Getting Too Mechanical

Photo courtesy of Pinterest

 

Over the last four rounds, I’ve twisted myself into a psychological swing pretzel.   I’ve had this happen before.  I go to the golf course with a swing thought I’m going to work on for the day and usually strike the ball poorly, but sometimes find a new thought late in the round that allows me to finish strong.  Then the new thought becomes the focus for the next round.  This perpetuates a viscous cycle of bewilderment as I travel through the swing thought wilderness.  Does this happen to you?

Not sure why I do this but it’s usually late in the season, and it happened again last weekend.  After a predictably frustrating ball striking day, I decided to go back to what my pro and I had worked on in our last lesson, and bingo.  It was late in the round again and I had just debunked all the solutions and fixes I had been working on for a month, with some common fundamentals passed down my instructor’s trained eye.  I’ll chalk this up to COVID because I had a lesson left on my 2019 package, and rather than taking it in the early spring and following up every month during the season, I took my first and only lesson in the summer, after restrictions were loosened  at our courses.  Rather than signing up for more lessons, I tried to self-medicate.  Some people can do this but there’s a reason we pay good money to these trained professionals and why most of the instruction on the internet is free.  YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

So where does this leave me?  There is more playable weather forecast for the DC region in November, but I’ve shut my game down.  It’s time to empty the mental recycle bin and not refill it for a while.  I’m hoping this year’s winter is as mild as last year because I was able to practice and play in January and hit the ground running for my February Myrtle Beach trip.  That trip is planned again this year, but I’m wondering if it’s going to happen with the current state of the virus.

Sometimes it’s best to give your game a rest and recharge your physical and mental batteries, even though you can keep playing.

Do you take time to refill your psychological tank?  Have you shut it down for the year?

Play well.

 

Golfer And Genius – The Only Thing Common Is The “G”

Albert Einstein defined insanity as repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting a different outcome.  I was reminded of this today as I twisted myself into a mental basket case trying to implement too many mechanical fixes during the first eight holes of my golf game.  Fed up with hitting pop-ups and chunks off the tee, I decided on the 9th hole to “screw all these stupid swing thoughts” and just hit the ball hard at the target.  “Bingo!” The flow and rhythm immediately returned and I rifled short irons right at the pin on four of my next five holes and carded three birdies.  Having done the “think target only” thing in the past with great success, I was left to wonder, “Why do I keep doing this to myself?”

The culprits are not just us weekend warriors.  I learned during Saturday that Jim Furyk’s resurgence at the PGA was due largely to some recent work he’d been doing with Dr. Bob Rotella.  Apparently, Furyk’s mind was so twisted he couldn’t get out of his own way.  Watching Furyk reset five times before every putt was starting to drive me insane, but he was making most of them, so he must have been doing something right, and Rotella must be making a boatload of cash off these touring pros.  He has developed quite a reputation for fixing guy’s heads right before stellar performances in the major championships.

Weekly players practice once or twice before a round and latch onto a swing thought that happens to be working at the time and then try to put that into play.  The fallacy in this method is that swing thought momentum is fleeting and inevitably we make a bad swing using the good swing thought and the mistake is a catalyst for a new swing thought.  Every been there?  I think we’d all be better off playing 18 holes and starting the round by just thinking target and attempting to “trust our swing” as Dr. Bob advocates.

I wonder how much an hour of Dr. Bob’s time costs?  How’s your mental game?