Recovering Your Putting Stroke

Dear Seth,

The No B.S. Golf Newsletter

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Golf Potpourri
by
Mac Stevenson
Focus on Mental Approach For 2008

Now that the holiday season is here and the chances to play
golf are infrequent at best, it's a perfect time to relax
in your easy chair and reflect on ways to improve your game
in 2008. Improving the control of your emotions can help
your golf game immeasurably.

In golf, it's easier to become impatient with yourself or
fellow players than it is in any other sport. A
psychiatrist would call it displaced aggression. It's
imperative to keep your emotions under control in order to
play the best golf that you're capable of. When you hit a
poor shot or miss a short putt, don't start looking for an
outside agent to blame.

This battle to be composed and patient will help with your
everyday games, but it's even more critical in tournaments.

In tournament play you know you're going to have good and
bad streaks. After a disastrous hole, try your hardest to
control your negative feelings and focus on the next
shot--with the realization that you can't get all the lost
strokes back on one hole.

Your patience will be most severely tested after a bad
start in an important medal play tournament. If you make a
double-bogey or worse on the first hole, a feeling of
desperation can destroy your rhythm and concentration for
several holes. That's when patience is most important.

Think back to last summer and try and remember if you
weren't faced with a situation similar to what's described
next. One of the hardest things to do in a medal play
tournament is to assess your situation calmly and
objectively after a shot that puts you in serious trouble.
The main thing to avoid--after you hit a bad shot--is the
double- or triple-bogey. To do so, you often have to hit a
sacrifice shot back to the fairway and play for a hard par
or easy bogey. Players often create their own disasters;
they try and hit a miracle shot from trouble and end up in
a worse dilemma.

These high-risk shots hit another tree or end up in a
hazard and result in a round-ruining hole. It's rare when
near-impossible shots attempted from serious trouble work
out. They usually compound the problem.

Most important of all: When you decide to play a sacrifice
shot, do so with the full concentration and caution that
you would use on a normal shot. How many times have you
seen a player--stymied under a tree--chop at the ball in
anger and end up in more trouble because the shot was
carelessly hit?

If you have to hit a sacrifice shot to get back to the
fairway, make sure you give a wide berth to the hazard,
which is usually a tree. Don't try and shave the tree in
order to gain a few extra yards; concentrate on leaving the
shot in the fairway. When in deep trouble, disgusted and
frustrated players more often than not hit the wrong club
and play the sacrifice shot poorly--hitting the ball
through the fairway and into more trouble.

Focus intently on sacrifice shots; take your time and study
the shot before selecting a club, and then make a
successful shot.

When putting in medal play tournaments, achieving
equilibrium between aggressiveness and patient conservatism
can be difficult indeed.

It's easy for players to let the fear of failure become
master for the day and that results in tentative putting--a
round killer. You must use mature judgment on when to be
aggressive and when to be cautious.

The most destructive emotion that almost all golfers
succumb to at one time or another is deciding to try and
just "hold on" when you have a great round going.

When you allow yourself to think harmful thoughts: "If I
can just par in, I'll have a 32" or "If I can shoot a 36 on
the back nine, I'll break 70"--that's when you stop
attacking the golf course and let the fear of failure
become the master. When you have a great round going, stay
aggressive.

Don't change your routine in medal play tournaments. As an
example, if you normally study your putts from behind the
ball, continue to do so during tournament play. Don't
change your normal strategy by looking at putts from every
angle. That just builds unwanted tension and pressure.

Another sure sign that your round is getting away from you
is when small distractions that don't usually bother you
begin to destroy your concentration. When someone is
talking on the adjacent fairway or a passing car shatters
your focus, step back and have a harsh talk with yourself.
Try and relax. You can regain your composure, but it's
much easier said than done.

The more tournaments you enter, the better you'll become at
handling the attendant pressure and distractions and
playing up to your capabilities.

If you think about these possible predicaments during the
off-season, you'll be better equipped to handle the trouble
shots next summer.

The most important aspect of medal play is patience. Play
within yourself and don't become discouraged after a bad
hole. Keep trying, but don't let your determination become
desperate. Be patient and concentrate and good things will
happen.

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Richard's Quick Tip

Recovering Your Putting Stroke

The essence of good putting--indeed, the essence of golf--is
to hit the ball squarely. When you are doing this, you get
a great deal of the ball on the putter, a great feeling of
the grass, a great feeling for distance.

All golfers, but tournament players perhaps more than the
others, know the value of preserving a good putting stroke.
Nevertheless, everyone, including the most gifted and
conscientious golfers, loses his stroke at certain times.
All the experienced players have their own methods of
getting it back again. When I begin to lose the line or my
firmness goes off on the green, I fall back on a relatively
simple exercise to recover it. I like it because it is not
too complicated and also because it gets you back on your
stroke in such a way that it releases that fear of hitting
the ball aggressively--which, as you know, can build up in a
person who has been fighting a putting slump.

First, I take my left hand off the club and practice
putting with my right hand only. Then I switch and putt
with the left hand only. I find that when I putt with one
hand, I have to get set up more honestly to get my line and
get the ball rolling. You cannot work the ball haphazardly
and get away with anything at all--as you can when you putt
with two hands.

Just one session on the practice green, practicing first
with the right, then with the left and then with both
hands, is quite often enough to set up again the right
actions and a workably sound stroke.

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Quote:
"Don't be disquieted in time of adversity. Be firm
with dignity and self-reliant with vigor."
Chiang Kai-Shek

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Watch for our Christmas Special coming real soon!!

Until next time, good golfing!

Richard C Myers

http://www.thinkandreachpar.com/
http://www.golfforleftys.com/
http://www.totalgolfdvd.com/
http://www.ourdreamrv.com/

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