Book Review: Breaking the Slump

The the way my game has gone this year compared to last, I decided to read the new book Breaking the Slump, How Great Players Survived Their Darkest Moments in Golf--And What You Can Learn From Them. Written by Jimmy Roberts of NBC Sports, the book looks at 16 golfers, plus former President George H.W. Bush (41) and Olympic athlete Dan Jansen, and tries to unlock the secrets of how they dealt with adversity in the golf games as well as their lives. Among the golfers featured are Paul Azinger, Jack Nicklaus, Scott Verplank, David Duval, Justin Rose, Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Ben Crenshaw, Johnny Miller, Davis Love III, Justin Leonard, Arnold Palmer, Dottie Pepper, Tom Watson, Steve Stricker and Hal Sutton. Roberts spends a chapter on each, interviewing the players about the severe down times in their games and what they did to get back to the highest level. While all of them suffered a slump in a different, their advice was pretty universal: don't panic, don't try so hard and go back to basics. The best quote in the book is from Bobby Jones, as repeated by Crenshaw: "The hardest course of all is only five inches long--the one between your ears." Another interesting observation came from Tom Watson, citing Harvey Penick: "If you have one bad round of golf, just forget about it. If you have two straight bad rounds, you might want to start thinking about it. A third consecutive bad round of golf, and it's time to get some help." While I'm not sure Breaking the Slump will get your golf game back on track, it is a very good, entertaining and easy read.