By: Shane Matzen, Graves Golf Single Plane Academy Liaison
I will tell you upfront, the longer I’ve been associated with Graves Golf, both as a member of our Single Plane Academy and now on our staff, one of the things that has fascinated me most has been the mental game. Or, as Moe would like to say, “An Alert Attitude of Indifference”. I’ve always appreciated that Tim and Todd make it a point to include this as part of their agenda when they teach us everything about Single Plane Golf. You name it: AAI Schools, AAI MasterClass, bringing the mental game expert, Paul Monahan, aboard to contribute….the list goes on and on. They always make sure that we recognize that we must train our mind as well as our flexibility and ability to hit our positions.
What prompted me to write about this topic was a chat session on the now-in-progress Alert Attitude of Indifference MasterClass. One of our members asked a question in the very-cool, interactive zoom session about using a big portion of the backswing as his personal “waggle”. Tim thought about it for a second and came back with something like this, “Well, normally we don’t want you taking practice swings. But if taking your club back to a position, checking it for a second and then pulling the trigger MAKES YOU COMFORTABLE, then by all means.” And then the discussion went into the professionals that do just such a thing before their swing (see Justin Thomas).
Well, as has been mentioned many times on our SPA Facebook group, in my weekly videos there and in this space, I get a real kick out of analyzing things. Sometimes that borders dangerously on OVER-analysis but in this case, I’m not going to cross that line. Stay with me through a few examples….
Tim and Todd have always taught us that there is a proper amount of time after we set up to the ball that we should execute our swing. And we’re talking here only about a few seconds. I loved Tim’s reference in the aforementioned AAI chat that if we go past that point of a few seconds, our minds are going to invariably go to the technical or negative and thus, make it impossible to mindlessly just EXECUTE. Or in other words, do what we’re supposed to do when we get into what Todd has taught us in the Green Zone.
I had an issue when I was very young taking my medicine in the form of pills. My mom came up with a genius method to make it happen and end the aggravating-to-her discussion that I just couldn’t do it. She put my pill in a glob of jelly in a spoon and reminded me how much I love grape jelly and to just swallow it all down at once. All of a sudden, my mind went to the jelly and well, you can guess how that went…..instant success!
Fast forward to my freshman year in high school. Basketball season and not to brag, but I was having a really good season. At one point in the year, I’d made 21 consecutive free throws in games and ended the year shooting 79% from the line. The next season, 15 years old and a sophomore I made the varsity and started most of the season for a team that I’d like to think was the best team we’d had to date in the history of our high school. We ended up winning 26 games and advanced deep into the postseason. My job was to play defense and rebound as we had plenty of scorers and I was happy to fill that role. What really bothered me though was I ended that season shooting 48% from the line. Now what was different? Well, let me list the ways: we played most games in front of packed houses that season, the importance of the games was ratcheted up about 1000%, I had more people depending on me and being 15 in and of itself was just the cherry on top to deal with everything.
From the first time I began to love basketball, Julius Erving was my hero. Dr J could do it all and though I couldn’t swoop around the backboard and perform highlight reel dunks, I COULD follow his free throw routine. From the beginning, I dribbled five times, spun the ball around, took a deep breath, looked at the rim and then put up the shot. Up until that 1983-84 season, this had always worked for me. But even back then, my brain would go into coach mode and I self-analyzed pretty deeply that offseason leading into my junior year. I knew my technique was good so what would cause me to drop 27 percentage points? It didn’t take me long to come to the conclusion that I was getting in my own way. My junior and senior years my routine (as much as I hated to leave my Dr J-like routine) became two dribbles, set and fire. I ended up getting back into the high 70s again and hit a couple of late free throws my senior year to win our own tournament which I’ll spare you the importance of to someone growing up in Eldon, MO and the history of that event (which this year will be 90 years old).
One more hoops-related story for you….1993 comes along and I’m a head basketball coach for the first time and my point guard is a young man who was supremely-skilled with confidence to go with it. He could handle the ball, was a tremendous/unselfish passer of the ball and a really good shooter. But you can guess it, history repeated itself and he was struggling at the free throw line. I proceeded to tell him my story and it was our first year together and we were still in the feeling-out stage so he was nice enough to tell me he’d consider changing his routine. I was ok with that because a routine is a very personal thing and was not something, to me, that you create ultimatums on. I kept an eye on him the next couple of days at practice and I could tell he was experimenting with some things at the charity stripe. We got to the next game though and he pulled this out of his hat: the referee handed him the ball for his first free throw that night and the moment it touched his hands, the shot went up. Yep, no dribble, no spin, no nothing. He just shot it. If I recall, he went about 8/9 that night and the one he missed we got the offensive rebound because our guys knew what he was doing and were able to get in position for an offensive board before the other team even knew what was going on. Needless to say, this is a story I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of.
Present day now and I’m all in on “Matching the Model”. I’ve always thought Todd’s routine is a solid one so I’ve tried emulating it. But my waggle has evolved and while probably 85% of what I do is Todd Graves-like, there’s some differences. But hearing what Tim said in his chat that I mentioned at the beginning of this article makes me feel as Tim would say, “comfortable” in my own skin as far as my prep to swing the club. While there’s no jelly involved in my process, making sure “less is more” is a big part of what I try to do in preparation for a swing.
My mind is pretty persuasive over the rest of me and sometimes I literally feel like I have the proverbial angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other both whispering in my ears. I just don’t give them the time to make their point.
For those of you who are mentally strong enough to just turn to each shoulder and say “Shut up!” and those dudes go away, I’m jealous. For those of you like me though, my hope is you’ll join me in this quest to find ways to just shut off the negative conversations and beat back our demons. We CAN do it. We just have to find the way that works for us.
