Even the best golfers don’t have a perfect mental game. Our 8 Personality Traits of Champion Golfers provides ideals ranges for the most important golf traits. One of these 8 traits is a personality range of “self-assured” to “apprehensive”. People who are self-assured control their negative self-talk effectively. No matter how nice your swing is, a golfer who isn’t self-assured will struggle when stakes are high. Read on to see how to control your self talk to the greatest extent.
8 Personality Traits of Champion Golfers
Our first study was of the LPGA players in 1981. This study discovered that there are 8 personality traits out of 32 where the frequent winners on Tour measure differently from the other Tour Pros. Follow up studies in 1989 and 1990 on the PGA Tour and Senior PGA Tour players found the same 8 personality traits for the frequent winners. We have been able to map where the champions score consistently on our personality assessment. These ranges are the darker green in this sample report.
*SELF-ASSURED
Self-assured is your ability to maintain confidence in yourself no matter how well you are playing on a given day. The nature of golf is to be very hard on confidence in that it is virtually impossible to maintain perfect skills or peak performance for long periods of time. Levels of play can fluctuate wildly during a single round and if your self-assurance is low, confidence can fluctuate just as wildly, quickly taking you out of the zone. If you have low self-assurance, you are likely very hard on yourself and prone to feel guilty for a wide variety of things. This leads to negative self-talk, negative imagery, and self-doubt on the golf course which can make it virtually impossible for you to be competitive. Low self-esteem can even subconsciously leave you feeling you don’t deserve to play well. Strong self-esteem enables you to develop and retain confidence vital to peak performance. Self-esteem is developed over a lifetime and it is never too late to make it stronger.
The Champions scored on the more stable end of this scale: 3-4
It is important to not be too confident. This prevents you from learning from your mistakes, and isn’t ideal. While it might be better to be overly self-assured than to be overly apprehensive, neither is ideal for solid golf.
Find out more about the personality traits referenced in our popular book, or by checking out some of our articles related to the topic.
Learn to think like a Tour Champion.
Dr. Deborah Graham and Jon Stabler have helped Tour Pros and thousands of Competitive Golfers like you control their emotions on the golf course using their Golf Psychology System and Tools. Find out how you compare to the best players on tour with our 8 Champion Personality Traits for Golf Assessment and Advice. A 42-page report with recommended methods based on your individual personality.
