Your Golf Attitude (Part 3)

Play within your own limitations.

One appreciates that a lot of the fun in the game for the club player lies in having a go, but surely the score counts too? If it does, a little more reality about one’s own ability, and a little more assessment of the percentages, can work wonders. This does not presuppose a defensive attitude. By all means attack and have a go when there’s a reasonable chance of success. But, when the thing is obviously impossible, accept your mistake and play to minimize its effect.

Playing the percentages is not something you do only on recovery strokes. Innumerable times club golfers are faced with situations where some strategical thought, allied to common-sense assessment of their own capabilities, must result in an iron from the tee, or a sand-wedge instead of a four-iron from a fairway bunker, or a four-wood instead of a two-wood from the fairway. It might hurt your pride to accept the fact you have limitations, but it will rarely hurt your score.

Try your utmost on every shot.

Easy to say, difficult to do. Yet this is one of the greatest factors in success or failure at golf. How many times have good players lost to poorer players simply because they didn’t give maximum effort?

It is, of course, very easy to try on every shot on the first hole, and probably on the second and third holes, too. But what about the fifteenth and sixteenth holes, especially if things haven’t been going well? There, often, is the acid test.

So, to get the maximum pleasure from your golf, try your hardest on every shot. This doesn’t mean adopting the characteristics of a man contending for the Open, and taking 10 minutes to crawl around inspecting every blade of grass between you and the hole. It means above all concentrating on golf when you’re playing golf, and conditioning yourself to the shot every time as you approach the ball. From there on, it is a question of thinking properly: forgetting the last shot, however it resulted, disregarding those to come, and focusing your attention exclusively on the shot at hand.

Unfortunately, there is no doubt that if you are going to try to play the best golf of which you are capable, it is necessary to devote reasonable time and thought to each stroke, just as it is necessary to complete each hole.

What I am really suggesting is a maximum effort, and in this respect I would advise at least half-a-dozen warm-up shots and some putts before playing. The middle-handicapper is always in a hurry. He rushes to the club, into the locker-room, and out onto the course not having touched a club since the previous weekend. He then rushes into an appalling start, which sets the standard and the tempo for the rest of the round. No wonder his handicap stays high!

Click on Your Golf Attitude Part 1 or Your Golf Attitude Part 2 if you would like to read the rest of this great golf article

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Golf Tips, Instructions, Mental Game, beginners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.