by Dan Phillips
PGA Professional and Director of Golf at Mistwood Golf Club in Romeoville, IL.
Golf itself can be a very frustrating sport. The thing is, we try and be perfect at a sport that is imperfect. For one thing, the surface that we are playing on is grass. It’s beautiful and it’s maintained, as all golf courses are, especially now. The grass is inconsistent. A putting green does have bumps on it. You can land in a little ball mark in a fairway and you might not even know it. So you have to take that for granted. Even the best players in the world are going to hit some bad shots.
I know that the best players in the world are not constantly in the middle of changing things. They really are trying to keep their focus on just one, maybe two things throughout the round. For a Tour pro, it may be a feeling of timing. For the rest of us, timing would be great; but normally we need some, or just maybe one, mechanical thought to bring us in there.
That takes work. It takes a few rounds of golf; going out on the golf course and just literally thinking one thing.
Let’s say, as a thought, I need to turn my shoulders. Well, as you are going through the round of golf, once you hit a bad shot, the first inclination is to think, “Well, maybe it’s my hands; maybe it’s my knee, maybe it’s this; or maybe it’s that.” You really have to stay away from that and just concentrate on that one thing that you brought on the golf course. Which, let’s say its turn your shoulders; so with every shot that you take, the only thought that you can have would be, “For every swing, I’m going to turn my shoulders.” At the end of the round, the swing will normally come and find you.
If it really doesn’t, if you are just having a bad day; at least you can chalk that up to maybe a swing thought that just wasn’t the best for that day. Instead of going through a myriad of things and by the time you are done with the round you are just mentally drained and thinking that you’ve tried everything today and nothing works so I’m a really poor golfer.
