Cycle of Performance - Golf, Bowls and Petanque 1/2 (AMem)

Tiger Wood, golf's greatest athlete in his video "My Game, Episode 1, My Practice  by Golf Digest,  says " "feeling and reality are not the same". During our performance we often have a feeling that everything is great; or "things just aren't right" and "everything is going to go wrong". These feelings may be no more than your negative self-talk or signs of a lack of confidence as you go into a important performance. Reality may be all is good and your doubt is creating these feelings. Sport Psychology offer the mental strength to know your reality and destroy such feelings of uncertainty.

 Tiger's coach says of Tiger's Preparation "He is very detail oriented in the preparation, a lot of "uma minuta" in his home practice" because practice is important without regards for what level of performance we actual have achieved.

(Uma Minuta - Minutes or a Draft in Portuguese like a business contract prepared before being signed) Used in English, it often may refers to detail preparation before the final event happens. Practice makes perfect is not true if you do not do the practice with the proper goals.

If you were going for a job interview you would have three parts to your preparation. Pre-interview preparation, The interview, and the Post-Interview Waiting and Results.

Sports performance has the same preparation, and this blog will look at an athlete's preparation and his performance as to these three steps. Realizing that there is a different in Lawn Bowls and Petanque as to the distance of play to the target that the athlete has to do their performance; each sport has a different committed mental strain.

 Lawn bowlers rolls their bowl as much as 31 meters, while in Petanque play; the target (jack) is usually between 6 meters and 10 meters.(rules allow it to me moved by play up to 20 meters). Feelings are different for the athletes of these three sports. (Golf, Lawn Bowls, and Petanque) because of the length of time until the action is finished. Also, Sport Psychologists, which  attempts to help athletes with problems due to these feelings or emotions, must treat team sports like Soccer, Basketball differently than "Closed" sports like Bowls and Petanque and how performance  is affected by the time of their performance.

Where running sports with performance like Soccer and Basketball (Open to everything going on around the athlete) the closest sport to the continue play of running sports is Petanque. If an athlete of Soccer has an psychological error or damage (lack of confidence) the coach will give them bench time to re organize their feelings. In Lawn Bowls and Golf there is a waiting period between performance and the next performance by the athlete, which allows the athlete to do mental exercises to regain their confidence of recover mentally. In petanque with the one minute time to perform and if unsuccessful the athele must return and perform immediately; the burden of an athlete enduring a  psychological incident may destroy their play, and may last for several ends of play and even be responsible for the complete lost of the game.

Today, April 11, 2026,  The final stage of the most important golf tournament, The PGA Masters, was being played at Augusta National Golf Course (Augusta Georgia). Over the last 2 days 91 of the world's best players have played, and today history was made as  Shane Lowry (Ireland) made his second Master's Hole in One. As the only player to have make two Master's Hole-in-One in the total of  90 years of tournaments. (Shane made his first Master's Hole in one  in 2016). I mention this because my blogs on the subconscious performance of athlete of Lawn bowls also started in 2015 and 2016.

In Golf there are a lot of rules about distraction of the players. How does an athlete continue to play great at  their sport after such an exciting moment as a "Hole in One" at such a hard golf course. As in the Canadian Press victory photo of Shane Lowry's 6th tee excitement. The photo also shows a sort of major distraction, as a lady spectator in the background seems to have got too excited. (she probably was jumped in the air or  her boyfriend's hug  ended up showing too much of her). This photo is used to shows two emotions which destroy an athlete's game (confidence) but golfers have a strong mental game. The "Game Success" Excitement which usually happen at the end of the day and / or any "Shocking Distraction" created by  a spectator, are mental changing events during game play. 

This blog will attempt to show how sport psychology applies mental exercises to helping  with an athlete feelings or emotions. Ofcourse, knowing various mental exercises (self-talk, breathing, etc) does not necessary lead to athlete's self doubt which could lead to errors that destroy their performance. A mental training program which may be developed by a Sport Psychologist each type of sport is intended to help an athletes avoid the danger of  their reality of excellent performance confidence to be destroyed. Without a "Time-out" like is Soccer or Basketball, the athlete which is required to continue game play with their emotion baggage may find it hard to perform. 

The series of Tiger Wood's video which discuss various aspects of Tiger's Previsualization and game play strategy; suggest how his shot imagery in his Pre-performance preparation is actually a 9 square vision of a grid of his shot placement during his performance. (photo below).

Golf visualization of shot

The photo above, show an excitement and a distraction as two emotions or mental feelings which destroys an athlete's performance.

Until the golf ball completed it three bounces and dropped into the 6th hole cup there was probably a couple of minutes of waiting and watching after his great golf   performance. Shane in realizing that he had made a "Hole in One", shows his excitement but now has a long walk to the green and plenty of time to recovery his mental stability. In some sports like Petanque where there is not the opportunity to "Reset" their emotions; the exictement or distraction can be a serious problem.

 Shane time to recompose his emotions with his long work up the 6th fairway and his wait as his fellow players finish their game, was important. Like most skilled athletes after such a success, he would perform a Post-Performance Mental Recovery, which is his personal routine to recapture  his self-confidence and  return to the next tee with a performance he know is needed for the remainder of his game. 

At this point, I will leave golf as my intention was to show the mental game of great players and the above photo of Tiger using a "9 square" Shot Planning grid. This sort of grid can be used by Petanque athletes who may have to refuse a Petanque playing surface in their approach to the "Cochon" (jack). Although our sport may not be Golf, we all can learn even if our sport is not golf as Tiger explains how the depth of his tee into the ground before his golf swing may allow him to make a difficult shots more easly to physically produced. We all can find small things in our sport, like balance, feet placement and others preparation decisions which allow us to do a more controlled performances.

This blog was decided to be presented  because of a discussion with a great future Petanque athlete, whom I learned from his comments that he was seeing  the mental strenght during his play as not being made of three parts but as one performance. Physical and psychologic and all part of his instinctive performance.

 I continue to insist that the reader in wanting to better and develop their "Muscle Memory" must make their Performance as three simply section of play. The most important being the "Thought Free" instinctive actions of "Performance" (Delivery in Lawn Bowls and "Takeout shoot" in Petanque)é  with thought on strategy and decision being a part of "Post Performance" and then afterward before returning for another Performance to make decision and mental adjustments in their Pre-Performance.

This division of thoughts and performance will make the new  performance as only a physical action with controlled emotions and self confidence. In Lawn Bowls there is plenty of time for the athlete to do an evaluation and study of their performance result; and this analysis done during the Post-Performance  is used in the decisions of the Pre-Performance. In Petanque with out the same opportunity to collected  performance information, it may become a task for the team player and communication of decisions and mental support.

 In a fast moving game like Petanque, game Stress, lack of confidence and fear of losing must be an experience or feeling which we identify and know how to correct the thoughts or feelings. Often there is not a lot of time for the Petanque player  between the end of the previous performance and the beginning of the next; so the mental exercises (discussed in part two) must be a part of our performance. Too much thinking or negative self-talk in Petanque can destroy the mental psychological strengths needed for the actual ideal performance. The athlete if in top mental displince will perform his physical best; but with minute to minute occurance of emotions or other other unwanted feelings, he will find a slow lose of self-confidence with that burden.

Any thought once into the pointing circle (Petanque) or on the mat (Lawn Bowls) must be before the trigger point of Muscle Memory and be a quick "non-instruction" thought, as any thought that is a muscle instruction will interrupt the "Muscle Memory". If as a developing player you are now starting to see the results of the long hours of practice, you next step should be to identify you "Subconscious Void" as you feel your conscious mind receiving control.

A year ago (March 2025) I did three blogs on "Communication with the subconscious Mind" which are intended for athletes with a well developed presentation of "Muscle Memory". A year earlier (sept 2024) there were three blogs on "Talking to the Subconscious Mind " and want to pass shot instructions to the subconscious mind before "Muscle Memory" is started. For the developing athlete there may be a need to identify the "Void" or "Zone" where total control of actions is done by the Subconscious mind or instinctive performance.

In Feburary 2023 a 2016 blog was redone to include Petanque teaching of being in the Zone. The blog "Muscle Memory and the Zen Zone" is an interesting blog which allows a developing athlete of Bowls or Petanque to better understand the Performance section of their Sport.  It is a long blog and the intention was to show the ¨Pre-Trigger" actions of both Lawn Bowls and Petanque players. After the athlete's feeling of the distance (with visualization or other), the players will have decided "now do it", starting the trigger phase of Muscle Memory and his performance will have entered their Muscle Memory Zone; where his mind will allow for an instinctive performance.

First step for a learning athlete is to identify this feeling of the mind moving from Subconscious actions to Conscious thinking. Have you ever got out of bed last at night without lights on and walk down the hall feeling for the light switch until you find it. Or miss it because your feeling position on the wall was lower than the actual position of the switch.  Feeling you Zone is the same thing. once you know the feeling you can know you had completed your  Muscle Memory performance. After that point you are then feeling for that feeling and knowing you did not interrupt you instinctive actions.

Days ago we all watched as the NASA Artemis Splashdown after their amazing trip around the moon and back. In 2016 I blogged "Zone Awareness - A new frontier" which discuss the strength of our subconscious mind. Those who follow this blog closely would have seen in February 2026 a blog which explain the strength of the subconscious mind. In just 7 days it had 100 read/visits. 

It talked about strength I have developed with the inner mind like removing a headacke of a family member in Mexico (I live in Canada) which my wife, a native, has done all her life for friends and family. (this blog was reset to Draft after a month because of the comments I received and personal information.

For the Lawn bowls developing athlete who want to discover this Zone or Void there is a December 2012 blog "Three subconscious  Mind Exercises" and I will explain here in a paragraph or two such an exercise for Petanque players want to experience it.

To identify the feeling of the Subconscious control of your performance in Petanque I suggest that you as the take-out shooter attempt a "Jack Take-out" with the jack at about 7 to 8 meters. If you are doing this exercise because you find that you donot compete your action; you must learn to feel for the feeling of the Void and not look for the success of the shot. Like all practices, this mental practice will be successful and maybe not but the more you work at it the more often you will fell the Void return thinking to the conscious mind.

In the second part of this blog, it will continue on the physical evaluation of performance with the intention of a study exercise into the Post-Performance data. If there were mistakes made we immediately must find the time for the psychological exercises needed to return our emotional state to our maximum performance potential.

 Also, I will attempt to explain how in the Pre-Performance, before going to the mat (bowls) or player's circle (petanque) to do a few mental exercises to identify our psychological success from our work in the Post performance analysis of our addressing our feelings.