Playing Partners and Other Psychological Pains.

If you've been following this blog, you know I'm on a quest to lower my Golf scores. Primarily I am focusing on the mental aspects of the game. My mechanics are good enough, as evidenced by periodic flashes for brilliance. But as the pros have shown us over and over, even with the most brilliant "A game" in the world, the brain can get in the way.

Playing Partners can be a joy or a Pain.

Let's start from the premise that in Golf, as in all other endeavors in life, if you can't see the end-result in your mind, you're not going to be able to achieve it. Starting a round you can't see scoring well on pretty much guaranties some pretty awful Golf.

Partners can do that to you too. If you play with a regular foursome, there is a tendency to find yourself labeled as "That Player." "That Player" can be any one of "The 'D' Player", "The one who always shanks an approach shot after a decent drive", "The one who can't get out of a bunker to save his life".... you get the idea. Unfortunately if we allow ourselves, we can quickly make those labels self-fulfilling prophecies.

It's worse when we've applied those labels to ourselves. They are harder to overcome!

I conclusively proved the point on my last round: I played in a foursome of near and dear friends. In that group, I have the reputation of being the longest hitter with the least accuracy and no short game. It was only on the fourth hole that I realized what was going on. My friends were reinforcing those notions at every opportunity with the banter. Not intentionally I'm sure. Finally realizing what was going on (and being real clear on the fact that the problem was my doing and not their doing) I started focusing on what I was telling myself....

We're in do as I say, not as I do (DAISNAID) territory here because I'm still working on this.

When I paid attention and went through my whole pre-shot routine (including visualization and feel), and made sure that my internal conversation was not negative, I did well. When I paid more attention to the banter than to my game, or allowed doubt to creep in my thinking, I did horrible.

Next time you're out, pay attention to the banter - both from your partners and from your self - and analyze it's content. Is it helping or hurting?

Posted via email from Kinetic Golfer