The Theory Behind The Golf Profile

4 Personality and Temperament
4 Four Types of Golf
4 Focused Golf
4 The Mental Scorecard
4 The purpose of the Golf Profile

Personality and Temperament

To the top

Dependant of your temperament, personality and attitude towards golf, when on the course, your round will be a mixture of different elements from the four focus areas. The fact that we shift our focus from area to another in our daily lives is not really something we give much thought.

Sometimes we focus on organizing our work, so that we can pick up the kids on time. This is what I call Baser Focus, because it is about getting the basics to work.

Other times we’ll focus on on the solution to a particular task, because it needs to be finished by a certain time. That I call Result seeking Focus.

And in between these activities we may think of a conflict we had earlier with a colleague and call to apologize. This I call Integrator Focus.

And finely we may contemplate about different suggestions as to how a new product can be marketed. This I call Development Focus, because it moves us forward.

During our daily activities we shift our focus from one area to another, without giving it much thought. The same holds true on the golf course. Your conscious is like a projector that sheds light on a landscape. A sharply defined cone of light that for instances at a time shines on different situations, occurrences, words and thought sequences. Often, one doesn’t in detail become aware of the situation before the projector sheds its light on another part of the landscape.

The cone of light moves constantly, irregular and at different paces, so that the consciousness doesn’t focus in. In these situations we act in a state of absent conscious. We leave it to our habit, routine or instinct to decide what we will do or how we will react.

We play a lot of golf in this mental state of absent conscious. A state, which is the greatest obstacle for your ability to develop you golf play. Hence it is also in the awareness of what you are focusing on, that your golf progress lays. Let me illustrate what I am saying:

Four types of Golf

To the top

When on the golf course you may be very attentive, to begin with, of your own game, your swing and your ability to hit the strokes you want. You think of your swing path, if the grip is right and that the ball in placed properly in the stance etc. In these situations you try to be very systematic and structured and think about that you bring the technique from training, to where it really counts. With this focus, you play Baser Golf or gray golf.

But during the round there will be situations where you are more occupied with your score than your technique, stance and pre-shot routines. Maybe you started the round with the intension of lowering your handicap. Meaning that you will gamble a bit, go for a birdie at third hole, and if you don't get your birdie in hole number three, you might gamble a little bit more for hole number 4. Obviously there are periods during a round where you focus more on results and press the game more than you should. With this focus you play Result-oriented Golf or RED Golf.

Another element which some times takes over is the social one. Time spent together with others, talk about the game and the tropics. When social togetherness is in focus you may be more patient and adjust to the pace of your partners by making encouraging remarks about oblique strokes, praise or joke etc. It might come natural to you, to be conscious of your partners needs and moods. Or maybe you belong to the type who lets it get to you, where you become more sharp and irritated, silent or despondent. In any way you play a lot of rounds where the social aspect has an influence on the result of the round. With this focus you are playing Integrator-Golf or BLUE Golf.

And in between talk, funny remarks, thoughts about grip and swing path and your gamble to reach a certain result, you might experiment with your play. Maybe you try with a little more wrist in the bottom of the swing, put the ball a little forward in the stance - or maybe it would help if you opened your stance a little more? When you are in that mode you don't give many thoughts to score or rules, but play a new ball after the one you just hit to see if you can't succeed to screw the ball around the tree or get it out of the bunker without touching the edge. You are fascinated by the play with the little ball. With this focus you play Developer-Golf or GREEN Golf.

This way you are instinctively playing a mixture of social golf, structured golf and result-oriented gamble mixed with some experiments here and there. You don't direct the spotlight. In the absence of consciousness, you move your focus in a random mixture from Baser-Golf to Result-Golf to Integrator-Golf to Development-Golf. Actually you don't focus on all but let the situation, the company, your luck or bad luck with many different strikes decide the round and thereby also what you more or less randomly learn and gain from the round. 
Maybe you learned a bit more about how you can optimize your golf and score. But honestly: the chances that you gained something - in relation to what you want - are probably quite small. The solution for you could be to have a program made for focused golf. I mean: if you can do it without loosing any of the pleasures you already enjoy about golf-social life, nature, motivation, good strokes, experiments, fascination - wouldn't it be worth to consider?

The basis for the way we experience, challenge and handle different situations is to a certain extent, determined by our personality and temperament. Conscious focus, deep concentration, to reach the mental level where we play excellent golf, rises when we are conscious about the factors that rules our behavior and the choices we make.

Focused Golf

To the top

Think about this: You can in fact choose to go or train four different rounds, which individually will give you an opportunity to develop and integrate four different and significant, mental and technical elements in your Golf. Basically you can choose between a gray, red, blue or green round.

The model and keywords in the four areas illustrate the four focuses, which represent the four types of rounds or training-sessions. The gray, red, blue and green. At the same time, the keywords describe four types of players with different personalities and therefore different learning-styles.

Players who learn to change consciously from one focus area to another will master some significant technical and mental elements of the play, which all in all will give a lower score and - just as important - more positive and happy hours in company with golf.

The Mental Scorecard

To the top

And so we have reached the core of it all. No matter how non-result oriented a golfer is, for most people the result of their efforts has a deep impact on their behavior and mood. The result is - together with our experience of other peoples' expectations, the factors with the most significant influence on our play and the choices we make on the course. These factors focuses the spotlight. So here is where we introduce a new kind of scorecard : The Mental Scorecard. A scorecard, which is designed for your mental handicap - not for your play. A scorecard, where all you have to do is to watch your mental play.

We have to know your Golf Profile and with that your normal way of challenging and adapting situations on the Golf course - and thereby also your strong and weaker sides, alternatives you don't spot or are most reluctant to choose. From this knowledge and a certain acquaintance with your technical level, we let an instructor or a trainer develop an 18 hole golf course, which can optimize your possibility for developing your decision-ability.

To give you an idea of what a scorecard could look like, I have constructed a scorecard for an 18-hole mental course, which you can see below. Practices, pre-routines and visualizing are made for a very result-oriented, handicap-18 golfer. After each hole the result is evaluated, perhaps with the golf partner. If the player has followed the routines he gets two point. If he hasn't followed them 100 % he receives minus two. The maximum points of the devised golf course are 32. 
The player received 24 plus and 8 minus point when he played the course for the first time. That is 16 out of 32 possible points. His mental handicap is therefore 16. When he reaches close to 0, which we expect him to do within a month we then construct a new mental 18-hole course with matching scorecard to bring him through a number of continuous technical and mental exercises and bring him to a another higher level.

If we combine the acquaintance of the golfer's personality and learning-style with The Golf Profile and a knowledge of what the golfer has to work with technically to become better, then the mental scorecard gives the optimum possibility for long-term planning of his golf-development. A plan where the golfer continuously can follow progress in his ability to make conscious decisions - playing better golf. And especially to plan the next move in the development of his golf-potential.

The purpose of the Golf Profile

To the top

The Golf Profile is based on a questionnaire with 64 statements. Your answering-pattern is transformed into a graphical profile, which reveals your preferred focus-area as well as areas that you more or less unconsciously de-select. From this we can make a training-profile and your Mental Scorecard,Ô, which will form a basis for your further golf-development. In brief the mental training aims at developing our ability to make conscious choices. For the golfer, the ability to make conscious choices will substitute our physical capacity of performing a golf stroke with all our physical and mental resources. And that is exactly the purpose of the Golf Profile.

Generally it applies that:

Gray golf

Choosing Gray Golf, is about technique, repeating the same movement, learning pre-shot routines, following plans, playing safe, being well-considered and systematical.

Not choosing Gray Golf, is about forgetting technique, not being focused on technicalities, not to consider grip, swing-curve but to let the swing come naturally, to find a flow. And to accept destiny and avoid excuses like technique, weather, wrong handles etc.

Red golf

Choosing Red golf, is about score, being focused, taking chances, making quick decisions, being result-oriented getting more length, using strength.

Not choosing Red, Golf is about safe-playing, not pressing and gambling, using a longer iron, using club-3 instead of driver, not focusing on results but process.

Blue golf

Choosing Blue Golf, is about decision-making independently of other peoples fine opinions and expectations, learning to be attentive to how you influence fellow-players, to avoid that you contribute to a bad mood.

Not choosing Blue Golf, is also about decision-making independently of other peoples fine opinions and expectations, and to learn to shut out the influence from fellow-players. By not getting irritated over remarks or slow play for example.

Choosing Green golf, is about experimenting, trying the untested and crossing own borders. Learning to fade, draw, stop-balls chips, playing from the green border with a club etc. by playing.

Not choosing Green golf, is about leaving the play alone, playing safe and goal-directed and taking things serious, not giving in because of a bad score at a couple of holes.