Let’s start this post with an assumption: golf is hard. Some days are harder than others, and it’s truly a rare day when the game comes easy. Heading into the tournament this year my game was in solid shape from tee to green. Just a few days prior I played around and missed only one fairway off the tee – confidence was high.
Personally, I get very tentative when playing tournament golf. Focus shifts from the shot that needs to be hit into where the shot can’t go. Stepping up to a tee box and only seeing trouble leads to one thing: trouble. This week was the first time I can say a course genuinely didn’t “fit my eye”. By that, I’m referring to my ability to visualize where to hit various shots. That’s no excuse for bad play but it certainly compounds the problem.

Screwup #1

Very quickly into the first round frustration built and boiled over into silly temper-tantrums (none of which were appropriate). Failed expectations took over instead of staying focused on the process of hitting good shots. I forgot to stay involved in the routine, ignore the results, and stay focused on the task at hand, instead of the bad result that just occurred.

Screwup #2

The fade. It shows up when I’m nervous. I can still hit a draw under pressure but I have to really commit to it and think about it. That’s not to say it can’t be done (I did it quite a bit on day 2), but it needs to be the preferred shot shape under pressure situations.

Screwup #3

Laconia CC is a course that demands you have extreme accuracy on your approach shot. From 160 yards, I can’t hit a target 15′ x 15′. As such, properly missing a shot should have been on my agenda. It wasn’t. Instead I found myself missing approach shots short sided, or in horrific rough that all but eliminated the possibility of saving par. My short game is pretty good, but I never gave it a chance to shine because of the impossible places I was trying to recover from.

Work To Be Done

It’s not quite “back to the drawing board” after such a disappointing tournament but rather “back to basics”. With the club championship a week away and the next state-event (stroke play championship) only a few weeks off, there is ample time to get mentally strong for the next event. Areas I’ll be focusing on:

• Hitting draws through the entire bag
• Avoiding tucked pins on longer approach shots
• Noticing when frustration creeps up and acknowledge that perhaps my expectations were out of line with my abilities for that day.

The Results

Embarrassing, but it’s my motivation to work harder.