30 minute blackout

The Mental Side of Things
#1

Great concept from Decade Foundations. The idea is the mistakes you make are likely COMPOUND MISTAKES.

IE… if you feel like you blew up in a round, it’s very likely that you lost control of your emotions and went on tilt for a 2-4 hole stretch. I think this is a big reason some of your best rounds just feel uneventful. It’s not that something special happened and you went on a birdie tear, you likely just avoided any compound mistakes.

@jon mentions that golf shots are independent. You are definitely going to hit some bad ones. Just don’t let that influence your next shot!

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#2

Great concept, and one that I can certainly identify with (and pretty much any other golfer).

The hardest thing to do is to think clearly and rationally when you are having a difficult part of your round. You should never expect perfection, but working on your “mental scorecard” in those situations yields real results.

That’s why it’s always best to look back on your round and think about these kinds of mistakes you made. Heck, I made a couple of them in my round this morning when my mind was moving a little too quickly and I didn’t pick the best target or commit to my shot as best as I could.

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#3

Chasing Scratch talked about “a line on the scorecard” where you reset your round and expectations… I’ve been thinking about a post called “Sunk Cost” discussing the fact that regardless of where your ball is and how many strokes you’ve hit, you still need to get home as efficiently as possible.

It’s way to easy to blow up a round with back to back bad shots… the worst possible thing you can do at that point is “take a risk” and try to salvage the hole… ultimately a good score comes from play 18 holes as best as possible after each shot. One hero shot isn’t going to save your round.

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#4

It’s crazy how easy you can get thrown off. I’ve been striking the ball fairly well lately (for me). Was super excited to play in my foursome with my buddies. The thing was, my sin-in-law played with us and my parents wanted to come watch. They all know that I’m chasing a dream. For whatever reason, those two little variables caused me to put a great deal of pressure on myself and it took me about 12 holes to calm down. I was so quick and off tempo. It’s a good lesson though because as I am still fairly new to the game I start to identify those feeling more easily and they help me grow as a golfer. As I get the feelings I resort back to all of my bad swing habits that my golf coach has been working on fixing for the last year and a half. However moments of stress and you resort back to the law of primacy. I can’t wait until my new swing and focus is so ingrained that the law of primacy will only rear its little head on very rare occasions.

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#5

Definitely something I have been working on is resetting after a bad shot or hole. Don’t remember where I heard it this quote but it definitely speaks to the golf of my youth “Just because you 3-putted doesn’t mean you need to blast your next drive out of bounds”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this from DJ recently: I hit bad shots all the time. I just did. For me it doesn’t bother me. It might bother me that second when I hit it. well, really it doesn’t. It’s not surprising or anything, I do it all the time so why would I get upset about it? So I just go find it and hit it again. It’s all about your misses. We all hit really good shots, and it’s about being able to play the shot after you miss, because you can’t hit 'em all good. No one does. You want to limit your misses, or at least get some sort of pattern of what your miss is so you can play for it on the course. It’s like a baseball player striking out. The best hitters in the game strike out a lot. The best basketball shooters still miss half the time. You can’t hit them all good.
source: https://www.mensjournal.com/sports/dustin-johnson-on-how-to-handle-hitting-a-bad-shot/

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#6

I love perspective it’s always the thing that keeps me getting back out got another day of practice.

I used to think of I work hard enough I can get color to perfect at some point. Then I realized perfection is a fallacy and a word that is more negative than positive. If you can’t ever achieve perfection that’s not positive at all. So now I must say I’m trying to be excellent, I’m striving for excellence. That is attainable and it actually makes me smile, I know I can be excellent.

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#7

If I have a bad shot or two when playing (if I’m riding with someone else). I’ll walk to the next tee/from tee to fairway or wherever I am to use as a complete reset. I can think about it during the walk (technical/mental/whatever is leading to the issue) but when I get to the next shot it has to be out of mind.

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#8

I prefer walking, but if in carts, I prefer to ride rather than drive, so I can walk where possible, and it’s particularly helpful when you need a reset.

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#9

I prefer to walk as well. Tend to play better that way - probably since you don’t have to go sit in a cart with someone who will ask “what was that” after a bad shot and then you get talking about it

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