Zen GolfDr Joseph Parent

Zen Golf, mastering the mental game by Dr. Joseph Parent.

First published in 2002 by Doubleday in the USA this is an easy to read and approximately 200 pages about the mental game of golf.

The Author, Dr. Joseph Parent, is a Buddhist teacher and also a PGA Tour Instructor and well known Coach. His client list is impressive and includes Professional Golfers such as major champions Vijay Singh, David Toms, and Cristie Kerr.

At this time of writing this review, in January 2009, Dr Joseph Parent’s book is in its twelfth printing including seven different languages.

The book is not written as an instruction manual and you don’t need to work through the book from A to B. It is a book that you can pick up and read as and when time permits and put down again and then come back to easily.

Zen Golf consists of three main sections (A Different Perspective, The PAR approach and A Game of Honour). The PAR approach is about Preparation, Action and then Response to Results. Within each main section there are a number of short stories or teachings and exercises that convey Dr Joseph’s Zen philosophy on reframing negative thoughts and taking a positive attitude that “there is something fundamentally, essentially right with us”. The book shows you how to stay calm and let your mind help you through a collection of what you would call Zen based techniques and exercises. Zen apparently means “action with awareness” and is about the present and staying in the moment – staying in the zone as some of you may have heard top athletes say about their best performances.

There is a lot of focus on putting and the short game – and quite rightly so as the closer we golfers get to the hole the more acute the pressure becomes – but the book covers more than just techniques to keep calm over short putts. One nice aspect of the book is the Index of exercises at the end. Once you’ve read it and you then wish to revisit an exercise at some future date, you can quickly refer to the index to find the exercise you wanted to work on.

More about Dr Joseph Parent and his work including other publications can be found at: