Rory McIlroy Improves Putting with a New Mindset

How McIlroy Overcame Putting Woes

Your mindset, or your attitudes and beliefs about your ability to perform in a wide range of circumstances, shapes everything concerning your golf game.

Mindset affects how you play when you are: under pressure, leading a tournament, facing adversity, injured, having a bad day on the greens, etc.

A negative mindset may make it easy to write off a tournament, or even part of a season when one part of your golf game is struggling.

When you are consistently leaving putts short, pushing putts or misreading putts, you can easily conclude that you are not good at putting… and that mindset will keep you trapped in your putting woes.

A negative mindset may cause you to label yourself as a poor putter and nothing you do can change that self-given fact.

You might even buy into the idea that you have the putting yips if you miss enough short putts.

Your mindset will remain unchanged unless you challenge those erroneous self-beliefs and adopt a different mindset, or an alternative way at looking at things.

Rory McIlroy has experienced all the ups and downs that all golfers experience.

McIlroy had an excellent amateur career and won seven PGA Tour titles between the years of 2012-2014.

McIlroy experienced a dip in performance by his standards and claimed injury and fatigue as the culprits.

Earlier this season, McIlroy missed the cut at the PGA Championship and sounded down but not out.

After calling his putting ‘pathetic’ at the major, McIlroy was not about to give up.

Many golfers would just give in reciting, “I’m just not good at putting,” but McIlroy chose a different approach… a new mindset geared towards finding a solution instead of conceding to a faulty conclusion.

McILROY: “I need to do something… I just need to figure out what to do on the greens. I need to have a long hard think about that… I need to go back to the drawing board and see where we go from here.”

McIlroy’s positive mindset created the impetus to search for ways to improve his putting game instead of buying into a false belief that he is incapable of putting effectively.

McIlroy’s positive mindset was the key in his ability to overcome a two-shot deficit after the third round… It was McIlroy’s mindset that put him in position to force a playoff with Ryan Moore and Kevin Chappel and win at the fourth playoff hole for the Tour Championship victory and, ultimately, the FEDEX title.

McILROY: “I’ve always benefited from low points. I always feel like from a low point you can work yourself back up, and you can really assess what you need to do. I think it was blatantly obvious what I needed to do after Baltusrol, in terms of trying to fix my putting or to at least address some issues in it.”

McIlroy went on further to dive a great piece of advice for golfers struggling at some aspect of their game…

McILROY: “Just the margins are so small in this game. So it was nice to just set the reset button after PGA. You have goals, you have ambition, you have drive to work hard for something else, and I really wanted to work hard to try to at least give myself a chance in these playoffs.”

Tips for turning weakness into strength:

Use McIlroy’s reset analogy – Tell yourself, “RESET” and imagine yourself hitting the mental “control, alt, delete” buttons to end those negative programs running through your head.

If you buy into negative self-labels about your putting, confidence is very hard to obtain.

Next, identify what needs to improve in your putting: mindset, green reading, stroke, touch, etc. If you can improve one of more of these putting competencies, how will this improve your putting?

Since actions speak louder than words, get right down to work.

Learn how to putt, chip and pitch freely and enjoy playing golf again!

Discover How To Break The Yips Cycle!

Do you suffer from anxiety, tension, and over control of the stroke or swing?

Do you suffer from the inability to swing the club freely on the course (despite the fact you can in practice)?

Do you suffer from super low confidence with the yips-infected stroke?

If you answered yes to any of these check out Breaking The Yips Cycle.

What are students saying?

“I wanted to tell you I have broken out of the yips short putt issues. I have won 2 of the last 3 competitions. Right now my putting confidence is sky high. I HAD the putt yips for past 6 years. I contribute the success to two of your drills. First focus hard on the hole, forget about all else. It took awhile to get the 100% focus, but I could see the results coming. Then your advice “Let go and trust your ability.” Immediate result. Wow what a relief. Having putted for so long under yip pressure, I now feel I can be put under extreme pressure to win the club championship. I now look forward to short putts.”
~Ian Dodd

“Two of your drills have been especially helpful: Eyes closed the eyes open and the tap in drill. I have only been able to make short putts for some time with my eyes closed and have been very effective with that. Both drills have improved my overall rhythm and putting success. Only used your drill sequence for one practice session so will step up the routine to 7 days in a row.”
~Trevor Morgan

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“You helped me with my routine—it’s almost like it has a flow to it—you pull your club and boom you are into it. You should glide through the routine. It’s when you try to make yourself stick to a cadence; the routine feels out of sync. Helping me get into the flow of the routine has been a big help.”
~Joe Durant, PGA Tour winner