Head Problems

[dannyra]

I haven't had one excellent day of golf during competition all year. Every Wednesday I play in golf league, and my game seems to get worse and worse each week.

I know part of it is devotion. At the beginning of the year I play about 36 holes on the weekend and about 18 during the week. This time of year between tournaments and women's league it's tough to get out there that much and besides when it's over 100, golf isn't the highest on my want to do list.

Even though I haven't gotten out as much, I know it's more head problems than swing problems. So I'm looking for some suggestions when it comes to approaching league play, as I've shot an aweful 51 the last 2 weeks of league. About as bad as I've shot all year.

I think these are the things I need the most help with mentally (related to golf).

1. Dealing with slow play. (To many fat old men, playing off 27 hdcp that take 5 minutes to line up a putt)
2. Unreliable Partner. Didn't even show up one week and is always late. Not going to be my partner next. Only a couple weeks left to deal with that.
3. General competition. I usually thrive in pressure situations, but find myself playing from trees a lot on Wednesday.

That's the 3 big ones I can think of right now. The other issue is watching my own score, as the other team never picks up our score card so I'm always stuck keeping score. I do much better when somebody else has the card.

[GregJWillis]

Re: Head Problems

Here are some ideas:

1. Dealing with slow play
* Bring a small binocular and bird watch.
* Bring some topics to start up to your group. Afterall, it's supposed to be a social game.
* Bring a cell phone. Call a friend during slow periods of waiting. Keep it on vibrate so incomming calls don't disrupt.
* Practice bouncing a ball on your sandwedge. Strengthens the hands, increases eye-hand, and kills some time. Your partners will probably call you "Tiger".

2. Unreliable Partner:
* Lie about your start time to them. Move it 30 minutes ahead of when you actually tee of.
* Offer to pick them up.

3. General competition:
* Keeping score has it's drawbacks, so change the way you make your scores. Don't write numbers, but put dots for the number over you were, and dashes hopefully for under par. Par's are no dots. You might even change that to a boggie is no dot, and 1 dot is a double (all depending on your hdcp). Then convert to another scorecard the right way at the end of the round.

[dannyra]

Re: Head Problems

Thanks Greg.

I know a lot of my problems is the scorecard. Saturday afternoon I went out and played nine. I was one over after 7 holes, as this is when I tallied my score. And bogied the last 2 holes to finish with a 39. But I was shooting lights out before that and had to scramble for bogey on the last 2. 39 is still my second best score of all time, so I'm happy with it.

But if I could've waited till the round was over, I think I would've finished at one over.

It's amazing when you feel like you can't miss a shot. When I shot my best score 38, I just wasn't paying attention to my game. I knew I was playing well but didn't know how well until the end of the day. Saturday, I felt like I could sink every putt. I had some long putts that I left way short, but had no problem sinking the next putts. I probably sank about 3 putts over 15ft and another 3 from over 10ft.