Those of us in that predicament are left to feed our passion for golf through books, magazines, television, or the internet. In times like these, we tend to try and learn some new technique or magic tip so we can hit the ground running when spring gets here. It’s like the ever-renewed New Year’s Resolution. We study up and vow to shave strokes off our games, come spring.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t usually happen, for a variety of reasons. It is partly because we overload ourselves with information in an attempt to figure out what’s going wrong, and just blindly go out and try a few things. Nothing really works and within a short time, we just slip back into last season’s form.

By the time you finish this post, you’re probably going to be thinking, “he didn’t tell me squat.” It’s true, nothing here is rocket science. But, too often, we fail to improve because we have no plan for success. We just flail around and ultimately fall short.

These steps will help you create a blueprint to improve your game, but I assure you, ALL the work falls on you. There is no magic pill.

Step One: Figure out What You Want from the Game

This step is so simple, it’s almost silly. But it’s the one that many people never consider.

Why do you play the game? For enjoyment? For exercise? Love of competition? To bond with family or friends? Love of gambling? The challenge?

Everyone has some reason(s) that they play golf. Take a moment and think about yours and do me (and you) a favor: write them down. Grab a sheet of paper and create a list of the reasons you play the game. List them all, however trivial, but list them in order of importance.

Step Two: Figure out Why You Want to Improve

Look at the list you created in step one. Those are the reasons why you play the game. Now, think about why you want to improve.

Are you embarrassed about your scores? Are you competitive and you just don’t like losing? Do you want to win more money? Are you trying to become a pro?

Create a second column on your sheet of paper and list the reasons you want to improve next to the reasons why you play the game, again, in priority order. Be completely honest. If your number one reason for wanting to improve is vanity or peer pressure, then you need to understand and acknowledge that.

Part of the reason for doing this is to help you decide if you should even bother going any further. Yes, that’s right, I said maybe you shouldn’t bother going any further. Look back at the reasons you play the game. Do your scores matter in relation to those things?

Maybe you just want to bond with your son and get some exercise and don’t really have any specific reasons for wanting to improve. In that case, why bother? Just go out and have fun.

On the other hand, suppose the only reason you play the game is for love of competition and your only reason for wanting to improve is to win more. That should tell you that if you’re not seriously working on improving your game, then you’re short-changing your own enjoyment of it.

Sometimes, it seems like we humans are wired to do an awful lot of things without spending enough time asking, “why?” It’s hard to change or to plot a course without first asking that question.

Step Three: Figure out What’s Wrong

I’m talking broad terms here. What’s wrong with your game? I don’t want you to figure out what’s wrong with your swing. We’ll get to that. In a perfect world, you keep stats about your play and can look at those, but you can just think back through your last several rounds or just think about your general tendencies.

What costs you strokes? Here are some examples of questions you should be asking yourself:

• Do you hit the ball into trouble a lot? Do you need more control off the tee to avoid that?
• Do you three-putt most of the time?
• Do you struggle with knowing which club to hit? Do you end up short of your target most of the time?
• Do you feel like there are certain shots you just don’t know how to hit?
• Do you have a slice or hook you can’t figure out how to control? Even worse, do you not have any consistent shot one way or the other?
• Do you struggle making solid contact with the ball on full shots? On short game shots? Both?
• Do you have problems being frustrated after bad shots? Do you have anxiety before shots?

Take your sheet of paper and turn it over. List out the things that are wrong with your game. Order by severity of problem with the worst things at the top of the list. Ask yourself why your scores are not where you want them to be. Think back to specific bad rounds or holes and try and figure out what went wrong. Write down every weakness in your game.

Again, don’t try and turn into Butch Harmon. If you had a blow-up hole, don’t write down, “I scored a nine because I’m having trouble releasing the club and am off-plane, which caused me to have a big slice and inconsistent contact.” Instead, the idea that you’re struggling with inconsistent contact and a big slice is good enough for now.

Step Four: Figure Out What to Improve and How to Improve It

Not counting the actual work of improving, this is the most difficult step. And it’s one that you might want to tackle with the help of a pro.

If you’ve gotten this far, then you have a list with reasons why you play the game, reasons why you want to improve, and things that are wrong with your game. These are the things that a pro needs to know to help you to improve. But if you insist on going it alone, you’re still going to need to know those things to formulate a plan.

For now, I’m going to pretend that you’re going to consult with a pro. With the information in hand from the previous three steps, he or she can begin to get a picture of what’s wrong with your game. Maybe your physical capability isn’t bad, but your attitude is what costs you. Maybe you can get back five strokes per round just by spending some time working on your putting.

A pro will be able to look at the list of things that are going wrong and suggest ways to tackle them. Obviously, he or she will need to see you in action to diagnose your technique, but this information will help with formulating a plan. Are you going to benefit from a couple of band-aid fixes and be on your way, or do your goals warrant a completely rebuilt swing? Are most of your problems with course management? Can playing within your own limitations better lead you to better scores immediately?

A good pro will probably try to determine the things I outlined in the first three steps through some casual questions. If you sit down and think about it ahead of time, you won’t be stuck trying to figure all this out while you’re standing on the lesson tee with the meter running. Take your sheet of paper with you and talk about the priorities that you arrived at through this exercise.

After looking at the parts of your game that are failing you, and after looking at your swing in action, the pro should provide you with a plan for improvement, based on what you’re looking to get out of the game. It might be a couple of swing tips and some drills. It might be a longer-term plan that spans a few lessons. It might be some tips on the mental game. But it will definitely target the things standing between you and what you’re trying to get from the game.

If you perform this step on your own, then you need to try and figure out what’s wrong by yourself. That, I can’t easily tell you how to do because everyone is different. Video can be a help, if you know what you’re looking at. Analyzing divots, ball flights, and so on can give you a lot of information.

It can be done, but you need to take your list from step three and then figure out what’s going wrong to cause those things, in a technical sense. Naturally, if your biggest fault in your game is that you three-putt almost all of the time, then your primary improvement plan probably shouldn’t center around fixing your over-the-top move. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t need addressing, it means that it might not be the biggest problem. If you can’t hit a 2-iron well, but you only need to hit it occasionally, then it doesn’t make sense to spend hours on the range trying to hit it better.

Once you have a prioritized list of things to attack, then you need to figure out how to fix them. If you feel like you need to build your swing from the ground-up, then maybe you’ll want to get Jim McLean’s The Eight-Step Swing, or a book about the Stack and Tilt to see where to go next. If your short game is failing you, then maybe Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible is what you need. If you won’t see a pro for help, then one way or another, you need to find the information you need to improve, through books, videos, or some other means.

The bottom line for step four is, you need to have a plan in hand, either from working with a pro, or from doing your own legwork, that gives you specific things to work on to produce better results in your game, and it should be prioritized.

Things that are most critical and that will provide the most benefit should be at the top of the list.  If you don’t prioritize, then you’ll just end up working on things that are easy and might not solve your most pressing issues. Humans like to take the path of least resistance and we don’t want to do that here.

There’s another reason to prioritize. No matter how serious you are about improving your game, unless it’s also your job, you’re not going to find time to address every issue with your game, at least not at first. There just isn’t enough time, and if you have a busy life, even dealing with just the top priorities in golf will take a back seat to the top priorities in life.

Focus on the important things that provide the most benefit to give yourself a realistic chance to see good improvement.

Step Five: Put in the Work

I hope you knew this was coming. It’s rare in the game of golf when improvement comes without work. Sometimes, it’s possible to improve immediately with properly-fitted equipment. Or, maybe a quick tip gives immediate results to get you on track.

Usually, though, improvement comes at a cost of time and effort. If you’ve gotten this far, then I hope you realized that the first four steps were leading here. I told you at the top that there’s no magic pill.

At this point, you should have a plan for improvement. All that is left is to execute it. You identified what’s going wrong, and you came up with a plan to fix those things. So get out there and work.

Set aside time planned for working on your game. Whether it’s an hour per week or an hour per day, it doesn’t matter. Schedule practice like it’s an appointment just like any other. Try to keep from getting distracted by other things that tend to draw your attention (yes, I know it would be so much more fun to be out on the course than stuck at the practice green).

Organize your time well. You have your list of things you need to do, so allot the time to address the things on your list in order of priority. Make your practice time count. You should always be practicing with purpose, or else you’re just out there hitting balls.

And don’t forget to enjoy yourself. Remember the old saying, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?” Well, don’t lose out on the fun of playing because you’ve now blocked in all your free time to practice. Look at your list from step one. Don’t forget why you’re playing golf in the first place. You need to commit to improve, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of enjoyment of the game.

It’s Not Just a Golf Thing

If it hasn’t hit you yet, these steps aren’t something that are specific to golf. They can apply to many different things. Having documented goals and a plan for achieving them is important for success.

If you boil down these five steps, it’s nothing but:

1. Figure out why you like to do something
2. Figure out why you want to do it better
3. Figure out why you don’t do it as well as you like
4. Come up with a plan to do it better
5. Execute the plan

You could come up with a hundred different things that you could improve in your life by performing steps like these to document your goals and to devise and implement a plan for improvement.

I really wish I could magically make us all better golfers, but I can’t. We can’t usually get magically better at anything. Improvement is greatly assisted by defining goals and creating a plan.

When we skip everything else and just arrive at step five, it’s not conducive to success because if you don’t know why you’re trying to improve, what you need to improve, and how to improve it, then what, exactly, are you going to accomplish?

If you’re sitting around, snowed-in like I am, then you probably have time on your hands. If you’re serious about wanting to improve, then give it a try. What do you have to lose?

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Five Steps to Improving Your Golf Game This Year

Hopefully you see where I’m going with this.

Looking at the poll currently in my sidebar, a vast majority of respondents want to make significant improvement in their golf games this season.  That’s a pretty lofty goal, but it’s certainly achievable for just about everyone.  What each of us considers to be significant improvement is certainly a subjective measure, but how do we know when we’ve been meeting our goals?

What if the goal was weight loss? Or, what if it is to learn oil painting? Or, what if the goal is to visit all 50 states in the U.S.?

Fortunately, it’s usually fairly easy to recognize when a goal has been met.  If the goal is to lose 50 pounds, when the scale says that 50 pounds are gone, the goal has obviously been met.  On the flip side, it’s sometimes difficult to figure out why goals haven’t been met or if we’re even on track to meet them anymore.

That’s where keeping a journal comes in. It can help us look back over time and figure out why the scale isn’t changing or why our golf handicaps are stagnant or why our painting looks like someone just spilled paint on the floor.

One of the things humans do well is, we delude ourselves into thinking that the status quo is fine or that we are making progress when we’re really not.  We also tend to have selective memory and to take the path of least resistance.

This is something that I’ve discussed extensively over the years, but why do people tend to spend most of their time at the driving range instead of around the practice green when we all know that the practice green is where we’re going to have the biggest effect on score?  Why do people stand at the driving range hitting driver after driver after driver, when they know they’re not hitting any greens in regulation and they’re three-putting most greens?

Keeping a journal isn’t going to fix that, but having a plan will.  And keeping a journal will help you stay on plan and help you evaluate your progress as time goes on.

In a lot of ways, Life in the Rough is a journal for me.  I try to do semi-regular progress updates to keep track of where my game is going.  I also keep track of statistics, which is another form of journal.

A while back, I felt the need to keep track of my practice and play in a more immediate, personal way.  I don’t write progress update posts for every event that happens in my golfing life so details are forgotten and lost over time.  I keep statistics for many of the rounds that I play, but the numbers don’t really reflect what was going on that day. Things like amount of confidence or swing tendencies can be lost in the numbers.

Believe it or not, I’ve found that despite the fact that we live in the age of computers, that keeping a journal with old fashioned pen and paper works best for me.

Logically, it wouldn’t seem like that should be the case.  After all, with a computer journal, if you can type reasonably well, you can put down a lot of information in a shorter amount of time.  It can be organized in a myriad of ways. It’s easy to be able to search through the data.  You can e-mail it, edit it from many locations, or share it on a website.

However, I’ve found that these modern conveniences don’t really affect or enhance the biggest benefits of keeping a paper journal.  Based on my experience for the last 7 1/2 months, here are the benefits I see with keeping a paper journal as well as reasons why doing it electronically doesn’t really add anything compelling enough to make me want to computerize it.

• It’s available anywhere. I can pick it up and take it with me to the driving range or read/write in bed right before going to sleep. I could achieve the same thing with my iPhone, but typing out a bunch is kind of time consuming and cumbersome. I don’t need to boot up my PC or laptop, I can just immediately chronicle my practice and play whenever I’m inspired to do so.
• It’s personal. The journal is for me, not for sharing online with all of you. It’s not that I mind telling you what’s in there, but I can feel free to whine and complain or brag or express other emotions that I might not want to share with the world.
• Writing by hand tends to lend itself to more careful thought and consideration. I can certainly sit down with my laptop and perform a brain dump relatively quickly. I can type out every little detail that comes to mind however unimportant it might be. Writing my journal by hand, however, is a slower process.  It forces me to sit there and reflect on what I’m trying to capture. Not only does it force me to limit it to what’s important, but the deliberate reflection helps me learn from what happened at the range or practice green, so that I can adapt my plans for the future. It helps me think about what’s going wrong right then and there instead of having to worry about it down the road when I’ve gotten frustrated enough.
• I like leafing through and scanning old entries.  Every so often, I pick up the journal and flip through it, trying to see how my swing has progressed. It’s much more pleasurable to do that than to sit at my computer and try and read back through a file of huge brain dumps.
• Searching is overrated. We all know that Google has made information more readily available to the world.  It’s natural to expect that having a journal that is searchable would be a big benefit, too.  However, I’ve found that I just don’t want to use it that way. I don’t have trouble with my driver and then wish I could type “driver problem” into my journal and get a list of every time I had driver trouble so that I can see the trends and how I fixed it.  Even as I’m re-reading this paragraph, I can’t help thinking that would be useful. Believe me when I tell you, I can’t explain why, but it’s just not.  In general, it seems like searching is beneficial when I want to boil down another person’s information.  With my own information, the personal connection is enough.  Maybe it’s because my journal is relatively small, so it’s easy to find things. Even I use the search box on Life in the Rough because there’s too much information to sift through to find something.  With my journal, though, I don’t miss it one bit.

Don’t get me wrong. Having an electronic journal is better than having none.  If you can’t bring yourself to put pen to paper, I understand.  The most important thing is to have some kind of plan and to use a journal of some kind to make sure you’re sticking to it and to help you understand what’s going wrong so that you can refine your plan.

I recommend trying a paper journal. I think you’ll find it has the same strengths that I outlined above and that the weaknesses are no big deal.  If you don’t like it, you can always go electronic without much hassle.  Whichever way you go, give it a try.  It will help you keep your golf improvement plan on track.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Keeping a Practice Journal

The key for me is switching my goals around a little. Sure, my long term goals the same. But whereas in the summer time, one goal might be to stop blocking the ball to the right, in the winter I need to shift to something more immediate.

It’s so easy to lose touch with the here and now while staying focused on the long term. Even though logically, the things I do over the winter are meant to help me in the summer, it’s hard to stay focused on that because the summer is so far away and the passion for golf is overshadowed by the tedium of working out.

So, I need to set some winter goals that align with my summer goals, but serve their own purpose. For instance, losing weight, gaining strength and flexibility, and gaining cardiovascular endurance become the goals themselves.

Now, that’s what I’m doing. Your goals are probably different. However, the fact that you’ve scoured the web for golf blogs and that you somehow ended up here tells me that more than likely, you want to improve your own game.

I’m interested in how you go through the winter (if you live in a place with a winter climate). Do you put the clubs aside for months then break them out in the spring? Do you play all year, even in the bitter cold? Do you put aside the clubs and focus on diet and exercise like I’m trying to do?

I was going to add some suggestions of how to use winter down time to improve your golf game, until I remembered that I already did that. Check it out for some suggestions to help you hit the ground running when spring arrives.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Fighting the Winter Doldrums

What he was telling me was that in a day or a week or a month, no matter how good our “plan” is, it’s going to be outdated. Things change. We learn new information. We change our goals. But it’s the act of planning that prepares us to deal with those things. As we go through the planning process, it makes us aware of alternatives. It helps us discover pitfalls. It helps us refine our goals. In the end, we’re left with the actual plan, but more importantly, we’re ready to refine it when things change.

As I’ve discussed here and there, without goals, we’re just wandering through life. We need goals to help guide us. They must be clearly defined, and it’s of benefit to put deadlines on them.

Once we decide upon a goal, it’s all talk until we start taking action toward reaching it. At first we might just do some things that we think puts us closer to that goal. But if we really want to reach our goals, we need to have clearly defined plans.

My overall goal is to become a golf pro. To achieve that, I have goals to increase my fitness, lose weight, and work on my game. My to-do list is filled with all the things I intend to achieve in the short and long term.

But how do I go about those things? How do I go about getting fit? How do I improve my golf game? Certainly, I can go to the gym or to the driving range. But what do I work on? What did I work on last time?

To make sure I’m always headed in the right direction, I developed plans. I created a fitness plan, a golf plan, and will be creating a diet plan shortly. With these plans, I’m now armed with something that will help me constantly move forward toward my goals.

There are several benefits to creating well-defined plans that direct you toward your own well-defined goals.

• Most obviously, it gives you something to do. If you’re sitting in front of the TV, thinking “what can I do to work toward my goal?” then you’re probably not taking any action. With a good plan, you know exactly what to expect of yourself that day. Sometimes when we don’t have a clear plan, it creates paralysis (don’t worry, not literally) that keeps us from taking any action at all.
• It helps take away “outs”. When we have poorly defined goals or plans, we leave ourselves a loophole. When we make things hard for ourselves, we’re more likely to take the path of least resistance. Especially if there’s a conflict. If you wake up and can’t decide whether to go to the gym or to the practice range, then chances are you’ll mull it over until it’s too late and do something else instead. If you have a plan that tells you that today is a gym day, then the decision is made.
• Plans help you to track progress. If you know exactly what you should be doing every day, then you can easily track it. I’m creating an activity log that aligns with my main plans. Each day, for each plan, I’ll note whether I followed my plan or whether I didn’t.
• Plans help to make sure that we use our time most efficiently. We can see where we have gaps and can fit things in. Plus we don’t lose time trying to figure out what to do. We just do it.

That kind of brings us full circle. Eventually, the plan will be useless (or at least, its usefulness will diminish). For instance, it’s just a hunch, but I’m guessing my golf practice plan will be somewhat different in the dead of winter. Or, maybe I’ll discover that my fitness plan totally ignores a part of my body. Or there’s always the possibility that I’ve planned too much and my expectations on myself are unrealistic on a certain day. In fact, I’ve already discovered that my golf plan didn’t include bunker practice, and my fitness plan is missing a few of my favorite exercises.

That’s where the planning comes in handy. I’ve created well-defined plans and have considered pitfalls and alternatives. I’ve had to make decisions about what’s important and what’s not. I’ve had to decide how much time I have to spend.

With that preparation, I’m prepared to make intelligent revisions to my plans. In the long run, that will lead to better plans that are more likely to be complete and realistic and thus will help reach goals better.

This is a topic that’s not really specific to golf. It’s something that’s applicable for life in general where having a well defined goal is beneficial. Have a look at my plans and at my activity log to get an idea of how you might apply the principles to your own goals. It’s kind of amazing how much well-defined goals and plans affect what I’m doing in a positive way. Instead of just floating along doing whatever suits my fancy that day, I’m more focused than ever. And it doesn’t feel like a burden because these plans are just that: plans. Not laws.

Feel free to suggest ways where I can improve, whether it’s in the planning process or within the plans themselves. Also feel free to take my plans and modify them for your own use.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Plans are Useless but Planning is Invaluable

The stock answer is that I’m working on my fitness, weight loss, and practicing the various aspects of the game. But that’s not enough. If I lose all the weight I want to lose, get reasonably fit, and play to scratch, I’m still not going to be good enough.

My basic premise in what separates the best from the rest is that mental game is the biggest factor once a player gets to a certain point. I listed out a bunch of aspects of the mental game that I feel are factors. The question is, what am I doing to develop those things?

Right now, this blog is my biggest vessel for mental development. It sounds strange, but when you find a way to be totally honest with yourself and expose your deepest, darkest, inner flaws in front of the world, it’s an experience that starts to change you.

One of the biggest issues that many people, including myself, suffer from, is a lack of honesty with oneself regarding where we stand, whether it’s golf or anything else. It’s that lack of honesty that keeps us in the same ruts, doing the same things over and over. We can’t know how to improve our lives if our mental defense mechanisms hide our problems from us.

This blog lets me air out all my problems so that they’re right there in black and white, in my face. Then, I must deal with them if I want to achieve my goals.

I also have the benefit of people in my life who are very supportive, but don’t let me cop out. They’re family, friends, and co-workers. They’re also total strangers here whose input I value greatly. They help me to see things that I don’t (or won’t) see for myself.

But that’s only half the issue. Knowing what’s wrong is important, but having a specific plan to reach goals is just as important. A while back, I lamented that I lack discipline. That’s great, but if I don’t do anything about it, then I’ve accomplished nothing toward reaching my goals.

With all that in mind, here are some problem areas for me, and specific steps I’m performing to fix them.

• Discipline. As I said, this is a sore spot. In virtually every aspect of fitness, proper diet, and golf, I know what to do. I know how to get the job done. Working on discipline is the easiest, because it comes down to a simple choice. Am I going to eat fast food tonight? Am I going to be too lazy to line up an aim club at the driving range? Am I going to give up after a bad hole and call it a practice round? With each and every choice I make, I am striving to make what I feel are the best choices for achieving my goals. I know I don’t have all the answers, but too often I do and still make poor choices.
• Fear. Sometimes I fear failure. Also, while I’m not afraid to lose, sometimes I’m afraid of being a loser (if that makes sense). To deal with fear, I’m trying to evaluate everything that happens with a “so what?” attitude. Nothing I’m doing will ultimately have a negative effect on my life. So what if I don’t win a tournament, or play a bad round, or have atrocious stats, or top the ball in front of a bunch of strangers? In the end, these individual events won’t define success or failure for me. Part of the reason I stopped keeping stats as regularly was out of embarrassment because I felt like they were way worse than they should be. Why should that worry me? The problem is that the stats are where they should be. But I was worried about people’s perception of me. Why? I don’t know, but I’m getting over that.
• Pressure. In some aspects of my life, I deal with pressure well. At work, when there’s a crunch, I dig inside myself and excel. On the golf course, I’m not so good in that area, especially since I’ve never really faced any real pressure. What I need to do to deal with the pressure is break down each and every shot into a single, atomic action. It’s one shot. I need to form a plan, go through my routine, absolutely commit to the plan, and execute. I can’t worry about the big picture.

In addition to addressing those specific problems, there are some things I’m doing to improve every area of my life.

• Evaluate every action. I try to evaluate each and every thing I do to determine if I’m doing what I can to meet my goals. Whether it’s a decision to watch TV, a decision to eat something, a decision to stay up late, a decision to read a book, a decision to take a nap, I ask myself “how does this fit in with my goals?” If it doesn’t or if I feel a little twinge of guilt, I then have to decide, “is it worth it?” Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. The point isn’t to make sure every single detail of your life fits in with your goals, the point is to be sure that you’re making a conscious decision about every detail in your life.
• Do something each day. One of my main short-term goals is to do something every single day to further my overall goals. That doesn’t have to mean a round of golf or a driving range session. It can mean reading a book or doing some stretching, or making good eating choices or uncovering another truth about myself.
• Write a blog post each day. I really make an effort to make a post every day. I’ve probably missed 4 or 5 days in the last couple of months. On the surface, you might think, “how does that really help?” Well, in two ways. First, when I write technical articles, I go through a process where I lay out what I know. Then I do research to fill in the blanks and to fact-check myself. This is an amazing source of learning for me. While I might have 80 or 90% of an article coming out of my brain, there are still little details that I’ve forgotten or never knew in the first place. That fills in the gaps for me. Secondly, writing these posts is where I discover probably half of the shortcomings I’ve found out about myself. When I write an article saying that you should do this or that, sometimes I’ll think, “wait a second…” and realize that I need to improve in that area.
• Put time frames on goals wherever possible. HappyRock pointed out to me that when we don’t put time frames on goals, we give ourselves an out. When we give ourselves an out, we generally will take advantage of it and don’t attend to those goals in a timely fashion. Before we know it, years have passed and we’re still not able to reach specific goals.
• Gain knowledge. Practice on the range only takes a person so far. I feel that I need to absorb all the golf knowledge I can get my hands on. This includes reading books, talking to people, experimentation. I need to understand everything there is to understand about the game. I also need to absorb information about fitness, diet, etc.
• Develop confidence. My confidence is generally good when I’m in a comfort zone. Most people can say the same. The problem comes when I’m not hitting the ball well or when I’m faced with some adversity. When I get out of my comfort zone, I lose confidence and it affects what I’m trying accomplish. To gain more confidence, I need to make sure I’m properly prepared for the task at hand. If I never practice hitting a ball from a plugged lie in a bunker, how can I expect to be confident as I prepare for the shot on the course? Dealing with the items mentioned above (fear, pressure, discipline) will also help breed confidence.

Finally, in addition to those more general changes, I’m going to achieve the following specific goals in the time frames listed.

• Update my to-do list to include due dates where applicable. (June 18, 2007)
• Develop a detailed fitness plan. (July 1, 2007)
• Develop a detailed diet plan. (July 1, 2007)
• Develop a detailed practice plan. (July 1, 2007)
• On the first tee of every round, declare whether the round is going to be practice or for a score, then stick to it. This includes regular stat-keeping again. (Immediate)

That’s pretty much it. Once again, I’m lain bare before you. That’s OK, though. It’s what I need to do.

Maybe you can apply some of these things to your own goals and we can attack them at the same time.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Talk is Cheap: Achieving Goals

Club Pro

These guys and gals run the clubs. They help to make our golf lives fun. They manage the club, give instruction, organize outings and all the other stuff associated with keeping a course running. The PGA of America has a good deal of information about becoming a PGA professional.

One of the first steps to becoming a PGA professional is taking the Playing Ability Test. This is a playing test that ensures that you have the minimum amount of required golf ability and aptitude. It’s a 36-hole test where the target score is double the course rating, plus 15. So, if the course rating is 70, then your 36-hole target score is 70 * 2 + 15 = 155, or about 77 on each round (for a course rating of 70). Obviously, this will vary across different courses.

So, now that the PAT is out of the way, then what? The next step is a registered apprenticeship and the PGA Professional Golf Management(PGM) program. This is a 4 1/2 year program that teaches the skills required to be a PGA professional. There are many golf programs offered in colleges and specialized academies that offer the PGM program as a curriculum, so it’s possible to satisfy that requirement while at college, as opposed to while on the job as an apprentice. Once you become an apprentice, you have 8 years in which to pass a series of checkpoints, graduate from the PGM program and be elected to membership.

Teaching Pro

There’s not much of a difference between a club pro (or a head/assistant golf professional, in PGA terminology). Mainly, it’s an issue of which way you steer your career. The requirements to achieve that status are primarily the same. Your avenues of opportunity kind of open up a bit thought because many times, instruction occurs at golf schools, retail outlets, and other places away from the traditional golf club.

Touring Pro

That leaves my favorite. These are the people who make careers out of tournament play. To me, this is the top rung on the ladder that is my quest. To many people, when they hear “tour pro”, it means the men and women they see on TV every weekend. While they are certainly tour pros, the PGA Tour isn’t the only outlet for tournament golf.  There are literally dozens of professional golf tours across the U.S. and world. You’ve probably never heard of most of them, but they’re out there.

There are usually two ways to join most of the tours. Many, especially the smaller ones, allow you to simply buy your way in. If I get my foot in the door as a teaching pro or club pro, and feel like I have enough game to pursue tournament play, then these small, regional tours will be a good way to test the waters. The schedules are shorter, the events are spaced a little further apart, and it would allow me to keep my primary job (assuming my employer is ok with me taking time off to play competitively).

The other method of getting on tour is to play your way in. This is more prevalent on the larger tours like the PGA Tour or the Nationwide Tour. We’ve all heard of the dreaded Q-School, where players either get a chance to realize their dreams or have them crushed. The top 30 finishers at Q-School get PGA Tour cards, and next 50 players qualify to play on the Nationwide Tour.

North of the border and kind of along the lines of the Nationwide Tour, there’s the Canadian Tour which has produced several PGA Tour stars like Mike Weir and Chris DiMarco, among others. The Canadian Tour also employs a Q-School qualifying tournament for membership.

After that there are literally dozens of regional tours like the Gateway Tour, the NGA Hooters Tour, The Adams Golf Pro Tour Series, and the U.S. Pro Golf Tour.

———–

So that pretty much covers it. These three paths are the ones that I’m targeting as my goal. Right now, all the things I’m doing to achieve my goal align well with all three of these paths. Once I get further along, I’ll need to refine my strategy to help me move in the direction I want to go. But that’s a ways off. I still have a lot of work to do. See you at the range.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Becoming a Pro

My tag line says it all: “My quest to become a golf pro”. But what does that mean? I said yesterday that goals should be specific and that’s about as broad as it gets. Have no fear. My goals are very specific, but I just haven’t done a good job relating them to all of you.

Some people have probably misconstrued that to mean that I believe that I’m headed to the PGA Tour after a little practice and a couple of competitive rounds. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I look at my ultimate goal like a ladder. I’ll begin climbing and will keep climbing until I determine that I can’t climb any further. For me, the bottom rung of that ladder is to become a teaching pro or a club pro. That is the minimum achievement that I will accept as a successful realization of my goal. I think teaching golf will be lots of fun. And it will open the opportunity for me to spend more time immersed in the game. I’ll be able to play in competitions locally or regionally. I’ll be able to do the things necessary to try to climb more rungs on the ladder. I’m aware of what I need to do to reach that level (that will make a good post for tomorrow), and I have complete confidence that I can meet that part of my goal.

But I won’t stop there. After that, I’d like to consider playing competitively. That brings up the possibility of being a tour pro. Does that mean PGA Tour? Not necessarily. There are tons of tours across the U.S. and in the world. Some just require a financial buy-in and some require players to play their way in. But there are many outlets for competitive golfers to play.

If I ever get to that point, I’ll evaluate the situation and make a decision on the next step at that time. Since I’m on a ladder here, I only want to climb one rung at a time.

I’m getting the feeling that there are those who look at me and think that I’m just naive and don’t know what it takes. Believe me, I do. I may not have the physical skill (I think I do…but weight loss is key). And even if I do, I’m flirting with the possibility of financial hardship or even ruin if I get my foot in the door and find that I’m not good enough to make any money.

But I won’t go to my grave wondering if I had what it takes.

That brings up the question: what does it take? It seems like such a huge leap between a run of the mill scratch golfer and a player on the PGA Tour. I submit to you that the difference between a scratch player and a tour player is mainly mental and also a matter of dedication. A scratch player has the physical ability and consistency to play every shot in the book. From there, it’s a matter of further refining skills through serious dedication. Not a couple of range sessions each week. I mean serious dedication. A willingness to spend hour upon hour exercising, reading, learning, practicing, refining, playing and then doing it all over again the next day. That’s dedication.

The other component is mental. There has to be a mental toughness, an ability to handle pressure, a drive to compete. You have to be able to take the plunge with confidence in your ability. You can’t succumb to the fear of failure. You can’t crack under pressure. You can’t let your focus or determination waiver for even a moment.

You could point out thousands upon thousands of people who have tried and failed over the years. And I don’t mean to trivialize their own stories. I’m not saying that they failed because they weren’t dedicated or skilled. Sometimes luck is a factor. Sometimes you need a lucky break to get over the hump and a lot of people just never get one.

Do I have what it takes? I don’t know. I’m a long, long way from even being a scratch player. But I promise you: I’m going to find out.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Working Toward Goals – Part II

Do a little self-reflecting with me here. Do you have goals of your own? If not, why? Is there nothing in life you want to achieve? Ok, so let’s say you do. And let’s say that maybe you aim high with your goals and dreams, so it’s going to take work (maybe a lot) to achieve them. Well, what are you doing to achieve them?

These questions aren’t necessarily easy to answer. But once you set goals, you have no hope of reaching them without a clear understanding of what they are, and a clear plan of how you’re going to reach them.

The goal-setting part is a little easier. Figure out something you want to achieve. Don’t just make it nebulous. Like, “I want to lose weight.” That leaves too many questions. How much weight? In what time frame? Make your goals as specific as you can.

Next comes the harder part: figuring out what we need to do to achieve our goals. Unfortunately, this is obviously specific to the individual goal, so I can’t give you a magic pill answer. What I can tell you is, learn as much as you can about whatever you’re trying to achieve. Read books, search the internet, talk to people who have done what you’re trying to do. Often times, we even have to blaze our own trails.

That only leaves us with the execution of the plan. You might think that this is the hardest part. But if you have well-defined goals and a well-defined, realistic plan, execution is easy. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be hard work and set backs. But you’ll be marching toward your goals full steam ahead. Don’t be afraid to periodically review your goals and plan and refine as necessary.

I recently had a conversation with someone about goals that resulted in both of us agreeing that each day, if we consciously take at least one action toward reaching our goals, then we’re doing ok. I would like to further refine that to say that if each day is a net positive, we’re doing even better. Depending on your individual goals, maybe you take a small step back in one area, but make up for it with big positive movement in another area. I call that a positive day.

That brings us to my specific goals. The encouragement I’ve gotten from family, friends, co-workers, and strangers has been very positive. At the same time, I can feel people’s unspoken (maybe even subconscious) reactions ranging from genuine support to “who does he think he is?” to “is he nuts?” I’ve kind of laid out what I’m trying to accomplish on the About Me page, but I think it needs some more clarification and I think I’ll do that in a post tomorrow.

Does that mean that I feel the need to justify my journey to anyone else? No, not really. The mere act of talking/writing about it does nothing but make my plan and my path more clear, though.

What have you done today to reach your own goals?

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Working Toward Goals