For any golfer who wants to play great golf
Game Sense
Sometimes in golf we need to unlearn before we can learn
Jun 14th
The last couple of weeks have been up and down in terms of my scores, but I have learned some very valuable lessons along the way.
In my last five rounds I have two of my best scores for the season, two of my worst, and an average round. What does that tell you? It tells me that golf is a game of patience. You can’t control the outcome. You can only control your process.
Golf is interesting because you can’t force a good shot, you can only let it happen, but you can definitely do a lot of things to create bad shots. The opposite of that is what I think sports psychologists call “getting out of your own way”.
Asking the right questions
May 13th
I was reading Fearless Golf by Dr. Gio Valiante, and in chapter 4 he talks about the questions that guide us. I’m reminded of that scene in “The Matrix” where Trinity and Neo are at the nightclub early in the movie and she says to him, “It’s the question that drives us.” In his case the question was “What is the Matrix?”, but in golf the question is “What is my target?”.
Often though we get caught up in things like our score, our competitors, pressure, what I did on the last hole, or 3 holes ago and we get away from asking “What is my target?”. But Dr. Valiante is right. The questions do drive us. Asking the right questions can help us play better, make better decisions and keep us in the moment, while asking the wrong questions, can quickly take us out of the moment and down that road we’ve been before, and we know where that road ends.
The wrong questions introduce fear and distractions, they make us focus on the past or on the future, and they take us out of the zone if we were in it, or more likely, just take us further away from being in the zone.
So how do we get to the point where we are asking the right questions? One of the key ways I think is to think well about the strategy, the way we want to play the hole. Thinking about strategy puts us back squarely in the present. Asking ourselves the question “How do I want to play this hole?” is much more constructive than something like, “I usually hit way right on this hole, what if I do that again? Or worse, what if I hit it in the water? What if I look like a fool?”. One question gets your mind moving in a direction that allows you to marshal your resources, the other takes you out of the present, introduces fear and doubt, and makes it hard to focus on this shot right now.
Be your own caddy
Apr 26th
As I kid I learned how to play golf on a golf course with caddies. We never took the golf cart, but we usually had a couple of caddies.
The caddies were great. Not only were they super nice and friendly, they knew the course so well that you couldn’t help but play better. They kept you in the game, recommended the right strategies and clubs.
I don’t get to play with a caddy anymore. So I’ve had to learn to become my own caddy. I’ve had to learn the right strategies. I’ve had to learn to deal with the disappointment of making a bad swing. The caddies were great with that. They could always make you laugh.
I think that if everybody could play with a good caddy, that the scores of the average golfer would really drop. Playing with a caddy really takes pressure off. Your mind can be much more quiet, thinking about the shot, rather than trying to calculate everything. But since most people don’t get to play with caddies then they need some help.
Golf perfection is impossible and not needed to play good golf
Apr 26th
You ever get mad when you don’t pull off a shot, that realistically you had no business trying? Happens to me too. Just because we hit that shot once in our life we think we should be able to do it on command.
Of course, that’s not even close to reality. Perfect golf is impossible even for the players at the very top of their game who are the best in the world.
But you don’t need to play perfect to score well. When I look back on my best scoring rounds, I wasn’t playing perfectly. I was leaving myself with good opportunities to score and was able to cash in on enough of them to end up with a good score.
Aside from perfection in golf being unattainable, the main problem with trying to get it is that it puts pressure on every part of your game. That is the quickest way to score badly.
How Bill lowered his score by 5 shots using Game Sense
Apr 22nd
I received this great note in my inbox this morning.
“Today, once the rain stopped, I headed out to my course to test drive “Game Sense”. I live on a golf course and have played it nearly every week for 8 years. Using the Game Sense points I actually came to view the course a totally different way. Angles and highways came into view after reading the hole from the green to tee. Amazing, it all works. I played 15 holes, had a par putt on every hole and NO Doubles. Shot 39 on the first 9! My avg score on this nine is 42-43. Playing the hole from the best approach saves a lot of big numbers.
