Let’s be Clear, Your Window of Opportunity is Very Small.
As you know, pursuing the college golf dream is expensive and time consuming. You can spend lots of money which can be replaced. But you cannot afford to waste time performing poorly. Once the Window closes that opportunity cannot be made up.
To earn a college scholarship and play college golf at the Division I level, you are looking at a well defined and short period of time.
Your performances during your Summer before Junior year, throughout Junior year, Summer before Senior year and the Fall of your Senior year are the ones that matter. Those are the scores that the college coaches will consider most important in their consideration and attempts to predict how you will do on their team in college.
A high school golfer is a teenager who is growing and developing at a great rate. Predicting how they will mature and perform in the future is very difficult and every coach has been surprised by some of their recruits when they get on the team. This means the coach is looking for players that show consistency and very competitive performances. This is no guarantee of future performance but it is the best they can do.
A one hit wonder is not impressive for them. One success is not enough. A lower competitive stroke average in good competition is the holy grail for the coaches. High national ranking will get their attention.
This means that you have to perform your best during this Window if you want the greatest chance to get recruited. Before this Window doesn’t matter very much. After this Window the opportunities dwindle rapidly. You have a very short “shelf life”.
Often players show great promise in their younger competitions then do not perform as well when they hit this Window. Typically the player has been playing with little pressure mostly for fun. But they know about this Window when their performances become very important for their future. This increased pressure for score makes it harder to perform during the window for most players.
With each disappointing performance the Window gets smaller and the odds against increase, ratcheting up the pressure.
The sooner you develop your mental skills the better able you will be to handle this pressure and reach your goals of a Division I golf scholarship.
There is no such thing as a swing that holds up under pressure. Even at the Tour level they often fail to perform as good as they normally do when the pressure of a Major is on them. The difference between the performers and the losers is their mental strength.
It is their Mental Game that can take the pressure or not.
It takes time to develop a pressure proof mental game. You cannot wait until the middle of your Junior Summer to realize that this is not working, that your mental game can’t handle it. We can help even then, but you don’t want that drama and the added pressure of a really small Window.
The sooner you start the better. We recommend seriously working on your mental skills beginning as young as 13 with our support into and through Your Window of Opportunity. But even at 16 or 17 it is not too late.
Some parents and players think that playing lots of competition is the way to learn to play in competition well. We call this the “Sink or Swim” approach to learning to play in competition. Unfortunately learning to play competitive golf well is a lot harder than learning to swim. In fact “Sink or Swim” is unlikely to be successful.
More likely you will experience lots of failure and frustration. This negative history will be hard to shake and will likely lead to more anxiety and lower confidence in your skills, insuring poor play. It is a downward spiral.
When you work on your mental skills and play in competition, you will increase your awareness of your challenges and learn to overcome them. Competitions will become learning opportunities to be looked forward to instead of opportunities to fail.
As you know, pursuing the college golf dream is expensive and time consuming. You can spend lots of money which can be replaced. But you cannot afford to waste time performing poorly. Once the Window closes that opportunity cannot be made up.
Working on and developing a strong mental game will pay off in less drama and frustration and much better odds of reaching your College Golf Scholarship dreams.
We can help. We have helped hundreds of Tour Pros and we can help your Junior Golfer develop their mental skills in the fastest way possible. We use a combination of online tools, biofeedback and coaching to move them forward rapidly in their understanding and ability to perform.
The first step is our Mental Game Builder Package of online tools, including a Mental Skills Assessment and a Personality Comparison to the 8 Champion Personality Traits from our studies of the Tour Pros. Both assessments generate recommendations that are appropriate for your Junior Golfer.
Also included is a year of email support through our Online Coaching System. This system helps them set goals, prepare for their rounds, play their rounds and learn from them. It will help them adjust for the next round. We will get an email every time they use the system and can view their inputs. We will make comments and suggestions by email to help them learn.
The Mental Game Builder Package is only $199 and you can have the assessment results in an hour. This package is required to work with us directly.
You can choose to work with us directly, individually and in our small group Schools. The Level I Schools are limited to 4 players with 15 hours of intensive coaching on course and in the classroom in one weekend.
Click here to get started right away with the Mental Game Builder Package.
Click here to get started with a Level I School(including the MGB Package).
