Recently I wrote about what happens when the Ka Ka hits the fan, when you’re in the middle of a round and you get a one-way ticket for the bogey bus, departing immediately.
I’m sure you’ve experience it for yourself, everything is rosy in your golfing world and all of a sudden you start playing like a complete moron, you take a potentially great round and consign it to the annals of history, never to be remembered or worse, it scars you for life.
But did you know the opposite also causes just as much trouble?
Perhaps you’ve experienced this for yourself as well.
Your head down, making your way through the round and all of a sudden it hits you.
You’re playing really well. You start to do a few calculations and suddenly realise you have the potential to shoot your best round ever or come in with the most ridiculous score you have posted in a long while.
Your heart skips a beat and you mind starts to race just thinking of the ego stroke you will receive when you sign for that blessed number on the scorecard.
I can remember once playing in a very prestigious youth’s trophy at a very prestigious golf club, with five holes left to play I was a long way under par and looking very good.
The acceptance speech was mentally rehearsed; thought given to how I would explain my good play and consideration on where I would house the trophy at home was also included in my run-away thoughts.
An hour later I was walking off the last green over par, an also ran, a loser.
That hurt.
So, what do you do when you’re playing well, how do you keep a good round going amidst a blitz of good play and how do you get the maximum out of it and not waste any shots.
It’s just a serious a problem as suddenly making a few horrendous errors that derail and ruin your round.
The answer is almost the same, it’s some sage advice that was no doubt dished out when the very first shepherds starting hitting rocks up the beach with their crooks in bonnie Scotland many moons ago.
It’s advice so simple that most people reading this will completely ignore it and gloss over it, clicking away to look for more sexy nuggets of information which are to be found on this site.
“Take one shot at a time”. Really read that and mull it over in your head. When you make yourself focus on one shot at a time, the shot that you are about to play, there is no future and there is no past there is only now. Your concentration is on the present, not on your current score, not on what you might shoot, how much of a big dawg you will look when you post the crazy number, not on what your friends or peers will tell their mates about how you played.
You just have now and only now.
Much wisdom in those six little words, so simple but yet oh so effective and has taken many a good round and turned it into a great round.
Bob James PGA