Phil Mickelson Continues to Battle Illness!

Thursday morning Phil Mickelson woke up in a pool of his own vomit, and said it was a good omen! Why would he say such a thing? Because the last two times Mickelson woke up in his own vomit, he won that week's tournament.

While many of us simply don't go to the golf course when we are feeling under the weather, there is a lesson to be learned here. Why is it that many tour pros end up winning a tournament when they are not feeling well? For one thing, they simply go through the motions of envisioning fundamentals in their golf swing, and don't try to overpower the ball. What happens when you picture something happening in sports, and then let it happen? It happens the way we envision it if our power of positive thinking is strong enough.

Golf is played in the five inch wide spot between the ears. When properly played, golf is 90% mental, and 10% mental.

When I was 18 years old, I was playing in a Father Son Tournament with my Dad at the Lake Shastina Golf Resort at the foot of Mt. Shasta in northern California. At that time in my life I had never broken 70 on the Par-72 championship course, at 6,859 yards. I was one under par standing on the 18th tee, a par 5.

I drove it well off the tee, then hit my 5-wood on the right side of the green, sixty feet from the pin. After my Dad and the other father/son team chipped onto the green, I was away, and asked my Dad to tend the pin.

I announced that I was going to make the eagle putt to shoot under 70 for the first time in my life, and then reminded my Dad that he had to take out the pin after I stroked the putt.

"I know, I know," Dad said as he took the pin in his right hand.

I looked over my 60-footer for eagle, read a right to left break of ten feet, pictured the ball going in the hole, then stroked the putt. I walked toward the hole as I watched the ball follow the path that I had pictured in my mind. Ten feet right of the hole, then the ball rolling left toward the hole. As the ball approached the hole and was about five feet from going in, I noticed my Dad was so excited, he was standing there with his hand still on the pin, frozen!

"Dad, pull the pin!" I shouted. Just as the ball was about to hit the pin, where I would incur a two-stroke penalty, Dad got the pin out of the hole. Dad jumped up and down and yelled, "Pete eagled the final hole!"

I walked up to my Dad and told him that I knew the putt was in the hole before I stroked it. I could have made a $1,000 bet before stroking the putt that it was going in the hole; that's how positive I was about making the putt.

When I was in my teens, I had read all 82 volumes of The Destroyer paperback series. It was about a Newark, NJ police officer who was taught the secret of the ultimate martial art by a 90-pound North Korean by the name of Chiun. Remo Williams was the country's secret weapon against evil in the world, and only the President knew how to reach him and how to give him his orders to take out the bad guys. In his spare time, Remo would play golf, scoring eagles and birdies on every hole, because his training taught him to picture something happening, then make it happen.

I shot my first 69 that day, and I love telling that story of mind over matter. It reminds me of Star Wars, and The Force. Remember the phrase, "Use the Force, Luke."?

The next day I was playing Lake Shastina again, this time with a buddy. It was a windy day, and scoring was tougher than the day before. On the 18th green I had a two-foot putt for a par, and the ball was vibrating from the wind.

I knew I was going to miss it!