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Golf is a mental game, and no one will argue with that.
It’s just that not everyone agrees on the math, so to speak.
To start here, Bernhard Langer is a dynamo on the 50-and-over circuit, having recently set the PGA Tour Champion mark for the most wins of all time (46), and the conversation around the 65-year-old German has been complex, even though he is one word Just. how? It was no different before this week’s College Comp tournament.
“You’re not the only one asking this question,” Langer said. “It’s not one thing. You can’t say, well, I attribute my success to my caddy or to my wife or to my hard work or to my discipline or to the team around me or to my genes. No, it’s a whole bunch of things you’re a part of. There’s the coach.” And the can, and the team, and the family, but there’s the dedication, the discipline, and the hard work.
“I work out every single day and I’ve been doing sports for many years. There’s a lot of things. God has blessed me with great hand-eye coordination, and I’m good at any sport, I’ve always been. So it will definitely help me, there’s no doubt about it in mental.
“Whether I was playing tennis, ping-pong, skiing, throwing something or catching something, I was always good at everything. It will help you get to a certain level, but from now on, hard work and discipline, having the right people on your side, And get good advice and many other things.
What about the motivation to keep going? Did this play a role?
“Yeah, that’s another one that not everyone has, and I think it was given to me,” Langer said. “The drive I have is very extraordinary. For you to be 66 a month from now and still want to get better and better and compete with the guys here, a lot of people don’t have that. When you look at Byron Nelson, his drive was to earn enough Money to buy a farm and to be a farmer.So everyone is different.
“In my case, I love competition, I love golf and I’m healthy and good enough to do that, so I’m going to enjoy it.”
At this point in the conversation, the conversation had begun to touch upon the aforementioned mind game, so the next question was a good one. Langer some ideas.
One of golf’s most amiable souls, he’s also not shy about telling it like it is.
“Just to follow up on the obvious sports psychology,” a reporter began, “You mentioned the process, of course, which is crucial, of course. In your success this year, how much of your success do you attribute to your mental game?”
“This is impossible to answer, sorry.” Langer said. “I hear people say well, golf is 90 percent mental, that’s just — if you say that, you don’t have an IQ, I’m sorry. It would be 90 percent mental if you put two players together — at the same level of technique, experience, ability. Then It gets very mental because what will differentiate the guys who are just playing at the top of the game.Then then I will agree.
“But if I take you tomorrow or today, I don’t know how good you are but it doesn’t matter, you can be the best rational and I can be one of the worst, I would still beat you there just because of the difference in technique we have and the different experiences we have.”
From there, the questions turned to the golf swing. Notably, he said he played the first seven years of his career on a self-taught trapeze.
Is Langer right? Depends on your point of view, right? Langer’s logic is solid, though the mind is a mysterious place. Who would say in Langer’s example what would be the outcome if the match was played in front of thousands of people, for millions of dollars? We’ll be at least curious there.
We’ll end it this way: So who came up with the same? It’s been said many times, in many ways, after all.
It was probably baseball legend Yogi Berra who He phrased it this way:
“Baseball is a 90 percent mental game. The other half is physical.”