How to Find the Problem in Your Golf Game
Do you know how to clearly define the problem in your golf game? Understanding where you struggle the most is imperative to improving your scores, and the first step is to clearly identify which part — or parts — of your game need the most work. Thankfully, this is easily done.
Golf Plays with Our Emotions
When our golf game struggles, most golfers sit back and reflect on how their game makes them feel.
“I was really looking forward to playing today, and now I feel like it was a waste of time!”
If you’ve felt this way before, you are not alone. Most of us can only get out to the course once in awhile, so we have to make the best of our experience on the course. If our game isn’t cooperating, our enjoyment takes a nose dive. Unfortunately, the answer as to why we played poorly that day isn’t always evident.
This feeling of helplessness severely impacts not only our enjoyment of the game, but lowers the likelihood that we will ever improve. In fact, things will only get worse!
Map Out Your Game
In part one of this series we talked about the importance of being honest with yourself when evaluating your game. Do you miss too many fairways and greens? How many short putts do you miss? How often are you in bunkers?
Think about your last golf round. Picture every shot (that you can remember) in your mind, starting from the teebox on the first hole.
Where did your tee ball land?
Did you hit the green in regulation?
Did you have any penalty shots?
How many putts did it take to finish the hole?
Once you have a good picture of how you played the first hole in your most recent round, write each shot down on a piece of paper, index card or post-it note. You should have one note — or “process step” — for each shot on the hole. Be as specific as possible for each shot, and include the result.
In the map above, you’ll see we included the club that was used for the shot, along with any descriptors that could help with our practice plan (“7-iron;” “5-foot putt”, etc.).
Complete this same exercise for three or four more golf holes from your recent round. The goal is to create a process map that will help you identify trends in your game based on the results of your choices.
What’s the Next Step?
Once you’ve got a few holes mapped out, you’ve set yourself up for the next step: identifying trends in your game.
In the next installment of this series we will discuss how to use that data to your advantage, how to expand it into measurable metrics, and ultimately use it to improve your game. Stay tuned!
