What’s the hardest thing in golf? While you may ask eight Golfers that question – you may receive eight different answers. Yet, the one answer always in the Top 2 will be … “Moving onto the next shot after a bad shot.”
Hitting a terrible golf shot might be the most frustrating aspect of playing golf – however, it’s something that every Golfer will experience at least once a round. So although you don’t want to have the mindset that you’re expecting to hit a bad golf shot – you shouldn’t be surprised when it does happen.
Yet, as much as you know that you’ll eventually hit a terrible shot – it’s still incredibily frustrating after it happens.
The question though is how do you forget about the bad shot and make your next shot a good one? That’s the question that has launched a 1,000 Golf Psychology books.
The fastest way of improving your mental game is to improve the confidence you have in your golf swing.
There’s no doubt that it’s easier to have the mental side of your game improve once your golf swing starts to improve. Because you can use all the mental strategies thrown at you and still top it off the 1st tee with regularity.
Confidence isn’t something you get by reading a book – confidence is earned golf swing after golf swing as you watch your results slowly improve.
Yes, it is hard to comeback after hitting a disappointing golf shot. It’s a terrible situation when on a 130 yard shot you hit 2 inches behind the golf ball and hopelessly watch as the ball travels only 40 yards into a fairway bunker.
The issue now becomes ‘not just what you’re going to do on your next shot’ – the issue is also ‘what are you going to do on your tee shot to start the next hole’. Because you might have already messed up your current hole – but how are you going to fix the negativity in your head before your next tee shot so you don’t screw up the rest of your round.
The most important thing will be to see if you’re mentally ready for your next tee shot. Will you be calm enough, confident enough, focused enough? Or will you still be agitated over how you screwed up the last hole?
And please don’t think this a malady that’s just reserved for higher handicap Golfers – sure the single digit Player is able to overcome a bad shot more easily, though it still irks the stuffing out of them! Why doesn’t it affect the lower handicap or Professional as much? It goes back to the “C -word” – Confidence. These Players have the confidence to more easily overcome a bad shot because of the success they have seen on the practice area and the golf course. Yet confidence doesn’t completely block out frustration – it just makes it easier to overcome.
Did Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, or Jack Nicklaus need a golf psychology book to get to the highest level? Of course not – they were able to overcome bad shots because they earned the confidence they had in their golf swing. And although you might not ever achieve the level of play or confidence those Golfers achieved – you can learn to more easily overcome bad shots before they create a string of blow-up holes.
In order to do this – you must first earn confidence in your golf swing by improving while using Drills that create a similar pressure that you’ll feel on the golf course. As opposed to thinking you’re improving your golf swing as you beat golf ball after golf ball into the middle of the driving range towards no target in particular.
The number one way to overcome bad shots is through confidence that is earned.
The Monkey thinks they’re going to find the secret in a golf psychology book
The Player earns it by improving their confidence by improving their golf swing
Go Ahead, Be A Player!
Regards,
Marc Solomon
