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Zen Golf Deck is a collection of brief lessons and exercises drawn from Zen Golf: Mastering the Mental Game. Applied in actual on-course sessions with golfers, including many PGA TOUR and LPGA players, they will introduce you to a unique perspective that brings together techniques of modern psychology and ancient wisdom traditions. Each lesson in the Zen Golf Deck will give you ways to make your mind an ally instead of an enemy, helping to reduce frustration, increase consistency, and lower your scores.

18 Holes with Dr. Mat is a podcast about mastering the mental game for peak performance in golf and life. Join Dr. Mat as he shares insights, strategies, and stories to help you strengthen your mindset, play your best, and unlock your full potential on and off the golf course. www.drmatpark.com

We’re so hard on ourselves. We tie our self-worth to the results of our actions, to how well we hit a golf shot or what score we make on a hole. When things go badly, we start to doubt our basic goodness as human beings. We start to say things like “What’s wrong with me?” We usually can’t accept making a mistake, despite the fact that we know everybody makes them.

In the martial arts and similar mind­-body traditions of the East, the body’s “center of gravity” is the source from which all movement and energy flow. It is located a few inches below the navel, in the center of the torso. Awareness of this center of gravity is extremely helpful in golf.

Chris, a good junior golfer, came for a lesson. He complained that his swing gave him trouble when he “got quick at the top.” That usually refers to an especially quick start to the downswing. It sometimes reflects a premature transition, starting the downswing before the backswing is complete. He showed me his swing routine, how he approached and set up to the ball, then how he swung.

To deal with last­-minute thoughts, those internal conversations about the shot right before you swing, I suggest an approach taken from body surfing. If you want to swim out where the wave starts so you can ride it in, you have to get past the breakers. Fighting through these breakers takes a lot of strength and energy, and more often than not the waves knock you back.

Impatience compounds mistakes. Making a poor shot, we should accept the situation and play the smartest shot from there. Instead, we try to make it all up with the next shot. If we miss a few putts, we begin pressing to get our approach shots closer to the pin, often taking unwarranted risks and suffering the consequences. Stephen had been playing golf for just three years, but had taken lessons regularly. Still, he had never broken 100.

Facing a difficult recovery shot is a particular situation that’s likely to give rise to an anyway. There’s a method to avoid compounding one mistake with another. When you set up as though to play the shot, tune in to your body. Using the body scan, feel how comfortable or uncomfortable you are. You’ll intuitively sense the difficulty of the shot you’re planning.

The mental skills necessary to play your best golf need to be learned and groomed, just as good swing techniques do. The tendency to “focus on the negative” needs to be replaced with the habit of accentuating the positive. A conversation with a touring professional provides a good illustration of this point. After the first round of a tournament, I asked Andy how the day went.

A musician came for instruction from the Buddha in practicing meditation. He asked, “How should I hold my mind when I practice? Should I try to concentrate hard and keep it under tight control, or should I relax and let it wander wherever it wants to go?” The Buddha answered the musician with a question. “When you tune your instrument, do you make the strings too tight or too loose?” The musician replied, “Neither too tight nor too loose. I make them just so.”

Often a golfer will have a bad start to a round and get completely depressed, assuming that the day will go that way. His discouragement creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. But since each hole is physically independent of the others, isn’t it possible that the rest of the round will be the best he ever played? Sometimes we struggle and struggle until late in the round when we say, “Oh, I give up. I’m just going to get up there and hit it.” And to our surprise the shot comes off well.

A young monk was spending some time each day in meditation and contemplation. He wondered how many of his thoughts during those sessions were virtuous (about doing good deeds) or non-virtuous (about deeds based on hatred, greed, or prejudice). He collected a pile of pebbles and put them in front of himself, and he placed a bowl to his left and another to his right. As he meditated, he would put a pebble in the left-hand bowl when he recognized a virtuous thought.

All too often we try to get something extra out of our drives, and the results are usually the opposite of what we desire. Even if we’re lucky enough to find the ball, it has traveled less than our usual distance. The golf swing is a series of muscle movements, all in sequence. Any interference with that sequence, such as extra muscle tension, interrupts the flow of the swing, causing errors in body action, swing path, and contact point.

Shambhala is a legendary kingdom that is a model of enlightened society, like the story of Camelot and its ideals of genuineness, confidence, and dignity. Shambhala warriorship is not about conquering others and wreaking destruction. It is about having the bravery to overcome aggression, to manifest fearless gentleness. The fundamental training of a Shambhala warrior is based on the Buddhist practices of mindfulness and awareness in action.

As we address the ball, occasionally something happens that makes us want to change our mind. It may be a change in the wind, something about our lie or stance that we didn’t notice before, or an uneasy feeling about our club selection. When you change your mind about how you’re going to play a shot just before you execute it, there’s more that needs to be done than you might think.

Let’s start with an exercise. Take your golf stance and close your eyes. For a few seconds, think of a situation that you’re afraid of or that causes you anxiety when you anticipate dealing with it. Now check on your breathing—is it deep and relaxed? Chances are it isn’t. Most people respond that they were barely breathing at all.

The key to getting the distance right on long putts is getting a good feel for the speed of the green. Here’s a putting drill that will quickly give you a feel for the pace of the green. On a level area of the practice green, line up several balls about 20 feet away from the fringe. Set up to the first ball and focus on the distance from the ball to the fringe. Then make your regular stroke, putting toward the fringe.

In golf, if we keep thinking about a mistake we made on a previous hole, or project how our score will turn out at the end of the round, it’s as if we’re daydreaming. We spend much of the time “asleep” to the present moment, preoccupied with thoughts about the past and future. Lacking awareness of the task at hand leads to poor decision making before the shot and distraction while we’re swinging.

This is one of the many paradoxes of golf. The control we want to get refers to consistent accuracy, control over where the ball will go. The control we have to give up is the kind we exercise when we “steer” a shot. Steering is an expression of the thinking mind trying to control the swing to make sure we get the results we want. Paradoxically, the results we get usually range from not very good to terrible.

Do you talk to yourself on the golf course? Out loud, silently, or a bit of both? Most of us engage in some form of self-talk. We don’t usually pay much attention to the quality of what we’re saying, but perhaps we should. The way people talk about something to themselves is a reflection of how they feel about it. If we say, “I don’t have much of a chance on this shot,” we’re not likely to do well. On the other hand, if we say, “I can see what I need to do and how to do it,” we are more likely to succeed.