I’ve been struggling with my comeback and with my press onward. I’m spraying the ball all over the place. It’s gotten to the point where I made all my planned rounds optional with range sessions waiting to take their place.
Up until now, even my range sessions were a struggle. I’ve taken a little time the last few days to recover some, with my new fitness regimen beating me down (I love it, but I just need to build up some endurance).
With a little time to kill before heading over to a friend’s house for some July 4th festivities, I decided to hit the range. With the pressure of poor on-course performance removed, and with several days to let my head clear, I had the best range session I’ve had in a long time.
Not every shot was perfect, but many were. And when I hit a bad shot, I followed it up with a correction and a good shot. I was like Tiger Woods on the range. Well, OK, that’s an exaggeration. But I was hitting every shot I wanted to hit, with every club I picked up.
I attribute this to the fact that I had time to let all the negative feelings fade away. I started to think about it some when my friend HappyRock wrote a piece last week about allowing yourself to take a break.
The human mind is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it gets filled with negativity and needs to be flushed. It took me several days. What I need to do is whittle it down to several seconds. I’ve been working hard on trying to play the game one shot at a time, but over the last couple of weeks I’ve really been struggling with that. It gets to the point where you try hard and don’t see results and then start to lose faith.
Learning to keep negative emotions from building up and learning how to get rid of them quickly is one example of what separates great golfers from the rest of us. I like writing posts about technical swing stuff, but now you know why I write a lot about the mental aspects of the game. I’m a head case!
On a different subject:
To all my friends in the United States: Happy Birthday U.S.A!
To all my friends in the U.K.: no hard feelings (it was over 200 years ago)!
To all my friends in the rest of the world: I hope your Wednesday is great!
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I totally agree with you. I had one of those funks(alright maybe a few) and when I took some time off, the next range session always seemed to be better. Of course there were always those crappy range sessions after a hiatus… boy those really are a downer.
You’re right about that, Andy. When you take a break and it still doesn’t work, then there’s a real problem. That’s probably a good time for a lesson. I had the shanks once and put down the clubs for a few weeks. When I picked them back up, it was the same thing. I got on the phone with my pro, got a lesson, and had things back on track after a couple of range sessions.
In that case, “downer” is putting it mildly, at least until I got in to see my pro.
DE,
You have been hitting it hard, and setting a good foundation for achieving your dream. I am sure you felt like you can do more or wish you saw more progress, but don’t forget to give yourself some credit. Think back a year or two ago, and how would you feel about your progress of the last few months. Probably ecstatic?
Keep plugging on your journey.