In the Crosshairs

Since I am now 40, I can seriously begin my journey of golf Zen. I have looked at and studied many different philosophies and religions and had the opportunity to see many in the countries where they originated. I talked sacred cows in India, Catholicism in Rome, and Zen Buddhism with monks in Japan. Of these, and all the others I have read and studied, Zen is the only one that doesn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth. All the others have some element of BS control that I don’t like. Zen, on the other hand, when properly practiced is an attempt to let go of all BS and pretense and simply live your life true to yourself.

Zen applies to golf for me in the same way it does to many related things I have done.

Hitting a golf ball
Throwing a dart
Shooting a sniper rifle
Practicing double taps from the holster

They all involve making a precise set of physical movements to propel an object to a desired location. The trick in every case is to keep the motion simple and eliminate anything that would cause that motion to deviate. Zen teaches to cleanse the mind and body of thought and action that detracts from natural living. I approach every golf shot as a moment of Zen and the pre-shot routine is intrinsic to this. Certain information is required to hit a quality golf shot including distance, wind, relative slopes and hazards nearby. Once this information is obtained and processed, a club and shot is selected, and it’s time to get your mind right. The idea is to make everything not directly involved with your shot go away and the routine helps. Each step eliminates one more thing you could be thinking about, so you can stop thinking and simply hit the ball.

Mine goes like this.

Pull the club, walk a bit away from the ball, swing a few times just to feel how long the club is, then stop thinking about the club.

Locate the spot I want to land the ball, visualize it’s flight from impact to landing, then stop thinking about the ball’s flight.

Place the club behind the ball in the aspect and angle I want it to strike the ball, adjust my stance appropriately, then stop thinking about my feet.

Adjust my grip, take a quarter swing to feel the timing between hands and hips at contact, then stop thinking about impact.

Full exhale, flex knees, look down at the exact spot on the ball where I want to hit it. Half inhale, hold breath, and the last conscious thought I make is HANDS to remind me to lead with my hands at the top of the backswing ( a guy is trying to hit a draw now), then just push the SHOOT button and watch the ball until the club crushes it out of view.

The whole process is about removing your conscious mind from things it doesn’t need to monitor and doing every thing the same every time. Eventually you get what is called muscle memory and the action becomes natural and that is the heart of Zen. The more natural and uncontrived your thoughts and actions are the more likely a positive outcome. There was a time when I had been training Hostage Rescue teams for over a year and all my team did was teach and practice Close Quarters Battle CQB. At that time we could clear a multi-room, multi-story building and just flow through each room like fine wine, every step smooth and purposeful, no unnecessary jibber jabber, puttin’ bullets in bad guys (or usually bad guy targets) and nobody had to stop and think about any of it.

The pre-shot routine went like this

“I have control. I have control. Stand By. 5,4,3,2 1″ and the snipers fire, “execute, execute execute” and the demo blows and in we go.

The conscious mind is active in classifying threats but once the decision to engage is made there is no thought. The weapon comes up, the front site or optics are acquired and two rounds ventilate the bad guy. Adding doubt, indecision, or any other factor into this could be fatal. It may sound strange but there is Zen in battle too.