Training the Brain

We all know how to work on our swings, but how do you strengthen the most important muscle of all, the one between the ears?

Sitting high in an office in midtown Manhattan in the middle of the winter, just before I was to be led through my first meditation in hopes of making me amore mentally resilient golfer, I realized the analogy that was most fitting for this moment.

We all know a 12-handicap who can hit it like a scratch. Problem is, those shots are few and far between. I have competitive rounds where I have shown the ability to think my way around like a “mental scratch.” Problem is, those rounds are few and far between. So what is the similarity?

“Practice,” says Eric Mandell, a coach of mindfulness and meditation at a New York startup known as bmindful, which focuses on athletic performance. “To actually dedicate time to yourself, to work on your mind, is a practice of its own. Building that consistency is super important.”

When I am putting poorly, I go putt. When I am chipping poorly, I go chip. That’s building consistency. When I am thinking poorly, I… do what? Get more mad? Call myself names?

The answer from Mandell is to work on that confounding muscle that sits between our ears, the five-and-a-half-inch battlefield that Bobby Jones described as the place where competitive golf is played. And Mandell believes that work is done through meditation, practicing our mental game rather than hoping it gets better.

It begins with the Three A’s: Awareness, Acceptance, and Action. You need to be aware of the thoughts coming in and out, and you need to accept that they’re there. Pretending there is no out-of-bounds right or that you haven’t bogeyed the first three holes does not work. You have to be aware of those thoughts and accepting of their presence. I’m actually good at that; I don’t lie to myself. And when I’m playing well, I have the technical ability to move on, just like that 12-handicap who has the technical ability to hit a 280-yard drive right down the middle. But just like that player, I can duff the next one and spiral downward, afar cry from the stability of a scratch. Without practice, what made me think Iwas going to get any better at it?

“It’s basically like a self-accountability check,” Mandell says. “That's a muscle that you practice.”

Mandell, 31, understands competition, as he was a highly rated recruit in baseball, fielding scholarship offers from Division I programs while a junior at Oceanside High School, on Long Island. But then he blew his knee out and the offers went away. He struggled through rehab and physical therapy and eventually only played one year of Division III ball before shutting it down.

“I had a lot of physical pain, but also mental pain,” he says. “So that changed my relationship with the mental side of the game, and it made me realize how important it is – and that it’s often neglected.”

After graduating, Mandell worked in a corporate tech job before he was laid off, what he called “a godsend.” As he thought about applying to graduate school for sports psychology he came across Ethan Saal, who had been a tennis player at Brandeis and started bmindful during the pandemic. The two former athletes connected, Mandell got certified as a coach three years ago, and off they went.

They work primarily with college programs, both at the team level and individual level. They are only beginning to explore golf, which should prove rather fruitful. I believe the amount of mental coaching done in golf far surpasses all other sports by an order of magnitude. That’s why the setting didn’t feel odd when I was first introduced to Mandell, sitting on a white wicker chair on the porch at Rockaway Hunting Club, the sun setting over the bay, during this year’s Long Island Open. He was talking quietly to my friend BrettCooper, a great player and Mandell’s lifelong family friend. They don’t work together – mixing family and work doesn’t always mesh – but it was somethingI wanted to follow up on (even more after missing the cut).

So here I am now for a few minutes every day – in a good chair, my feet planted on the ground, hands on my thighs, by spine “upright but not uptight,” my shoulders back, my chin tucked, and my gaze downward a few feet in front of me. Eyes open because “that’s how we live our lives,” Mandell says. Focus on your breath, be present, and let the distracting thoughts come in and out, floating by like clouds. “It’s like looking at your thoughts in the mirror,” Mandell says.

I always found it funny when a 12-handicap who doesn’t practice was confusedby why they weren’t improving. I was that player, mentally. But now I know howto practice, so I guess I have no more excuses.