Golf Made Easier http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/ en-us Nucleus CMS v3.23 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus//nucleus/nucleus2.gif Golf Made Easier http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/ Still Working! http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=12 swear I'm doing the same thing that worked before but can't hit the ball to save my life. Well, I've played a couple of times since my last post and it's still working! There are a few holes on which I've been afraid to hit my driver in the past. Now I'm using the driver on these holes because finally, I can work the ball.

So what am I doing besides playing with a better understanding of how to work the ball? I'm swinging much slower. Balance and rhythm. Balance and rhythm, balance and rhythm, balance and rhythm. Trying to keep my lower body out of the swing. Front arm straight. All of those things make a difference. But, to stand up to the ball and actually have some confidence in where it's going to fly has been incredibly liberating. If I spray one off to the left or right, I pretty much know what happened, quickly diagnosing the problem and correcting it on the next shot.

I have a good friend who is a scratch and better golfer. He said something one time that drove me crazy because I couldn't hit the ball to save my life. I hit the ball and sliced it off to the left (I'm a lefty) and turning around asked him, "Man! What'd I do?!" He said, "Well, looks to me like you sort of hit it to the left." Grrrrrrrrr! Then he said this, "It's pretty simple. The ball's round, the club's flat and the hole doesn't move." I wanted to choke him then but now, finally, I think I am beginning to see what he meant by that...

Study the Flight of the Ball

Giant Slice...
If you, as a right-hander, hit the ball and it starts out right and continues to curve to the right, that means the club face was open when you hit the ball and the club swing path was outside to inside causing it to curve that way as a result of the spin placed on the ball by the glancing blow of the club face rather than a straight on impact. You probably flew your back elbow out and held the club too tightly which doesn't allow your wrists to break leaving your club-face open.

Straight Slice or Fade...
If the ball starts out straight but then curves right, the club face was square at impact and the club swing path was outside to inside causing it to curve as it gets out and away.

Big Hook...
If the ball starts out left and continues to curve to the left, that means the club face was closed at impact and the club swing path was inside to outside causing it to curve left as a result of the spin placed on the ball. You might have taken the club back more behind you rather than straight back causing you to have to sort of snap your wrists around in order to come back to the ball square.

Straight Hook or Draw...
If the ball starts out straight and begins curving left, the club-face was square at impact and was traveling on an inside out path causing a counterclockwise spin on the ball.

This is really valuable information because all you have to do is watch the flight of your golf ball to know what you did.

The club's flat, the ball's round and the hole doesn't move!

Thanks, Rod.]]> General http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=12 Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:41:56 -0700 Pointing in the Right Direction http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=11 Billiard balls hitting from off center Now it's pretty easy to take that idea one step further and say that if the ball hits the side of the table from an angle it's gonna glance off at an angle opposite of the direction it was going when it hit the side.

Billiard Ball Glancing Off at Angle


Everybody's seen that happen and it's just so obvious that you're probably thinking, "Ok, I've got this get to the point." Here's the deal, if you open your club-face the ball is going to START OUT going to the right! So if you're trying to fade the shot and you open the club face to put a little clockwise spin on the ball you've got to remember that you're not just spinning the ball, you're shooting it out to the right to start with so you have to line up to the left in direct relation to how much you open the face of your club. It's like lining up a billiard shot!

Ball starts off going to the right


Standing over your shot you can actually predict which direction the ball is going to start out according to how much of an angle you'll be applying to the club-face. Also, the ball is going to spin a little more or less depending on the angle so it's an exponential curve! A wide angle not only forces you to further line up to the left but when you hit the ball it's going to spin more which means it's going to travel more to the right by the end of the shot. How much it travels to the right will be a function of how far it will be traveling or how long it will be in the air.

So let's bring this down to practical terms. You're standing on the tee-box looking at a dog-leg right and there is a tree line on the right. So you line up the shot with your club-face open thinking I'll just fade it around the tree line. But, you forget to take into account the ball direction based on the angle of the club and you hit it into the trees on the right.

you think you're aiming far enough to the left and you hit into the trees on the right.

In fact, if you're like me, you do it every stinking time and wonder what the heck is going on! Well, now you know!]]> General http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=11 Sat, 9 Jun 2007 05:51:28 -0700 Would You Like a Face Full of Mudd With Your Divot? http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=10
That reminds me. I'm also a hopeless idiot when it comes to wanting to save a stroke. Last Saturday morning I played with some guys who know me maybe a little too well. They realize that I take the game a little too seriously sometimes.

The story goes like this.

We tee off at 7:30AM, dew still on the ground, rained for 2 days prior but the skies have cleared, the birds are singing and all is right with the Universe. By the time I reach number 9 I've had a couple of good holes and mostly pretty bad ones. Number 9 is a short par 3 surrounded by water. The pin is in the front which makes the distance about 135 yards to the flag. There's a little bit of wind so I decide to hit a 9-iron nice and easy. I take a perfect practice swing and then proceed to decelerate on the down-swing so the ball is a little short and rolls back into the water but it's right on the edge and is only about 1 inch under the water and I'm only about 15 yards to the pin.

So, I'm thinking, I remember Tiger Woods taking his shoes off and hitting one of these! So, being the real idiot I am, I just lean over, get into position and line up the shot! Whack!! Muddy water splashes up and all over my beautiful WHITE Callaway golf shirt and pants, and my face and my head! I look up at the green and there's no ball. I turn around just in time to see my 2 golf partners rolling on the ground laughing. Grrrrrrr.

So, I exclaim, "Where did the ball go?!" As one of them begins to catch his breath from laughing he says, "About 4 inches behind where it was!!!"

What was I thinking? I'm afraid to hit the ball off the fairway because they're a little muddy and I MIGHT get a speck of mudd on me but, I'm fearless in the face of an entire pond? Sometimes I really wonder if this game is truly making me a crazy person.

You know what's really crazy? I hit it again!!! This time it got up and out of the water and close enough to putt. Ahhhhhh, victory!

Oh, my shirt's still soaking in some spot remover.

Over and out from the crazy man.

]]> General http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=10 Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:26:54 -0700 Swing Thought, or Swing Purpose http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=9 Are You Expecting Too Much?" for why I think it's crazy for a weekend golfer to expect to hit great shots most of the time. I shot a 42 on the back 9 but I hit more than 50% of the greens on the back in regulation! I think I might have discovered one of the secrets to consistent golf!I had gone to the range a couple of times in the afternoon over the previous 2 weeks. I spent a couple of hours at least each time and started by focusing strictly on coming back to the ball. That became my principal goal while practicing on the range. If you've read any of my other blog entries you'll see that I have had trouble in the past with the mental game falling apart. Read "The Dreaded Golf Gorilla."

The other thing I did was to address the ball and line up my shot to a target on the range in my mind's eye. After doing that, I would bend down and set a club across my toes and then step away from the club looking to see where my feet were pointing. Wow! Talk about way off! I'm a lefty and I was lining up way to the left of target. I would have sworn that I was lining up right at the flag! So, I pointed the club right at the flag and then lined up according to that.

I spent some time getting my mind's eye to accept this new look at the target from address. It is still a little wierd for me. Standing square to the target looks to me like I'm lined up way to the right. And to someone who has a tendancy to hook the ball to the right (remember I'm a lefty) that can be a little un-nerving. What I have begun to realize is that I have been hooking the ball and coming across it because I subconsiously knew that I was lined up closed. So I had two levels of sub-consiousness working against each other! Ok, I know this is getting a little deep. I'm surfacing a little now.

By focusing on alignment and coming back square to the ball at all costs my sub-consious and consious thoughts were all of a sudden working together! It was an awesome discovery! Another thing I noticed was that a focus on coming back square to the ball isn't really a swing-thought. It's more of a purpose or over-arching goal. But, it set up a guide for what my swing thought should be!

I started out by hitting some short shots with my 7-iron in an attempt to come back square to and make perfect contact with the ball. It was really a kind of chip shot with my 7-iron. What was wierd at first was that I had trouble coming back to the ball even only taking a little one-quarter swing!

So I thought, hmmm, I must be bending my front elbow because I wasn't breaking my wrist and nothing else was involved in the swing at that point. As a result, I simply kept the front arm straight all the way back and through, still remembering that my main focus was to come back square to the ball. Voila! I got to the point where I was taking the club back only half-way and crisply hitting the ball 150 yards just as straight as an arrow! From there all I had to do was make a little more of a turn with my body to take a full swing.

The main purpose or goal - coming back square to the ball - was guiding my principal swing thought!

In the past, I've just tried different things until something worked to get a swing thought. That is blind correction. It's really been more of a trial and error approach to golf and a recipe for disaster and frustration.

So, there I was hitting one shot after another with such ease I that I thought, who is this guy hitting the ball?! I know it can't be me! I felt like I was flying. But then it happened.

I hit a bad shot.

I don't remember exactly where it went. I think I topped it. After hitting that one, hoping it was a fluke, I hit another one, and another one. One bad shot after another. With each shot, I got more frustrated until I stopped and had a little talk with myself.

Ok, I said. You just went south! There's gotta be a reason. I went back to my purpose, come back square to the ball, stupid! I went all the way back to the short, smooth swing and made myself come back to the ball as perfectly as I could. I immediately realized that I had been rushing the down-swing causing myself to either block the shot making it spray off to the left (I'm a lefty remember) or come across it and pull it with a little hook. So I asked myself, "How do I make sure I can come back square to the ball?" The answer for me that day was to keep my front arm straight and slow down! I was back in the saddle again making great shots in no time!

I gotta tell you, this is the first time I've been able to take range shots out onto the course and I'm pretty excited about it!

My putter worked pretty good that day too but I still had a few 3-putts after getting a green in regulation. The greens at Pine Hills are in great shape but they are really slick! In addition to the 3-putts, I missed several par putts by a fraction of an inch after chipping up leaving me with several tap-in bogeys. Shooting an 87 was fine with me. I gotta remember that I'm a weekend golfer.

The next few times I play will tell the tale. We'll see if this is all a bunch of bunk or if having an over arching swing purpose (coming back square to the ball) guiding the swing thought necessary to make that happen (keep the front arm straight) really is the key.]]> The Mental Golf Game http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=9 Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:04:16 -0700 Bad Course Equals Bad Golf http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=8
My home course was in the middle of a big tournament and we only had about 4 1/2 hours to go, play and get back because we were expected at some friends house that evening. So, we went to a public course right down the road that had been redone in the last year. It's a little 9-hole course so to play 18 you simply play from the white tees the first time around and the blue tees the second time. I've driven by the course several times and it looked a lot better than it has in the past. It's been years since I've played it. In fact, my game has improved by probably 10 strokes since I last played the course so I was looking forward to playing it again. It's a shorter golf course than the somewhat difficult course I normally play. Boy was I in for a surprise.I hit a pretty nice drive off the first tee and was about 120 yds from the green. My approach shot hit the green and bounced off the back. Not only was the green extremely small but it was hard as a rock. So, stopping the ball with an approach shot was impossible and chipping up was even tougher. All the greens were ridiculously elevated so imagine chipping up onto a green no bigger than your living room where no amount of spin on the ball seemed to matter. Another thing I noticed about the greens was that the grass was inconsistent. I never knew how fast or slow they would be from one green to the next.

The last hole (9 and 18) was only 250 yards and it was a dog-leg left that turned at around 200 yards. So to get an approach shot you had to hit your tee shot around 200 yards and then you had a 50 yard approach shot to land on a green with a ditch directly behind it. The green was, I kid you not, maybe 20 feet deep and had an unreal amount of slope. The first time I played it (number 9 that day) I didn't know the ditch was there. I had lost my first shot in the woods to the left so I had to drop another ball and was hitting number 3 from behind the trees. It looked to be about 140 yards from where I stood and I needed some height to get over the trees and onto the green. I hit a beautiful 9-iron shot over the trees and right at the flag. You guessed it, the ball bounced off the green and into the ditch. Another lost ball on the same hole. So I dropped another ball where the last one went into the ditch (which was full of muddy water) and chipped up watching my ball roll to the other side of the green. I'm lying 5 about 15 feet away putting straight uphill. I 2-putt for a triple bogey.

I ended up shooting a 92 on a par 70 course which is like a 94 on a par 72! I normally shoot in the high to mid 80's on my home course and it is known as one of the hardest courses in the area. My home course, Pine Hills Country Club in Calhoun, Louisiana, I know is one of the longest in the state. And yet, this short, little podunk public course ate my lunch! As I played that course, I thought to myself, "I wonder what a professional golfer would shoot on this stupid course?" If I were a betting man, I would bet it would be one of their worst scores too.

In fact, one of the best scores I've ever shot was at a TPC course in Dallas, TX. I shot in the low 80's which is really good for me. It was the Byron Nelson Course there at the Four-Seasons Hotel. It was in excellent condition but it's a course that's supposed to be known for it's challenges.

I'm more convinced than ever that a course kept in good shape is much easier to play. There's consistency in every part of the course including fairways, ruff, greens and sand. A heartfelt thanks to the folks that know what they are doing in the greens and course management business. You guys make our lives much better every weekend!

God bless you!]]> Golf Courses http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=8 Thu, 7 Sep 2006 21:39:14 -0700 I Know What I'm Doing, I Just Can't Stop It! http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=6
That was as true a description as I can think of for my little ballerina move. I hit the ball and say, "Oh man, I stood up on my toes again! Why did that happen?! Why am I doing that?!" Then I proceed to the next shot and do it again. Sheeeeeesh! I once heard a comedian talk about golf and related it to baseball. The guy says, "You know I don't get golf. Go to a baseball game and there are 20,000 screaming fans, the ball is coming at these guys 90 MPH and still they manage to hit a fair ball! Not so with golf. The ball's sitting still on a tee, the guy's got all the time he needs to stand over the ball and hit the stupid thing and everyone around goes, 'Shhhhhhh'" Guy holding up a "QUIET!" sign.

My Dad doesn't play golf but every once in a while he's seen it on TV. He said to me not too long ago, "How does a professional golfer miss those little 4 foot putts? These are the best guys out there?" I tried to explain to him how difficult greens like that can be but he wasn't buying it. He said that if all they do is play golf, they should be able to make those things every time. To him it was tantamount to a professional baseball player letting a ball go through his legs.

Does golf just seem to make us weak-minded little weannies? Or is it really that hard?]]> The Mental Golf Game http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=6 Sun, 27 Aug 2006 18:02:28 -0700 Disaster Holes are Killing Me! http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=5 free stats deally. I'm looking it over and one glaringly obvious thing to me is this - I could have saved 6 strokes today had I turned my 2 triple-bogeys and 2 double-bogeys into bogeys. So, instead of shooting an 89 I could have shot an 83.

Of course, I had two 3-putts. Had those become 2-putts I could have dropped it another 2 strokes to 81. All of a sudden I've moved from right around 90, bogey-golf to almost down in the 70's! Just by eliminating my double and triple bogeys and 3-putts.

So why don't I do that? Why do I keep having disaster holes like that? I used to have a partner in business who is a scratch golfer and better. I asked him that question one time.His response was, "You're not mentally prepared to play at that level." In other words, when I start playing better than my normal score, my mind somehow takes over and pulls me back into old habits. Somewhere deep in the recesses of the gray matter I've gotten myself convinced that I can't sustain a score at that level. You won't believe what happened a few weeks ago.As I was saying, a few weeks ago, I played the first hole, a par 5 and parred it. Moved to the second hole, a short par 3 and parred it. Moved to the 3rd hole, a fairly tricky par 5, and bogeyed that one. So I went into the 4th hole 1 over par. Number 4 is a hard dog-leg left up a hill. If you hit your driver you'll go into the trees and if you hit anything less than 220 yards you won't get up to the 150. So, tired of playing out of the trees, I pulled out my 3 iron and ended up at about 170 yards out. I pulled out a 6-iron and hit the ball up onto the green and it disappeared. I was pretty frustrated, thinking I had knocked it over the green. I walked up onto the green and just for the heck of it, looked down into the cup and there was my ball! I'm thinking to myself, I think I've finally figured this game out. My golf partner that day is a bogey golfer for the most part, like me, and he was about 6 over par walking up onto the tee boc of number 5. I'm 1 under par and almost halfway through with the front 9. I can't tell you how that felt for a guy like me. As Rush says, the saga continues...

I walked up onto the par 3 number 5 brimming with confidence. It's about 170 yards downhill. Kind of a narrow green with sand on the right and water hazard on the left and all the way around the back of the green. I pulled out a 5-iron and hit it perfectly. So perfectly that it flew the green and went into the water. So, I'm 20 yards off the back of the green chipping up about 15 feet onto a green that runs hard downhill away from the cup. This is my 3rd shot. I duffed it. Grrr! 4th shot - went up and onto the green and rolled down the stinking hill and off the front of the green. A few minutes later I registered an 8 on my scorecard. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I went from stepping onto the number 5 tee box at 1 under to stepping up onto the number 6 tee box at 4 over par.

I never really regained my confidence that day. I ended up with an 89. Maybe my old partner was right. My mind works against me when I start to score well. I can't tell you how many times I've shot a 39 or 40 on the front only to shoot a 50 or 51 on the back. How in the world does that happen? I've done it in reverse too, 50 on the front and 40 on the back.

I'm gonna look for help in the mental game side of things. If I find something that really helps I'll post it here.]]> The Mental Golf Game http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=5 Sun, 27 Aug 2006 17:35:39 -0700 My Brain Hurts http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=4 Why I Play Golf
I didn't get to play golf today. Too much work to do. But I thought I could at least take a minute to collect my thoughts here on why I play golf. My work requires me to live almost constantly in problem solving mode. I do web programming which means I've learned (and am still learning) several programming languages that are used mainly on the Internet by a web server telling it what to send to your browser.

There's always a challenge of some kind or always something that has to be learned. So, there's never a mental break. I've been living like this for several years now too. It's easy to get overwhelmed to the point of mental paralysis. On the one hand, I love the challenge and the creative side of what I do but on the other hand, sometimes I just need a mental break. So, I play golf.

What? Did I hear you question my sanity? You need a mental break so you play golf!? Exactly! Here's why. I used to think that taking a mental break meant to "veg out." To sit and watch television or do something that didn't require you to think. That makes sense doesn't it? That works for most muscles. When you overwork anything you simply stop using it for awhile. You give it a rest. So, I would do that. Problem is, my mind didn't want to follow instructions. I could say to myself, "Stop!" but my brain would keep right on working on the problem at hand. I simply couldn't turn it off.

The Ahaaaaa Moment!


I started noticing that after playing golf there were many times I could sit down to a problem or challenge that had plagued me for days and solve it immediately! Then it hit me. My brain was getting a break from the problem as a result of having to completely focus on golf!

Here's the thing. All my life sports like baseball, football and basketball came naturally to me. I could do the same things with a sort of feel for the sport and get the same results most every time. Golf is the only game I've ever played that doesn't come naturally. I swear I do the same things but continue to get different results. I've always said that if I could just develope a feel for golf I'd be dangerous. But, I might have gone out today and played great only to go out tomorrow full of optimism and fall flat on my face. Thinking I was doing the exact same thing I did today.

When I stand over the ball I am unable to think about anything but that golf shot. Nor should I! My brain is riveted to that moment in time. When the shot happens, I am focused on the results. What did I do to cause that hook? Was the club face closed or did I come around it? Was my swing too inside out? Did I whip the club using too much wrist? I think about these things right up until my next shot. Who doesn't? Then, while I stand over the next shot, the process begins all over again. I attempt to clear my mind and focus on that golf shot. If I hit a good shot, I glory in it! It's like poetry in motion to see a golf ball with a gentle little draw come down and roll 2 or 3 feet from the pin and you know you've got a shot at a pretty sure birdie! What else am I going to think about at that point? I'm gonna get all the goodie out of that I can! I'm gonna look at my golf partners and say, "Give me some 'tater!" (For those of you who don't know, tater is a little fist-to-fist thing.)

After 4 hours of that, my mind is a clean slate. I can come back to a problem or challenge and many times immediately solve it. Golf is a life saver for me in that regard. So the next time your spouse says you need therapy, go to the golf course! It's what the doctor ordered!]]> The Mental Golf Game http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=4 Sat, 12 Aug 2006 08:36:45 -0700 The Golf Gorilla http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=3 The Dreaded Golf Gorilla
Somewhere inside of me is a golf gorilla. I don't summons him into action, he just shows up right at the last second and takes over my swing. He ruins everything. The golf gorilla is polite during my practice swing. That nice easy swing I seem to be able to execute flawlessly anywhere but on the ball! There's no sign of him anywhere. He doesn't even seem to be present until I get almost at the top of my golf swing. I say, almost because that's when he shows up.

He jumps into the scene, takes over my body and doesn't even allow me to finish my backswing. Starts the downswing way too early and makes me swing way to fast and way out of control. Sometimes he causes me to top the golf ball as a result of a wierd little standing up on my toes thing I do in the middle of a brute force swing.

I swear I'm not doing any of this on purpose. It's the golf gorilla, I'm telling you. You gotta believe me.Sometimes he causes me to hit the ball right (I'm a lefty) as a result of coming across the ball. Other times the ball slices off to the left (remember I'm a lefty) because that sucker grips the club so tight my wrists can't release back through so the club face is open. To be such a dumb gorilla, he sure is able to outsmart me and that's something I'm none too proud of.

So, I've decided I need a golf gorilla exterminator.

I've got to set a trap for him or something. He's proven to be a tricky, elusive, rascally dude so I know it's not going to be easy. Here's what I think will be my strategy but I could really use some suggestions:



  • I'm pretty sure golf gorillas are creatures of habit. I'm thinking about sneaking up on him and throwing him off by using my second practice swing on the ball! I usually take 2 or 3 practice swings before I step up to hit the ball. Then I address the golf ball and think whatever my shot thought for that day is for a second or two. Then, and only then do I start my swing. Maybe if I walk right up to the ball and swing I'll catch him off-guard!

  • I'm pretty sure the golf gorilla wants to grab the golf club with a death grip. After all, he knows he's big and strong. He wants to hit the golf ball a mile every time he puts the golf club in his hands! I'm thinking maybe, if I grip the club so that my wrists can easily hinge and unhinge, I'll rob the golf gorilla of his desire to death-grip it and rip it!

  • Another thing I'm pretty sure about is that the golf gorilla is always going for the long shot with the short club. He'll always get more pleasure on a par 5 in going for a 230 yard 2nd shot from the fairway over the water than laying up to the 100 yard marker. After all, the golf gorilla could care less about my score! He just wants to kill the ball. So I was think, maybe I should use a longer club than normal. If I normally hit a 9-iron 140 to 150 yards, maybe I should club up to a 7-iron and hit a three-quarter shot! Even the golf gorilla knows not to try to kill the ball when I'm swinging too much club.



These are just some of my ideas after playing today. I really could use some help in thinking through this.]]> General http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=3 Sat, 5 Aug 2006 11:56:01 -0700 Are You Expecting Too Much? http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=2 Golf Emotions

Control Your Swing? Control Your Temper!



Today I thought to myself, "I think I'll stay home and spend some time with the wife. After all, she's heading out of town tomorrow and I can play golf on another day in the late afternoon while she's gone." Well, I found out that she was not going out of town and that she and my daughter were taking a trip to look at wedding stuff all morning since my daughter is getting married in a few months! Arggg! I lost the chance to play with my normal group!

So, I thought, hmmmm, I'll go out there anyway. They'll put me with someone or I'll see somebody I know that needs a 4th, etc. As soon as I walked in to the pro-shop I saw a guy I had met and played with once before. What I remembered about him was his temper. He would hit a bad shot, which he did quite regularly, and proceed to verily beat himself up about it so loudly and so dramatically that it made me and the rest of our group a little uncomfortable. That day, I tried to be extremely positive. I thought it might be a good example to him since I wasn't hitting a lot of great shots myself. Didn't work.
So, fast forward back to today. He see's me and says, "Hey why don't you play with us?" It was just going to be he and a mutual friend, who is a great guy, and me." Nice little 3-some. I thought to myself, "Hmmm, well maybe he was just having a bad day the last time." "Yeah, sure, I'd love to, thanks!" I said.

I was dead wrong. What I saw was the very same guy that day.

He would duff one and go, "Man!!!!! Where did that come from?! Hit the ball you stupid, idiot!" (Club flies in the air) The very next shot - big stinkin' slice - "Oh crud! You looked up, you stupid...!" ('You looked up' seems to be everyone's diagnosis of the problem when in fact he didn't 'look up', he just does a serious reverse pivot and never comes back to the ball the same way) "I can't believe it!!!" he says. And it went on and on and on and on and on and on! Every stinkin' hole.

Here's My Question:
Why do people go out and play golf once or twice a week and expect to hit great shots most of the time?

Golf is a game of fractions of an inch. My gosh, I'm amazed I can hit the ball well enough to shoot in the upper 80's and low 90's as a weekend golfer! That blows my mind. I'm so excited about that I can't see straight. In fact, we shouldn't be so amazed that the pros shoot in the 60's and 70's as we are that we shoot in the 80's and 90's. After all, they play golf every day. We've all heard stories about how they hit balls until their hands bleed, tape them up and go back out there.

We show up in time to whack a few with our drivers off the range, shoes untied. Then we scurry over to the first hole tying our shoes on the first tee-box. We play one or two games a week like that and still shoot in the 80's or 90's! That's what's incredible given the physics of golf and ball flight. They aught to do stories on us! What's the big deal about Tiger Woods playing great golf? He's supposed to do that.

So, here's the deal. Par for me is bogey golf. Sure I get a little upset when I double or triple but if I make a bogey, I'm golden.

Here's the question: I've experienced the effect attitude has on my golf score. If I'm still steaming over the last bad golf shot (and there will always be a few) while I stand over the next one, the chances are much greater that I'll screw it up too. But, if I'm focused on the golf shot I'm making right now and trying to think clearly and positively, my chances of making a good shot seem much better.

The reason I'm such an authority on this is because a couple of years ago I was that guy. I used to really let it get to me until I realized that I was making everyone around me miserable. I don't play golf to feel bad, instead I play bad golf but I feel good!

What do you think? Can your attitude improve your score?]]> General http://golf-made-easier.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=2 Thu, 3 Aug 2006 09:00:12 -0700