Every athlete feels like he can perform just a little bit better, even if his original result is a personal best. This is an inherent mental attitude that all champions naturally use to be successful. Well, you don’t have to be an elite athlete to feel the same; We amateur golfers often feel like we’ve left strokes behind on the course, even when we get our lowest score ever. This approach to sports is the same, even if we get a bad score… we actually want to play better. There is a pitfall in trying to bounce back from bad golf scores and it is a trap that most of us have fallen into over the course of our golf journey. Well, I’m here to tell you how to avoid this pitfall so you can right the ship and sail to better golf scores.
Every golf season offers the opportunity to achieve low golf scores. Every round, every shot, every thought is an opportunity to play better golf. When our game goes off the rails and we hit one bad shot after another, we wonder if we will ever improve our game. This process happens many times over the course of my golf season, but after years of trial and error, I know the cause of bad shots and when I spot that mistake, I try to eliminate that mistake.
The simple answer to our consistently poor play is a lack of control over our emotions. We let our emotions influence our golf game and influence our mental strength and processes. Instead of trying to control our negative thoughts and feelings, we let them take over our entire game. Once the negative thoughts creep into our minds, the jig is up. Our confidence is shaken, the can’ts show up and we feel like we can’t dig ourselves out of this deep hole of poor play. Luckily, I have a three-step process that will solve all our problems.
I use the simple process of thinking, deciding and visualizing each wave. For more details on this process, you can read it in an earlier post. All three steps are important to ensure you consistently hit great golf shots. This isn’t a magic trick, but it does allow your mind to focus on what you want your body to do and how you want each wave stroke to unfold. I want to focus on one aspect of this process and that is deciding.
It is important to decide which shot to hit. However, it is crucial that you stick to that decision. We amateurs often decide on a shot without 100% effort. We allow our minds to provide a small (sometimes larger) margin of doubt that can trickle into our minds before we hit the ball. I will say at this point that unless you are completely committed to the photo, you haven’t really made a decision. This is not the time to hedge your bets. Therefore, if you are going to play golf, make sure that you fully support your decision.
Fighting back against bad golf scores is a process that needs to be ingrained into your game. Thinking, deciding and visualizing is just one simple way to improve your link consistency. It’s a process that has and continues to work for my playing. Hopefully it works for you too.
I am a grateful golfer! See you on the links!
#Hitting #bad #golf #scores