Redcliffe champ building belief through memory - PGA of Australia

Redcliffe champ building belief through memory


Brisbane Professional Zachary Maxwell is daring to defy conventional thinking that winning builds belief, insisting that he built the belief he needed in order to win last year’s Optilease Redcliffe Pro-Am.

Maxwell returns to Redcliffe Golf Club on Thursday as a largely unheralded defending champion competing for a $90,000 prize purse against former DP World Tour winners, players with current DP World Tour status and 22 former winners on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia.

The field was just as strong 12 months ago when Maxwell shot 64 in the final round to win by one stroke, including a hole-in-one.

But more on the significance of that ace later.

It was a timely win ahead of Maxwell’s first full season on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia but the 25-year-old has been on a journey of self-fulfilling belief dating back to the inability to play during the COVID-19 restrictions of 2020.

“I became very internally focused because obviously we couldn’t play golf and I was obsessed with golf and getting better,” Maxwell explains.

“I thought about the one aspect of golf that you can train when you’re not on the course and that’s mental.

“I went nuts. I think I went through four or five different sports psychs. I was reading books, listening to podcasts. I was just learning, writing, reading, meditating pretty much the whole of COVID.”

Two years ago, Maxwell linked with Dr James Clark at The Mental Switch, described as a “transformative coaching and mental resilience program”.

Like former US Open champion Matthew Fitzpatrick documents every shot he ever hits, a key component for Maxwell in training belief is to document how he feels after each round or practice session.

By writing it down, Maxwell is effectively building a bank of positive reinforcement that he can tap into when a particular shot needs to be executed.

“Our No.1 mantra is belief in how we obtain that and how we can protect that,” Maxwell says of his work with Dr Clark.

“You get that through the ways we practise and how we use our memories.

“When I was playing Redcliffe (in 2024), I was using memories from members comps, tour events, pennant matches from when I was a junior.

“It’s constant memory collecting and memory exporting into executing the shot.

“I’ll write down in my book my feels for the day. It changes every day. I just make sure I document it.

“It doesn’t matter if I read it or not. I just know that if you write it down on paper, it retains the memory stronger.”

Now, back to that hole-in-one.

At every level, golf is littered with stories of hole-in-ones that are followed almost instantly by disaster, blips that are soon forgotten in the retelling of golf’s perfect shot.

Trailing accomplished pro Aaron Pike by four strokes at the start of Round 2 at Redcliffe last year, Maxwell made birdies at 10 and 12 before his ace at the par-3 13th, his fourth hole of the day.

That he followed that with another birdie at the par-4 14th is testament, he believes, to the mental training he has committed to the past five years.

“Hole-in-ones are actually pretty dangerous in tournament golf,” Maxwell says.

“It sounds outrageous to say – you’re 2-under for one hole, it should be pretty good for you – but more bad can come from it if you don’t control it.

“Not only have you got to deal with your own emotions, usually a hole-in-one will get all the people who might be watching absolutely rowdy. All of a sudden you’ve taken on all these different people’s emotions.

“Having the right tools to retain your flow and all the memories to get back on track, I did really well. I was very proud of myself after that.”

The Optilease Redcliffe Pro-Am tees off at 10am on Thursday with the second and final round to be completed Friday.

Draw


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