraordinary Putting.
Here’s why the fellow—and many others—reduced his anxiety and improved his putting without changing his stroke. (Changing your mechanics in any aspect of golf is brutally hard. We’ll explore that little nugget on another day.)
As golfers do these exercises, their conscious minds are focused on some kind of task that makes it impossible to think about their usual stuff like “take the putter back straight,” “accelerate,” and so on.
Almost universally, players doing these exercises are amazed how—without thinking about their stroke—their putting significantly improves.
When you don’t interfere with your conscious mind, your brain and body are free to execute the task using your skills and the innate brilliance that we all possess.
On our podcast, Howard also recounted how a related visual-awareness exercise called Quiet Eyes that I introduced to him in 2022 had helped him. I also wrote a blog about Quiet Eyes on my www.oconnorgolf.ca blog.
That blog still reads pretty well, so here’s an edited version:
There’s no such thing as a miracle cure for anything in golf, but sometimes we can be surprised.
The surprise is that rather than doing more, we perform better when we do less.
As a varsity athlete at the University of New Brunswick, Joan Vickers performed extraordinarily in two notable games—one in volleyball and the other in basketball; she was so surprised by her performance that she became consumed with curiosity to determine what could possibly explain her feats.
In conducting hundreds of studies as a kinesiology professor at the University of Calgary, Vickers made a discovery that has become a foundational piece of performance skill for elite athletes in a range of sports, including golf, hockey, basketball, baseball and more. Vickers calls her methodology the Quiet Eye technique.
In her studies on putting, Vickers proved that the Quiet Eye greatly enhances a player’s accuracy and distance control and relieves much of the anxiety that golfers feel standing over a putt.
If you’d like to give it a shot, here’s how:
Go through your normal putting process of reading the green
Set-up over the ball, ensuring the centre of the clubface faces the centre of the ball
Allow your eyes to take in your target for a few seconds
Bring your eyes to the ball
Fixate your gaze (Quiet Eye) on the back of the ball for at least two seconds before you start the backswing
Maintain your gaze on the back of the ball and stroke the putt
After the ball is gone, maintain your Quiet Eye on the green where the back of the ball was for a second or so. This last elongated quiet eye is crucial.
That’s it. It seems remarkably simple but it has enormous influence on how your brain and body work together to allow for a solid putting stroke without any mechanical thoughts. Besides, it solves the “I-peeked-too-soon” problem.
As with the Retinal-After Image exercise, when the conscious mind is in a state of relaxed concentration, the brain and body can self-organize and perform motor skills without interference. By focusing your attention on the back of the ball, you are, in essence, distracted. You are not susceptible to the instructive or narrative thoughts such as “Accelerate through” or “Get it there.”
Vickers told me in an interview: “Quiet Eye takes your concentration and keeps you on task.”
Here’s another reason that you may struggle with putting: your eyes are constantly moving as you prepare to putt. Out of anxiety and doubt, your eyes may be darting back and forth from the ball to the target, and then you might watch the putter go back.
“When your vision moves around, you pick up feedback that makes its way into the hands and brain, and you overwhelm yourself with information,” Vickers explained.
This is often the cause of the yips, she said. “It’s the same with PTSD. The brain is overwhelmed.”
The Quiet Eye may seem like a miracle cure, but it takes effort and time to train yourself to do it and stay with it.
In my own putting and in coaching, I’ve combined some of Shoemaker’s exercises with Quiet Eyes. Give them a shot. You may be surprised at how well they quiet your mind, and how they allow that great putting stroke you’ve always had to reveal itself.
If you’d like to explore individual or group coaching in putting, please send an email to tim@oconnorgolf.ca.
In my book Getting Unstuck 7 Transformational Practices for Golf Nerds, I discuss the related subjects of awareness, presence and managing your thoughts and feelings in putting and your whole game. The new Kindle version is on sale for $6.99, down from the regular price of $9.99.
If you’ve ever considered mental game coaching, I’m inviting you to take the opportunity for a FREE 30-minute coaching call.
During this free session, we’ll discuss:
· What’s happening in your game?
· What are your objectives?
· What specifically makes you feel stuck?
· Identify actions and a plan that you help you get unstuck.
This FREE session will show you how to finally start moving forward.
To register for your free session, send an email to tim@oconnorgolf.ca.
Don’t miss your opportunity to get unstuck and develop your feeling of greatness!
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