To be successful in my journey, I need to be able to do more than hit a driver 300 yards or be a decent lag putter. I need to mentally groom myself for success. That includes every facet of my life.
Recently, I was talking to my friend, The Happy Rock about goals. He remarked that my to-do list should really have some time frames attached. Goals without target dates can be dangerous because they leave us an out. We tend to put things off and not maximize our time because we don’t have deadlines staring us in the face. Pretty soon time passes and we’re still at square one.
I’ve said in the past that I’m not putting a deadline on my overall goals, but there’s no reason that I can’t come up with some target dates for the individual steps.
I thought about it for a while and started to think about the things I’m doing to accomplish my goals and I came to the conclusion that I have a discipline problem.
It’s not that I’m not putting effort in to meet my goals. I’m doing that. Rarely a day goes by where I’m not hitting range balls or exercising or trying to eat right or stretching or reading. The problem is that I’m going about those things in an undisciplined manner.
Here’s an example: Wednesday I took a vacation day and headed out to the course around 10:30 to play nine before running some errands. My plan was to play a serious round to finally get some scores in, so you guys don’t think I’m messing around here. Well, on the first hole I had a terrible tee shot. My second shot was perfectly executed, but poorly planned and left me in some hideous rough. After hacking out of that and finally getting on the green, a three putt left me with a terrible score. As each successive shot piled up, I started to get more and more lax in my effort.
At that point, I thought, “well, my score is blown so I’ll just practice.” That was a horrendous display of quitting if I ever saw one. What am I going to do when I hit a bad shot under pressure? Withdraw? Yet, here I am training my mind that if I start to blow it, I’ll just call it a practice round. That stops now. Planned practice rounds are fine, but there’s no excuse for what I did. It’s not even an issue of keeping it fun. I’m never at risk of not having fun on the course, no matter how bad I’m playing.
Another example: since I’ve reworked my fitness routine, I’ve been very enthused about it. Granted, I’d like to make it more of a rigid schedule, but I’m OK with fitting it in between range time and rounds, so it’s not like I’m not exercising. I have a series of exercises that I’ve gathered from various sources. I use things like dumbbells, a medicine ball, an exercise ball, a foam roller, etc. I’m targeting my weak spots and am really starting to feel good.
The problem comes as I start to do some of the exercises. I find that when an exercise is difficult, I start to think, “I’ll work up to that” and just breeze through with hardly any effort. Or with other ones, I start to do it and I think “Man, that feels great!” and breeze through it so I can move on. One time, I had done that and caught myself: I only did three reps. Three. Essentially I accomplished nothing.
My practice is another problem. Especially when I’m hitting the ball well. I catch myself starting to forget about keeping a strict routine and going through the formalities like using an aim club and and taking enough time to visualize and think about the next shot. What’s happening is that I’m making great strides on the range, but I’m not building the mental confidence to do it on the golf course. I’m not correctly grooving techniques that should become automatic on the course. Sometimes I catch myself not doing the things I share here with you. I get angry with myself because I feel like here I am sitting here telling you that certain things are good practices and I catch myself not doing them.
Fortunately, half the battle is identifying the problem. How am I going to fix it? Basically, if I’m totally honest with myself, I know what I’m doing wrong. It took some guidance from a friend and some real thought, but I think I’ve woken myself up.
I’m going to make it a point to bring more discipline to my life in the following ways:
- If I’m playing a round to score, then I’m going to give the proper attention to every single shot, whether I’m one-under or 20-over. No more slouching, and no more quitting on a shot or on a round.
- When I exercise, I’m going to assign a number of sets/reps or a time to every exercise and I’m going to perform it to completion, every time. No more short cuts.
- When I practice, I’m going to be more careful that I’m accomplishing what I need to accomplish to take my range-game out to the course. I’ll be certain that I’m using an aim club, going through a proper routine, visualizing shots correctly, and the like.
- In general, I’m going to try to stop cutting corners and taking the easy path in life when that’s not going to give me the most benefit.
In reality, I could probably continue what I’m doing and improve a great deal. I’d get back to where I was and then some. But at some point, I’ll start hitting a wall. As you compare golfers of higher and higher skill, they are separated less and less by physical abilities and skills as they are by mental discipline and proper preparation. If I ever want to get anywhere, I must improve in these areas.
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I’m guilty of hitting a bad shot and calling it a practice round too, as I’m sure everyone has. If you want to complete your rounds for stats purposes, play for money. Your opponents won’t let you quit – especially when your playing poorly. It does wonders for your game. I think most people who play for money play worse when nothing is on the line. If you don’t have folks to play for money, put something else on the line. For each shot you shoot over XX, you must do XX more reps during your workout, or XX more shots on the range. Every 3-putt will mean XX minutes on the putting green. You can set a system whereby each round determines how you practice.
Have fun with it,
-G
That is a pretty interesting idea Greg. Let you scoring rounds dictate what you need to practice. In a betting format, it could be pretty fun.
Interesting take, Greg. It reminds me of the Lee Trevino quote: “Pressure is playing for ten dollars when you don’t have a dime in your pocket.”
When something is on the line, be it money or some other kind of negative repercussions, I can see where it would build the proper frame of mind for dealing with pressure and everything else the course can throw at us.
It looks like you finally wrote something that I can’t relate to! I do occasionally play 9-hole practice rounds, but when I play 18 I follow the rules, count every stoke, and post the score, regardless of how ridiculous my game might be that day.
The way I see it, posting every score is what allows me to see my progress. Over the last few years, I’ve posted a number of scores over 100. And I can tell you that so far this season, even my worst rounds have stayed in double digits. Now that’s progress!
I went through a period last season where my good rounds were the best golf I’d ever played, but my bad rounds were just as bad as they’d always been. I made a decision to play “better bad golf.” In other words, to try to hold it together on days when my swing was nowhere to be found. It turns out that this decision has made golf a lot more fun. It gives me something to shoot for when I find myself 10 over through 6 and want to throw in the towel.
Sounds like you have a good approach, Dave.
I think part of my problem is that I’m coming from a handicap of 10 or 11 (that was falling). A couple of years injured and that’s out the window. But psychologically, I think my brain is just subconsciously foregoing all those good habits thinking that I can worry about it when I get back to where I was.
It’s like deep down I think that as long as I serve my time, I’ll come out a free man, then I can *really* get started.
Unfortunately that’s b.s. and I needed to call myself on it. And clearly it’s not just on the course where I’m finding these problems.