Create your best golf with imagination

One of the least understood aspects of golf is the role of imagination. This concerns the ability to be creative, resourceful and inventive when it is required, especially with golf shots that are unusual and difficult. Using the mind to enhance your golf play is a powerful tool.

Before getting into the intricacies of imagination, I must convey a true story about a Vietnam War hero by the name of Colonel George Robert Hall, who was shot down near Hanoi while flying photo reconnaissance in September 1965.

He parachuted to the ground and was captured immediately. Thus began 7-1/2 years (89 months) of living hell at the “Hanoi Hilton” POW prison while mostly in solitary confinement.

Col. Hall managed to keep his sanity in his 7-foot by 7-foot cell by playing imaginary golf. He had a stick in his cell which he would swing like a golf club. In fact, Hall had been a scratch golfer and captain of the U.S. Naval Academy golf team.

[The following quotes are from the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame archives, https://MSFAME.com] “I’d play at least nine holes every day (as a POW,” Hall said. “I’d visualize a golf course that I had played and enjoyed, like Pine Valley or Pebble Beach. I’d hit every shot with that stick and then walk around that room. For instance, I’d hit my driver and then step off 240 yards or so around the room. I’d think about how long the hole was and then decide what club to hit next. I not only walked from the tee to the green but from the from the green to the next tee. I’d talk to people I imagined I was playing with.”

During that protracted POW confinement Hall was weak from malnutrition with muscles seriously atrophied; he had lost 100 lbs. of his total weight by the time he was freed.

On Mar. 21, 1973, six weeks after his POW release, Col. Hall was invited to play in the Greater New Orleans POW Pro-Am Open, where he shot an amazing 76. After his round the press asked him if his stellar round was a case of reentry luck.

Hall smiled and replied, “Luck, are you kidding? I never three-putted a green in all my years of practice in that cell.”  

Colonel Hall fought a brave battle with Parkinson’s but passed away on Feb. 16, 2014.

This story is not only a testament of this soldier’s determination in the fact of life-threatening adversity, but it is an excellent example of the tremendous power and potential of the human mind.

You and I can use the power of imagination by quietly playing a round of golf in our head as we relax in the manner of meditation. Allow about 30 minutes to sit alone, and undisturbed. It will be important that you take your time and play each shot with the best swing you can visualize.

Taking a deep dive into the nature of golf, we discover how the game encourages creative thinking, whether it’s coming up with unique ways to play each hole, figuring out new shots from awkward positions or finding new ways to approach each round.

The late Seve Ballesteros was a genius at finding imaginative ways to create golf shots in perplexing situations, which simply proved he was a true escape artist with a golf club. Let’s face it, golf offers plenty of opportunities in a single round to test our problem-solving skills. Maybe it is dealing with the wind, managing a tricky lie or adjusting to changing terrain.

There are few satisfactions like recovering from a bad break with a creative solution by inventing a brilliant shot to save par or make a birdie. Golf is a thinking person’s game, requiring imagination.

Nowhere does imagination come into play more than with the short game — chipping and putting. Being bound to one club for nearly all shots around the green doesn’t work. The best way to find out what works for you is to practice trying different clubs from different lies with different trajectories. On the putting green, imagine your line and then be sure you commit to that line.