How do top professional golfers like Jason Day and Jordan Spieth make the decisive putts, and hit the pivotal shots when needed to win the big championships, and yet other golfers in similar situations collapse under the pressure of the moment?

Do these great golfers possess a special mental toughness gene that allows them to hit great shots when it counts?


Maybe they come from disadvantaged backgrounds, like in boxing, where many of the toughest and most successful fighters in history came out of poor city neighborhoods, with little money to their name, and just a burning desire to change their situation?

No, it turns out that great golfers like Jason Day and Jordan Spieth historically have come from both sides of the railroad tracks. So the mental toughness factors that elevate their performances on the golf course appear to be accessible to all golfers, regardless of their background.

So let’s explore this topic and take a look at some of the mental toughness habits they and other successful tour golfers seem to possess, and also what types of skills they work harder on to make them less likely to falter down the stretch.
​
6 Habits of Pro Tour Tough Golfers
Being mentally tough enough, or what we describe at Pro Tour Golf College as ‘Pro Tour Tough’ describes elite golfers who we have found possess these 6 habits; 
​

1. Pro Tour Tough golfers tend to be more consistent and superior to other golfers in remaining persistent, focused and confident in their shot-making—especially on their bad days, basically because they are more in control of their emotional and physiological state when competing under pressure.
   
   
2. Pro Tour Tough golfers have built a higher threshold of tolerance for disappointment and adversity, so they can bounce-back from set-backs more quickly and easily.
   ​
3. Pro Tour Tough golfers have developed an unwillingness to take the easy way out to obtain improvement. They work hard on their weakest skills--the skills that aren't fun to practice but make a bigger difference to their bottom line.
   
   
4. Pro Tour Tough golfers work harder on the factors that make them tougher and more adaptable in all types of weather, on all types of golf courses. These golfers can adjust faster to changing situations and conditions on the golf course.
   
   
5. Pro Tour Tough golfers know and accept that travelling to, and competing in tournaments, and being away from their families for extended periods of time is stressful, but they cope better with it than other golfers.
   
   
6. Pro Tour Tough golfers have a bigger WHY or reason to succeed. Their key drivers keep them focused on continually finding ways to improve technically, mentally, physically and strategically.

And we have also discovered that it’s this big WHY that makes these Pro Tour Tough golfers push their game harder for longer, because they know that the only road to improvement is accepting that success in golf requires unceasing persistence in the face of adversity.

​Pro Tour Tough Golfers Have Better C Game Days
Pro Tour Tour golfers have developed a high level of trust and confidence in their shot-making that permits them to cope better than other golfers with the numerous stresses, burdens and trials that makes hitting golf shots in tournaments more difficult to do.

Pro Tour Tough golfers perform better than other golfers on the tough days because they have highly developed and effective scrambling skills.

All golfers have bad tee to green days, in fact out of every 4 tournament rounds it's possible that 2 rounds out of 4 are tough scoring rounds and great golfers have the best back-up skills on the tough days, and this helps them to maintain a lower C game score average in tournaments.

Your C Game is Your Achilles Heel
Think about this for a moment; many of the hundreds of amateur and professional golfers who enter tour schools each year are definitely good enough on their day to play on a pro tour, if they could compete with their A and B Game—their best game score average.

However playing on the pro tour is not about how good you are on a given day, but how good you are over multiple days. If you play 6 rounds of tour school and 50 percent of those rounds are your C game--or high score average, could you still get a good card?

The answer in most cases is nine out of 10 golfers pursuing a pro career fail mostly because their C Game just isn’t good enough.
 
As I mentioned, your C Game is your high score average—the score you have when you are playing poorly. The reality of top level golf is that you will have bad days, and it's on these days that you have to have a great back-up game to keep your score average down.

In baseball great pitchers don't just have a fast ball, they have a variety of pitches to help them win games, and you need a great back-up game with a wide variety of shots to help you to score lower, make more cuts and make cheques.

Do you know what your C Game average was for last season?...

When Your C Game Average is Too High
​Your C Game average results from the days when you struggle with your shot-making from tee to green and you make less pars than average, and more bogeys or worse compared to birdies or better.

For professional golfers missing too many cuts, it is having too many scores above 74. That doesn’t mean that the best golfers don’t score above 74, they do, but not very often.
 
Let me give you an example.

In the 2015 season on the PGA Tour Jason Day competed in 20 tournaments and made the cut in 18 of them. In 72 stroke rounds he scored 74 and above just 6 times, or just 8.3 percent for the season.
 
On the other side of the coin, 46 of his rounds out of 72 were in the 60’s, which is 58.3 percent of his rounds.

It's also interesting to note that Jordan Spieth scored 74 and above just 8 times in 88 rounds in 2015.

Click on the image below and you will see from the 76 rounds in the table (Includes The Open Championship) that most of Jason Day's scores (Orange line) are below the blue line which describes the par of the courses he played over the season.

The Chip, Pitch, Lob and Sand Shot Are Your Scrambling Tools for Saving Par
​Since golf is a high mistakes game, the real art of the game is in your ability to manage the inevitable execution, mental and strategy errors you will make better than the next golfer.

No two golf shots you hit are ever going to be the same, so most of the time the golf shots you hit won’t end up where you expected them to.

Consequently, to lower your C Game, or high score average, you must continually upgrade your chipping, pitching, sand and putting skills.


The most successful pros like Jason Day and Jordan Spieth do this, and you should too.

​So the key question that you need to ask yourself right now is this; “are you currently practicing and developing your scrambling skills enough to help you yield lower C Game scores?

If you are not practicing these skills enough, then why? If it's good enough for the best players in the game to practice them often, then why not you.

Being Pro Tour Tough is not about possessing some mental toughness gene but rather it's having the ability to keep your score down when you are not playing anywhere near your best.

This is the big WHY that will help you to pressure proof your game so you can play your best on your worst days.

Does stress affect the way you play? You bet it does and in this super episode of Golf Science Lab host Cordie Walker talks with Dr. Adam Nicholls from the University of Hull in the UK about how to manage it and turn it into an ally that helps you to play your best when you are under the pump.

Enjoy this podcast and make sure you follow Golf Science Lab on Facebook and Twitter and you can visit the website here. http://golfsciencelab.com/