Golf...it's just a number

I finished teaching a group of four beginners today who were taking part in a 5 half day beginner school. We finished the week by playing a few holes on the course and it was interesting that i spent a lot of the time trying to make the group see the positives in all of their shots.

An example of this was on the 2nd hole where one of the guys in the group caught a chip a little thin. Now ok it wasn’t the strike he was after or worked the whole week towards achieving, however the ball caught the greenside rough on its journey, jumped up and rolled out to about two feet from the hole. Now immediately my student (Nick) looked at me in disappointment...Why?? The idea of golf is to get the ball in the hole in the fewest number of shots isn’t it??
Nick proceeded to tap the ball in from two feet for his first official par in golf.

Try not to over analyse every shot you play, Tiger, Phil and Rory hit bad shots just like you do. They can probably count on one hand at the end of a sub par round the number of 100% successfully executed shots they have just carried out.

When you play you will miss landing spots and mis-strike shots its just a matter of managing these as best you can and leaving yourself an opportunity to succeed with the following shot. It’s not a ‘who can hit the prettiest shot competition’, its a ‘who can get the ball in the hole the quickest competition’.

Conclusion........
Take any good fortune that comes your way and make the best of every situation you find yourself in. Make sensible decisions over shots and execute them as best you can and remember the scorecard never says how the ball got into the hole, it just tells you how many shots it took.

Dan is a PGA Professional at The James Andrews School Of Golf