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Not psyching yourself out

I usually play my best when I don't or can't keep track of my score.
 
ken_h said:
Playing yesterday I was +8 through 16, with 3 birdies and it dawned on me if I par the next two holes (or better) I would shoot a personal best. The 17th was a par 3, and I tried to just concentrate on the shot at hand and of course, hit my first OB shot of the day ruining my chances. It was still a great round and I'm super happy with it, but can't help but feel a little deflated.

How do you approach a situation like this and not let the moment get to you?
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Well, since it didn't happen until 17, yours is not so bad. You still got a good round out of it. For me, the last two times I've played, I was off to a great start...making pars and a birdie, and then I have a flub hole. I don't know, it's like one shot goes bad and I go to correct and it goes from bad to worse and I end up with a triple. And then today, the very next hole, I come off the tee on a par three and fly the green. Great shot with a six iron 195 to the center and I'm like 7 yards out and I'm putting for bird, I flipping 4 putt!!!

Aarrgh. At that point I just consider that my score is out the window so I'll just focus on practicing. When I go into practice mode, I'll try shots I normally wouldn't and so forth because I feel that my personal best is already trashed. So, I basically just finish the day having fun and not worrying about my score.
 
Oh yeah....the other one was yesterday. I have a not-so-great shot off the tee. It only goes like 200 and it's left; I'm over by the trees. I try to use my five iron and squeek by.....nope. Hit the tree and ended up with a negative yardage hit as the ball bounces back and flies behind me like 20 yards. At this point I just start cracking up and think...oh well. Nothing can be done about that.
 
I find if you are playing with others is to just keep talking and dont really think about the golf. Just hit each shot and try not to think about the score. I only add my score up after 9 but in my head i normally know how many over or so i am to par anyway.
 
ken_h said:
Playing yesterday I was +8 through 16, with 3 birdies and it dawned on me if I par the next two holes (or better) I would shoot a personal best. The 17th was a par 3, and I tried to just concentrate on the shot at hand and of course, hit my first OB shot of the day ruining my chances. It was still a great round and I'm super happy with it, but can't help but feel a little deflated.

How do you approach a situation like this and not let the moment get to you?
Click to expand...

I just relax,and make sure I don't try too hard, because I have learned that I play better when I relax and don't try too hard.
 
there is fwiw something else to this too. There is a reason your (or me or a million others) are not single digits (at least not yet anyways). And the main reason is because we can only execute so many good shots before faltering. And so we are having a really good (or even one of our best) rounds. Well, at some points we will falter sooner or later. Its why we are nor single digits. Law of averages for the handicap level we play with will rise its head. sometimes sooner in our rounds and sometimes later. But when its later we always try to figure out why because its harder to accept. In the end you still had a good round. I assume low/mid 80's. Do that on a consistent basis and the cap will drop. So you still played a round that if you repeated enough (even with the blow-up 17th par3) would drop your cap. We are going to falter somewhere and in that round you faltered less often than usual so it was a good round. Its simply harder to take because your worst falter came at the end. Had that happened somewhere in the first few holes of the round it would be easy to take knowing from that point you went +8 for the rest of the round. So imo its really no different than any one of your better rounds because it still was a better round. As said, repeat that better round enough and your cap would drop.

There must be a hundred rounds where you had good stretches of holes and then faltered. The idea is for us to falter less of course. But putting together more rounds where the overall faltering is less often (which is probably what was done here) and its all good. It doesn't matter where the faltering play happened. 1st hole, or 5th, 9th, or 17th. It only just feels worse (via human nature) if its at the end. If we could go about plu8 (+or-) through 16 holes every round and then not falter on 17 or 18 as well we wouldn't just have a lower cap but we'd be below 10 shooting an average of 78 to 82. But before we can do that we first have to move from (in your case 14ish) down to 12ish and then so on from there. Repeat that same round enough times and you would be on pace to do that. Overall you did falter less than usual there so its a positive. Law of averages to falter caught up with you on 17 is all. But even with that you stayed below your normal law of average to falter which is a good thing.
 
I played on Sunday, front 9 I shot 54, had far too many swing thoughts from tee-to-green.

Back 9 I just relaxed and let me body and the club work its magic and shot a 41.

Once I stopped thinking I played really well. In fact, on the 17th green (a par 3) I had a 3 footer for par but right before hitting it I heard my brain say 'sink this and that's 3 pars in a row', obviously I missed it :)
 
I like to change the focus of thought from "What must I do to not screw up and blow this?" to something like "Lets make this par here and get in position for birdie on 18. I want this PB so lets go get it!"

I have always felt that those moments are about our frame of minds more than anything, with the main question I ask myself being "When this is over, do I want to look back and regret that I was too afraid to fail or will I be proud that I did what it took to succeed?"

Buckle down and get it done. Even if I fail with that I attitude, at least I didnt go down like a skeert little b!+@# lol ?
 
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