Do you find yourself feeling somewhat deflated after a round, and ultimately staring into the sunset? Part of the reason may be you lost confidence in your game. Every golfer at some point in their golfing journey has experienced this at one time or another.
So what do you? I’ll answer that after we first examine: “Five Signs: A Golfer May Be Losing Confidence”
- Worrying too much about making mistakes: Golfers who are losing confidence may be overly concerned with avoiding bogeys or hitting bad shots, causing them to feel anxious and unable to focus on the present moment.
- Pre-round jitters that don’t go away: Anxiety and a tight feeling that persists beyond the first hole can indicate a loss of confidence and an inability to relax and trust the game.
- Losing confidence after a single bad shot: If a single bad shot or score quickly erodes confidence and leads to frustration, it suggests a struggle with maintaining a positive mindset.
- Focusing excessively on technique or how to make a perfect swing: Over-controlling the swing and focusing on the mechanics can indicate a lack of trust in the swing and a fear of failure.
- Getting easily frustrated or playing cautiously: Frustration when not playing to expectations or a tendency to protect a score when things are going well can suggest a lack of confidence and a fear of losing.
If your one of those golfers who sees themself in this dilemma than you know what I’m talking about. There’s no worse than to hit the course feeling like nothing is going to work today. What typically happens in this situation is you simply go through the motions, and pray the round ends soon. You’ve read every golf book, watched every golf lesson on YouTube, but nothing seems to help. NOW WHAT?
Help is here!
I’ve been teaching this game to my corporate clients for over 32 years. Every one of them at some point, has felt the same as you have. Here’s what I tell them.
Let’s address each of the “Five Signs” mentioned above.
- Point 1: If you focus solely on your mishits and not on good shots, then self doubt begins to creep in. Try this! After you hit a bad shot; let out that emotion and expell the negative energy. Getting it out of your system in a burst of raw energy will actually make you feel better, rather than keeping it pent up inside. Once you have done that visualize a really good shot you hit that day, and allow yourself to absorb that positive energy. You’ll begin to feel better because you’ve focused on something good that happened. Now re-group, and focus on the next shot.
- Point 2: Everyone feels nervous stepping up to the first tee, even the pros. It’s normal! Some may feel that way until they have a few holes under their belt. The reason you are feeling nervous is you probably haven’t practiced much lately, or your warm-up routine lacks any real sense of readiness. Make sure that every time you hit the practice range, you do it with a sense of purpose. Don’t just rake and hit balls. Imagine you’re playing the first few holes of a course you’re going to play this weekend. What shots are needed to make a good score? Visualize each club you intend to play on every hole. See in your mind how you’d like the shot to be executed. Allow yourself to feed off the positive energy. Do the same in a warm-up right before your round. Don’t forget to stretch too! That really helps you to relax tense muscles.
- Point 3: So you hit a bad shot! Who hasn’t? Does that mean the round is over? No! It just means you hit a bad shot. Stick that in the back of your mind and analyze it post-round. Trying to figure what went wrong during the round can be disastrous. Did I do this? Or do that? Who cares right now? There’s still plenty of golf left. Brush it off and see what you need to do on the next shot. Do I need to hit a recovery shot? Maybe! Focus on what needs to be done now and don’t worry about the past. That shot is gone. Learn from it and move on.
- Point 4: Ahh! The perfect swing, good luck with that! There is no such thing. Every swing is different and unique to each golfer. Instead focus on becoming a better player. What can I do to improve my score? Having a perfect looking swing doesn’t necessarily mean lower scores. What does help lower them is to practice areas of your game that you fall short. We’ve all heard the saying: “Drive for Show! “Putt for Dough!” Well, there is a good reason for it. Bombing drives down the fairway looks great, but most amateurs lack the skill to do that with any consistency. However, working more on the short game like pitching, chipping and putting, can really drop your score. Spend the majority of your practice time working on these areas of the game. It will really help raise your confidence level.
- Point 5: Emotions can often get the best of us. A common mistake golfers make after a bad shot, hole or even a round is to completely change the way they play. A player who typically goes for the pin suddenly gets squeamish and starts to play overly conservative. What happens then is they get out of their natural rhythm. They slow down and begin to second guess every shot. The opposite can happen for more conservative players who now feel they need to be aggressive to make up for lost strokes. Did you ever see Nicklaus change his game mid-round when things didn’t go his way? Not likely! So why should you? Stay the course and play the way you always have. Making a drastic change like that can turn a small thing into something worse. Play your game!
In conclusion: To regain confidence requires you to analyze things and put them into prospective. Building confidence takes time and a lot of hard work. Losing confidence can also take time to come back. How much time really depends on how you approach things. You can walk around feeling bad because you hit some poor shots, or played a few bad holes. Or, you can use them as a learning opportunity. It depends on you! Better players have conditioned themselves to do just that. They shrug off the less than perfect shots, focus on what they did well. All that leads to confidence building. Tiger Woods often said in his interviews: “I didn’t play my A game today, but I’m happy with the results”. If one of the best players to ever play this game can look at his game that way. Why shouldn’t you? You might find that it’s not your game that needs to change, rather your attitude.
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