Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 Welcome to the Timeless Golfing Podcast. I'm co-founder of Proper golfing Julian Meller. And I'm joined with
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Me. I'm the other half of proper golfing. So I'm Joe Cameron. Yeah. Hello and welcome to our podcast. So today we're talking about mindset, aren't we?
Speaker 0 00:00:16 Mindset's such an important part of golf, isn't it? I,
Speaker 1 00:00:18 No, but in bygone days we didn't even talk about it.
Speaker 0 00:00:21 It was all about hitting lots of golf balls and trying to get really good at golf. And few golfers really understood the mindset side of it. So I think we've got some interesting things to share with the listeners today.
Speaker 1 00:00:32 Yeah, today it's all about what if,
Speaker 0 00:00:35 Oh, great question.
Speaker 1 00:00:37 What if, what if, you know, all the time you hear golfers don't you? What if it goes in the water? What if I hit it left? What if I shank it? What if? What if? What if?
Speaker 0 00:00:47 What if I qualify for the open? Oh, that's painful Joe, from my
Speaker 1 00:00:51 Point. Let's talk about your, so I we're talking about what if today. Okay, so what if basically puts fear and anxiety in it? Like what if? And pressure. And pressure. Yeah. So I said to you, didn't I? You know, give us your what if story. So tell us, tell us your what if story.
Speaker 0 00:01:07 So this was in the nineties, Joe. Yeah. I desperately wanted to play in the open championship and I did everything I thought possible to get in the open championship. I practiced a lot, I played a lot of practice rounds. A, a place called Sherwood Forest in Nottingham. I told everybody I was gonna get in the open because I was doing all the right things. Yeah. Until I stood on the first tee. And
Speaker 1 00:01:33 Then what happened?
Speaker 0 00:01:35 I just couldn't hit it. I was so nervous. My legs were shaking. Hit a terrible first tee shot. Somehow I managed a bogey on the first and it didn't get much better all the way round.
Speaker 1 00:01:47 That just sounds awful. Oh my goodness me. So there's a couple of words that jump out at me to start with. So just to explain, I'm a leadership and management specialist. So I've got a ma a master's degree, high level degree. And then I've taught at some of the leading universities around the uk. So we are now in proper golfing together. And I've just got fascinated about golfers mindset and what I've learned and how we can apply it to golf. So I'm not a golf psychologist, but personally
Speaker 0 00:02:16 Mindset is mindset, isn't it?
Speaker 1 00:02:17 Yeah. And personally I've had to deal with some really big mindset challenges, stories from another time, but like properly big ones. Okay. So that sort of puts me in this space about talking about mindset. So a couple of things and I'm a qualified coach. I forget the couple of things that stand out there. Like when you said you were desperate. Mm. You know,
Speaker 0 00:02:34 I was, I was desperate. I really, really, really wanted it. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:02:37 But desperate doesn't make you confident.
Speaker 0 00:02:39 Oh, oh, tell me about it.
Speaker 1 00:02:42 And then trying too hard.
Speaker 0 00:02:44 Tried way too hard. But you think you're doing all the right things, so you're doing the right things. I'm trying hard, I'm practicing hard. Oh. But boy did I put too much pressure on myself,
Speaker 1 00:02:54 You know, I'm tired already just listening to you talking about seriously. That makes me tired. The try and the force, the effort, all that.
Speaker 0 00:03:00 Yeah. So, so the the worst thing that happened in that is I came last in qualifying. You came last. Yeah, it was, it was terrible. Went home crying. 'cause I wanted it so bad, you know? Then I was ashamed. Aw. Because I told everybody I was gonna do really well. And then you finish last and now you don't want to talk to anybody and everybody's asking how did you get on? And it's just, it's embarrassing. It's shameful almost when you think you're really good and you, you come last. And I kind of stopped playing for a little bit about about two, three months. 'cause I just thought golf's unfair or I shouldn't be doing this. And, but I learned a lot in that moment. I would say I learned a lot about myself. Putting pressure on myself wasn't always
Speaker 1 00:03:44 Good thing. Yeah. The pre exactly. Putting and everybody, you know, I, we have, 'cause we have loads of people coming for one-to-ones at Leamington, don't we? So I'm always chatting to people trying to find out about the mindset and yeah. Loads of people are putting pressure on themselves and worried about what other people think. So then tell us about the next time then. 'cause this I love this story.
Speaker 0 00:04:00 Go on. So, so it's an annual event. Yeah. So the open championship is annual and there's always pre-qualify. So you have to pre-qualify to qualify to get in. Yeah. So there's, there's three, four rounds of golf that you have to play. So the next year I had one practice round. I didn't practice that much. And to cut a long story short, I qualified obviously. So I shot under par and I got in the top 12 and you went through then to the next round, which is a place called Bari in, in Scotland. So I qualified, didn't put half as much pressure on myself and yet played really well. I had to hire a hole in one in the same round. No, I was two over with three to play and had an eagle, got to one under and and got in. So, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:04:46 Honestly it's remarkable. So you what, mid twenties then or something with you?
Speaker 0 00:04:50 That would've been, I would've been 24, 25 I think when that
Speaker 1 00:04:53 Happened. Yeah. But my point is you, you'd never been taught about mindset before. You No. You had no, nobody had ever,
Speaker 0 00:04:59 No, nobody talked about it then. Really Joe? No, no. You know, there was the odd person says he's strong mentally, but nobody taught you how to be strong mentally.
Speaker 1 00:05:06 Yeah, that's a, that's a critical thing, isn't it? So I love that story. Oh, oh, bless you. So when you won then what did you do? Was you like walking around, like going Oh, you know, or just not really.
Speaker 0 00:05:17 It was, it was, you know, like more than that. 'cause all of a sudden you felt proud of yourself. Yeah. And, and you could stand tall and you can talk to people. I've qualified for the final qualifying of the open championship. You know, you, you, you're a slightly different level to what you were the year before. And the worst thing is when you're a pro or assistant pro is you have members coming through your door every single day. Oh what? And you can't not talk about it. And I think there would've been a rumor going round, don't talk to him about it because it's really bad. Nobody ever said it to my face.
Speaker 1 00:05:52 Like, stay outta the pro shop.
Speaker 0 00:05:54 Don't, don't go and see him. But it was a, it's a fact. Can you put some grips on, you know, I'm not qualified for the opening. You
Speaker 1 00:06:11 The price shop was empty for a week. Was it?
Speaker 0 00:06:14 It was a, it was a good way of not selling stuff for in there. There weren't many miles well sold that day.
Speaker 1 00:06:22 That is just funny. 'cause I bet they weren't the golfer weren't they stay outta the pro shop because he came
Speaker 0 00:06:27 The, the thing is in, in hindsight now who cares? Oh God. But in that moment it's really important.
Speaker 1 00:06:34 In your twenties it's fine. You
Speaker 0 00:06:35 Can't make any It was life and death wasn't it? No, it wasn't though. It was more important than that.
Speaker 1 00:06:42 Oh ju So then the next time did the sales go through the,
Speaker 0 00:06:49 Tell the funny story about the holding one was the hole was 124 yards long. I still remember. And it's a beautiful day. Right. And I hit it past the flag, but my glasses had steamed up and I never actually saw it. No.
Speaker 1 00:07:07 It was really
Speaker 0 00:07:08 So everybody else was cheering and I saw it. Yeah. And I'll tell you the other, oh, I'll tell you the other fun story. Story. The very end. Good. The very end. So the etiquette is you have to buy a round of drinks, right?
Speaker 1 00:07:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get that.
Speaker 0 00:07:19 Yeah. Okay. There's over 300 people round the kid. No, what? So I came up the lust and this guy came over and says, are you, are you the lad who's had a holy one? I says, no. It's a group behind. Yeah. You didn't I did. I did. So I didn't have to buy 300 drinks. So I did. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:07:34 So are we and we apologizing those 300 people. Now we should do we like, you know, if you were one of those 300 people we do send our biggest apologies. Okay. And we'll send you a, a, some balls or if, I dunno, we'll send you a hat or something or a towel.
Speaker 0 00:07:47 But the other same thing is when you have holding one, then you used to get a tie. But I never got me tie 'cause I didn't dare admit it. 'cause I didn't wanna buy all the drinks. Oh gee. So I never got my holding one tie. There you go.
Speaker 1 00:07:57 We not right to them got the whole, which, which golf club was it?
Speaker 0 00:08:00 Sherwood Forest. Can
Speaker 1 00:08:01 We write to show with forest? I think we should, if there's anybody listen from Sherwood Forest, can you just send him a tie just to put it No, yeah, absolutely. So don't wear glasses.
Speaker 0 00:08:10 Yeah, well I haven't got much choice. In fact, sometimes I wish I played without glasses. I might not seen all the hazards
Speaker 1 00:08:18 Is hilarious.
Speaker 0 00:08:21 Said pros on.
Speaker 1 00:08:22 Oh god. Honestly that's hilarious. I dunno where to go. We started off all about what if, don't we? But anyway, I'm still recovering from that 'cause I don't think I, I mean we've been together a long time, but I don't think I've heard quite that story in that fashion before. So that's really quite funny. Anyway, so send us a t show with forest and Yeah, we'll sent you some balls if you want three. Oh you didn't end anyway, where we start? We were at what if. Yeah, so I think what spurred it on today was I wrote, 'cause I write for the, the proper golfing members, don't I? And every week I'd write a mindset and I wrote this thing about what if. Yeah. And one of our members read the article and he is like, Joe, you've just nailed it because he was literally over the water, wasn't he? And he was going, what if I go in the water? Why if I go in the water? And he remembered what I said and he was like, well what if I get it over the water? And he did actually get it over the water. Okay, so different question, isn't it? It's as simple as being aware of the questions you're asking himself. But it, yeah, so like what if you could stand on the first tee and not be nervous? Yes. You know what if you could reach the, the green? What if you could,
Speaker 0 00:09:21 What if you hold the put Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Rather than I'm not gonna hold this. You know that, that mindset. A hundred
Speaker 1 00:09:28 Percent.
Speaker 0 00:09:30 It's it's learned habit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:32 It's completely
Speaker 0 00:09:33 Habit. What what if I do it wrong? What if So we train ourselves to think that way. Yeah, a hundred percent. But we, we've gotta train ourselves outta thinking that way. And it's a skill. It's not, it's not a hope,
Speaker 1 00:09:43 But it's graft. Yeah. As well. It's focused. You've gotta, it's time. It's, you know, let, I'm using the word work or graft. It's, it's making time to do it. It's making it habitual, it's being mindful and then changing it. Because you know, if you're in your fifties, sixties or forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, you have these habits like all your life. All your life.
Speaker 0 00:10:04 Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:10:05 So you have to put some time into change it. Yep. You know, like before the golf, during the golf, after the golf, you know, you have to put some effort in. I always say this, it's like driving a car, isn't it? When you first learn to drive a car, you're all over the place and then all of a sudden when you've done your lesson, you're doing your practice. You know what you're doing. Yeah. Okay. So I'm just, we're just talking today about what if, okay, so what if you could play better than you could currently?
Speaker 0 00:10:31 Yeah. What, you know, what, what if you could make a much better golf swing than what you are currently using? Yeah. If you
Speaker 1 00:10:38 Didn't put so much pressure on yourself.
Speaker 0 00:10:39 Yeah. Def. Oh def. That's definitely gonna help. What if you
Speaker 1 00:10:42 Can believe in yourself? Well
Speaker 0 00:10:44 What the way we help people not put pressure on themself is is what you came up with Joe. Is learning.
Speaker 1 00:10:52 Yeah. Learning. Oh, the outcome is, we'll cover that in another podcast. Yeah, we'll cover that in podcast.
Speaker 0 00:10:56 Yeah. But that takes that pressure off you.
Speaker 1 00:10:58 Yeah, a hundred percent. And
Speaker 0 00:10:59 What if the pressure, you know, if, if this is just about learning today and I'm gonna learn from it and get better from it, that's a much better approach than try and percent.
Speaker 1 00:11:08 So today I think you've got the message, it's about what if isn. So yeah, just being mindful of your language. As I say, we are from proper golfing. We are the co-creators and founders of it. We love what we do. As you can probably hear and our voice this, if you would like to download some stuff, you go onto proper golfing.com. Currently you can download a free sample of the book, the proper golfing handbook that Julian's written with 30 odd videos in it. And that still blows my mind that that took a year to write and it's got videos in it. It's,
Speaker 0 00:11:38 It's proving to be very popular. It's lots of pictures, lots of words, lots of videos. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:11:43 It's brilliant. So great job for that. Thank you. And then you can download the three principles of the timeless golf swing. But timeless golf swing, if you didn't know it is all about enjoyment, less effort and carry on playing for a long time. IE timeless. It's nice, isn't it? And it's not
Speaker 0 00:11:59 Gonna hurt you. Yeah. And you will, you will gain distance and
Speaker 1 00:12:02 Accuracy. I know. With less effort. Who wouldn't wanna do that? It's free. Yeah, it's free. So anyway, I'm Joe, he's Julian. And thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you on the next one. Yes, we will. All the best for now. Thanks. Take care. Bye.
