Mindset of Golfers vs. Pitchers | Mental Game LIVE with Dr. Bhrett McCabe  

Great video! I enjoyed it and want to expand on my mindset developed as a pitcher and how it guides my golf game and all areas of life. Pitchers and position players have vastly different expectations and experiences on the baseball field. Position players (hitters) are taught that the game of baseball is a game of failure and to succeed three out of 10 chances at the plate is good. They will only have three or four chances to effect the score of the game. That means in inverse is true for pitchers and a pitcher is expected to be successful seven or more times per 10 at bats. As you said in the video, your capacity and capability are different things. A pitcher might have the capacity to throw three pitches with great precision--but the capability to do it changes every time you step on a mound. I believe that when talent is relatively level, what differentiates great players from others is how quickly and accurately they can make adjustments. A great pitcher can find the proper adjustments to make that day to be able to use their pitches successfully. A great hitter will find the proper adjustments to make pitch by pitch, maybe even mid-pitch. These adjustments are physical and mental. For the pitcher, the game played within the game is the mental chess between the himself and hitter paired with the personal psychodrama playing out in his mind with every pitch, and the most influential character in that drama is his confidence. To be successful, a pitcher must have genuinely conviction in his ability to make the pitch he is about to throw and the slightest bit of doubt in a pitcher's mind while coming set or delivering the pitch will almost always yield a bad result...occasionally you will get lucky, but experience tells me this is when walks, wild pitches, hit by pitches, doubles, and homeruns occur far more often than when throwing a good pitch and the hitter somehow still beats you. The tricky part is balancing confidence and humility. Baseball will humble you over and over again and as a pitcher you will be tasked with immediately getting back on the mound after being humbled and it can be an incredibly lonely place to be. In those moments, you experience all of your doubts and insecurities within your psychodrama as loud as can be, but you must have the mental fortitude and flexibility to allow your confidence to reclaim the space in your mind as quickly as possible in order to have any chance of success. "So what, next pitch," was a common thing I would tell myself to achieve this. I never golfed until after my pitching days were over, yet I long idolized Tiger Woods' mentality, especially his ability to bounce back after a poor shot/hole. This mindset really made me fall in love with golf as soon as I tried it.