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in the moments after claiming the trophy reflects a man committed to playing fearless golf: “I wasn’t thinking about Phil or Tiger or David or anybody. I was thinking about getting the job done and doing what I had to do to give myself a chance.”

    Stewart talked about how he had a specific game plan for playing the golf course, hitting certain clubs on particular holes, regardless of the situation. And when it came down to the difficult closing hole, Stewart would not let himself panic even when his tee shot trickled into the rough. Needing a par, he had to trust his game plan and ignore the temptation to try to muscle a long iron from a difficult lie in heavy wet grass. He was left with a fifteen-foot putt, a putt he knew, a putt he had practiced earlier in the week. All that preparation, all that pressure, all that fear and Payne Stewart played fearlessly. “I didn’t question how I played the hole,” he said in the press tent afterward.

    I kind of knew what lie I had, and so I dealt with it. When I got up on the green, I was saying, “Look, you’ve given yourself a chance. You’re here. Do the same things you’ve been doing. Believe that you’ve read it right and make your stroke.” So I stood up there and read it. And I said this is an inside left putt, just believe that. And I stood up there and did my routine and kept my head still, and when I looked up it was two feet from the hole and it was breaking right in the center and I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that I’d accomplished another dream of mine.
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    Problem 3: Deceleration

    The third way that tension and fear influence the golf swing is that golfers change their rate of acceleration on the downswing. Tennis great Jim Courier once explained to me that when tennis players get nervous they often hit the ball short because they decelerate. The same thing happens to golfers who feel psychological resistance. They decelerate into the ball. On the full swing we call this trying to “steer” the ball or “holding on” too long. When trying to execute chip shots, this deceleration often results in either a thin shot off the blade or a chunked shot where golfers “lay the sod” over it because they swing in a jab motion. When golfers feel fear over a putt, deceleration manifests itself in the form of a “jabbed” putt along with a slight flinch of the eyes and slight movement of the head (which influence direction and line). Why? Well, think about the fight-or-flight syndrome. When you’re running from a tiger, you want to know how close he is to biting your leg. So you do what you can to get informed, even looking back over your shoulder when we all know that such a posture isn’t the best if you’re trying to run your fastest. Well, when you’re nervous in golf, your mind is overly occupied with results (not the process), even in the midst of executing a shot. You fear a left shot, so you hold on to the finish. You fear a skulled chip, so you look up and chunk it. Again, the focus is on the result (thanks to the power of fear), when the focus should be on the process.

    Problem 4: Coming Out of the Shot

    The final way that nervousness translates into the golf swing is that golfers often pull out of shots early. They jerk or flinch and do not stay down through the golf ball. If you are someone who plays a lot of golf, then you are aware that the most common error when golfers lose their confidence and begin playing frightened golf is to block the ball out to the right. Think about it. If you grip the club too tightly, get quick at the top, decelerate into the ball, and then pull out of the shot early, then of course the club face will have the tendency to arrive at the ball in an open position.

    Now, how do we go about solving these fear-induced physiological difficulties? Well, there are physical things that you can put into your process of playing golf that may help. First, when it comes to your grip getting too tight,