BOOK REVIEW: Winning Golf - The Mental Game
We’ve all heard it before: the mental side of golf is as important as having a technically sound golf swing. Rounds can be saved or ruined depending on a player’s mindset. In Winning Golf: The Mental Game, sports psychologist and author Dr. Saul L. Miller offers insight on exactly how a player’s mental state impacts their game, as well as techniques to help any golfer play better.
Dr. Miller has had a long list of high profile clients over the years, including those from the NBA, NHL, NFL, professional golf and even Fortune 500 companies. In Winning Golf, he brings decades of expertise and research into an easy-to-read, brief guide from which any golfer can learn how to manage stress, fear, and anxiety on the course.
Featuring interviews from dozens of professional golfers across multiple tours, including hall of fame players from yesteryear, Miller outlines the causes of stress on the course while under pressure. It’s amazing to be reminded of how the human body responds to stress (fight or flight), which includes much more than muscle tension and cloudy judgement.
What we appreciated most about Winning Golf were the simple breathing exercises and other stress-reducing techniques described in the text. This book reads more like a self-help guide than a commentary on the human mind, walking readers through exercises they can practice long after finishing the book.
As with any self-help or golf improvement book, the “homework” for the reader is relatively simple yet detailed enough where we found it helpful to take notes as a reminder when on the golf course. There’s no doubt that Miller’s decades of expertise is highly valuable; however, remembering to practice mindfulness and stress-reducing exercises while playing golf might be a difficult ask for some.
To that end, while Winning Golf can be beneficial to any golfer of any level, it is perhaps most helpful for competitive golfers looking to enhance their skills and mindset during tournaments. Most weekend players, while not immune to frustration and pressure, will likely focus more on playing with their friends or grabbing a hotdog at the turn.
At roughly 200 pages in length, Miller’s Winning Golf packs a ton of helpful information into a compact offering to which golfers can refer multiple times during a season. Get ready to grab a highlighter or notebook to remember key tips and techniques for future reference.
To learn more about Dr. Saul Miller, including his long menu of best-selling books, visit the author’s website here.
