Weathering Golf’s Perfect Storm

How do you handle a situation when everything in the game breaks against you at the same time?  My perfect storm happened on Sunday.  These events,  like their counterparts in nature, rarely happen all at once but are a culmination of factors that build up days in advance, and this was no exception.

My problem started Saturday with a very poor ball striking session on the driving range.   I hadn’t played in two weeks, but it was so poor that I grabbed my iPhone, took some swing video, and brought it home for instant analysis.  I caught the culprit, but the seeds of mental discourse were sown because thinking about a mechanical change the day before you play is never a good idea.  I did have a productive short game session and felt confident in my chipping and putting, but I also figured I’d be relying heavily on these since I didn’t expect to catch lightning in a bottle with the swing fix.

Sunday’s warmup started off predictably, with my newly identified swing fix not working at all.  Vet4golfing51 says that you need to find your swing for the day, and this was clearly not mine, so I took the last 10 balls and thought only of hitting them at the target.  Oddly enough, I started striping it.  (I’ve found this an effective technique when you need a pre-round or mid-round correction, but it only works until you see the first of the shots you are trying to avoid reappear.  A true WOOD band-aid.)  Armed with a smidgen of confidence, I headed towards the practice green.  After rolling a few putts, the starter announced the group in front of us had not arrived and we were pushed up to take their place, so we rushed over to the first tee.  #1 at Northwest is an innocuous par-4 of about 370 yards with little trouble from tee to green.  A well struck drive usually leaves me a short iron in, so I’m thinking “driver, 8-iron” but on this day they had the tees all the way back and a stiff two club wind had kicked up in our face.  With the swing fixes, the rushed start, and the toughened conditions, my 1st tee mental state was a bubbling concoction of garbage.  I tried to relax and managed to clip my drive a little off the heel but in the middle of the fairway.  Still 200 yards out and faced with a stiff wind, I had to adjust my thinking from “8-iron” to “knock-down 3WD” and promptly topped the spoon about 70 yards.  I knocked the next one on and three-putted from about 40 feet for a double bogey.

Now in the eye of the storm I took another three-putt double on #2 and a three-putt bogey on #3.  I’ve gotten off to bad starts before but this was ridiculous because my putting had been the best part of my game this season, and was letting me down.  With the prospects of no golf swing and a balky putter, my head was spinning.

How do you recover from these type of starts?  I did what has worked for me in the past, and drew a vertical line after the third hole (my mental restart line) and told myself to forget the first three holes and that there was a lot of golf left to play.  For some reason, this calms me and allows me to refocus.  Second, I recommitted to playing my approaches below the hole even if that meant missing a green short.  Northwest’s greens are huge and sloping.  All of my opening three-jacks had been from poor positioning above the hole.

The ship stabilized and while I didn’t play great coming in, still navigated the last 15 holes in five-over par.  At the end of the day, my 82 was not a handicap round, but the house was still standing.  Have you ever gotten off to a rough start like this?  How did you weather your perfect storm?

How To Improve Focus For Golf

This year I am making a concerted effort to simplify every aspect of my game from my fundamentals to my thinking.  A key component is improved focus during play and practice.  During early rounds, I have met with my share of successes and failures but have noticed that during periods of good play my focus is laser sharp.  During a stretch of poor play, I found my mind wandering and have tried to force myself to concentrate better.  Is good focus a byproduct of good play or can you force it?  The ultimate chicken and the egg scenario appears to be a bit of both.  I have found a few tricks to help me improve my focus and thought I would share.

If you’ve read, Putting Out of Your Mind by Bob Rotella, one of the key concepts he keeps coming back to is focusing on the smallest target possible.  Olympic target shooters have always attempted to “aim small, miss small” and I’ve found this helpful, not just in putting, but for chipping and full swing.

Putting:  On the green and especially for short putts, if you zero in on a blade of grass on the edge of the cup you expect your ball to enter on, and keep focused in on that spot, right up to the point before you pull the trigger, it seems to free up your mind and body to make a better stroke.  Jordan Spieth leverages this concept by looking at his target even while making the stroke and who’s to argue with his results?

The Masters champ focuses in.
Photo by wsj.com

Chipping:  While practicing chipping or pitching, I’ve found it useful to place two tees on the green a few yards apart and work to land my ball as close to each using different clubs.  If you practice chipping without focusing on a landing point, sometimes you’ll hit a poor chip that may end up close to the hole.  May make you feel good at the time but won’t help you out on the course.  By zeroing in on your landing spot, you can use the same club and learn how different swings produce different ball flights and spin patterns.  I’ve got some work to do in eliminating the chip yips that infected me from late last season, but this technique has helped improve my concentration and ability to trust my practice swing.  Side note:  if you have the chip yips, it’s either a technique issue or one of trust, which was true in my case.

Full Swing:  On your full swings, try and zero in on the smallest point in the distance and as high off the ground as possible.  This can be a tree top, apex of a distant building’s roof, power pole, or anything.  Keep that target in your mind’s eye, even while you start your swing, and you’ll free yourself up to make a move free of mechanical thoughts.  I do use an intermediate spot on the ground to set my initial alignment, but always ensure it corresponds to a distant high point I can focus on as a target.  Not sure why the high point strategy works, it just does.

Finally, you’ll find that rehearsing good focus techniques on small targets is not easy, especially during practice.  It’s hard when your mind tends to wander because the shots don’t matter.  But if you can focus on improving your ability to focus, you will play better.   Got any techniques that have helped improve your focus?   Please share and good luck!