Today’s Journey video is about “What if …” scenarios and how to develop winning strategies.

The key take-away from the video is to develop your situational strategies BEFORE they actually happen. Not in the heat of the moment.

The concept is called Contingency Practice. The idea is to ask “What if XXX happens” and then put yourself in that situation. See how you react, then develop a strategy.

Watch to video to get some ideas on how to implement Contingency Practice into your range sessions and how they can help you come through at crunch time.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that knowing what you will do in advance takes a lot of pressure away in the times you can really use a little help.

I remember like yesterday the first time my club broke during competition. I was in a Long Drive Tour event and had an excellent chance to win.

I made it all the way to the finals but on my second drive the shaft split and the club head fell right off.

I was thunderstruck.

I remember staring at the shredded end of the shaft in complete disbelief. It was my favorite club, and the one I used when I won my first World Championship. None of my other back-up clubs performed as well.

I just stood there, on the tee, holding this broken shaft for many precious seconds before it even dawned on me that I had to figure out what to do next and which back-up club to use.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

We only have 2 minutes 45 seconds to hit all our golf balls. I wasted a lot of time because I didn’t have a contingency plan for what to do in that situation.

I wound up going from first to fifth in that competition because I didn’t have a strategy.

It was an important lesson, and one I vowed to never have to learn again.

You can never practice every potential situation. Something odd always happens that you could never foresee.

But developing the habit of planning strategies in advance is like a skill. The more you do it the better you get at it, and the more you are able to handle just about any type of situation.

The second time my shaft broke was in another LDA Tour event in Chicago. Once again I was in the Finals, only this time the shaft snapped on my downswing. The head went flying off with about 6 inches of the shaft sticking out.

The kicker was that we were being filmed by a local news station. The camera man was slightly in front of us and off at a 45 degree angle.

My club head went whizzing past him at 140 miles per hour and missed impaling him by less than a foot!

The video footage is hilarious because by the time he reacted and jerked back with the camera the club head was already past him.

He never would have had a chance.

The good news is that the camera man was ok AND I had a strategy.

Once I verified that he was OK I grabbed my backup club and simply carried on with the competition.
Finished second.
Had a strategy.
It worked.
Everybody lived to talk about it.

TAKE AWAYS

1. The time to develop strategy is BEFORE you need it.
2. Imagine yourself in the real situation when you practice and pay attention to how you feel and react so you know what to expect.