Let’s consider the role a mental profile can play in your game. There are basically four ways you can improve:

1) Technique – improving your mechanics. 
2) Equipment – using the right clubs and balls for your swing. 
3) Golf Fitness – increasing flexibility, strength, balance, etc. 
4) Mental Game – learning to play and practice smarter golf.

For the first three – technique, equipment, and fitness – video, launch monitors and other assessment techniques are used for customizing instruction, club-fitting and fitness workouts. The role of this profile is to provide the same type of personalized information for your mental game.

The system generates personalized information for working on your mental game just as video and launch monitors produce personalized information for working on your swing and customizing your equipment. The profile works great for self-coaching as well as for collaborating with your Natural Golf Certified Instructor. 

The DISC Profile Styles

The DISC system uses “styles” to describe behavioral tendencies. Based on your answers, your mental golf style might be one of the four basic DISC styles or one of the many combination or “blended” styles used in the system. Answers are scored on the Dominance, Inspiration, Steadiness and Conscientious scales. No style is better than any other, and every style has potential strengths and weaknesses. A key principle from the DISC methodology is that a strength overdone can turn into a weakness. The key is to understand your style and how to use it to your advantage. 

Your report is produced in a “workshop” format, with space provided to make notes as you work through your report. This format makes it easy for self-coaching or to review with your instructor.

Following are the areas the profile will have a direct effect on for improving your game:

Golf Temperament - Generate positive energy by understanding and managing your golf temperament tendencies. 
Pre-Round Preparation – Prepare to get your rounds off to good starts by developing a pre-round routine suited to your mental style. 
Thought Processes Over The Ball – Improve your shot making abilities by understanding and managing your particular thinking style. 
Practice Habits – Convert practice time into actual improvement on the course by developing new practice habits. 
Course Management – Save strokes by using strategies suited to your golfing personality. 
Your Learning Style – Learn more with less stress by understanding your learning style when working with instructors, coaches, fitness trainers, etc.

We suggest reviewing all of the information and then selecting the key items that will most impact your performance. Perhaps the most effective method for reinforcing these key points is to write them on index cards and put them into a plastic bag you keep in your golf bag. Review these index cards before your practice sessions and rounds and you’ll be delighted with the positive impact this awareness and repetition will have on your performance.

The profile was developed by Bobby Foster, a management consultant headquartered in Columbia, SC. Bobby is a former teaching professional and golf coach at the University of South Carolina where he coached several All-Americans including four players who played on The PGA Tour. He is a Certified Behavioral Analyst specializing in the DISC Behavioral Style Model. He explains the purpose behind the development of the mental golf profile –

“Our company has had great success using DISC profiles in work language to help people improve performance in all types of working environments. Over the years, I’ve often thought about how much better I would have been as a player, instructor and coach if I’d known about the DISC System during that stage of my life. We built this profile in golf language so that players, instructors and coaches could enjoy the same benefits I’ve seen with DISC profiles in the workplace.”

For a direct link to the Mental Golf Workshop Profile designed for Natural Golfers Click Here.