I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

[WillingToListen]

Hey guys, I am new to the board. I have a huge problem that caused me to walk off the course today with 0 balls and one demoralized ego. You see, its almost as if I am two different golfers, one day it will be as if I feel I can hit it far, fairly straight and shape my shots and the next that I cant do anything. I have this problem where I hit it off the toe and the ball just shanks right (it doesnt hit off the heel, and Im PRETTY sure it is hit off the toe) but I am trying different techniques to prevent this. One round Ill be able to hit shots beautifully, the next I will literally not be able to put one ball in the air. I looked at one of my divots and it looked like I was coming over the top, but I tried a few swings where I knew i wasnt going from over the top and it just didnt work. Any suggestions?

[bonzi_532]

Re: I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

Get a pro to give you a lesson or two and have him diagnose the problem.

[LowPost42]

Re: I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

I had a few toe shanks a while back. My problem was I was setting up 'reaching' for the ball with my arms. So when I would swing, I'd actually swing closer to my body than where I set up - causing a toe shank. I started making an effort to let my arms hang and adjust from there, and I was fine. (Now if only I could put some range time in for my new swing...)

[WillingToListen]

Re: I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

I had a few toe shanks a while back. My problem was I was setting up 'reaching' for the ball with my arms. So when I would swing, I'd actually swing closer to my body than where I set up - causing a toe shank. I started making an effort to let my arms hang and adjust from there, and I was fine. (Now if only I could put some range time in for my new swing...)

thanks for the tip lowpost, Ill try that tomorrow when I head out. Do you think that my divots could give me some insight on what im doing wrong? Because whenever I toe Shank, the divot points about 35 degrees to the left. Its so frustrating because Im not a terrible golfer, I sometimes shoot 80 and 81 (mostly 82-86) but whenever I get the shank fever, I am hideous to play with.

[GregJWillis]

Re: I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

I'm going to take a shot here: It is your ability to focus.

Some days are good. Other days your eyes wonder all over the place. It could be what you ate that day, what you didn't eat, what you did, and who you did it with. But your symptoms sound like you are having a problem hitting the same spot. Golf is brutal if you are not committed to every shot, focused in both your mind and your eyes. Keeping your mind free of clutter is essential to allowing it to be free to focus on the task at hand, if only for that crucial 23 seconds you are preparing to hit that ball.



Here is a trick to fake out your head a little...keep it on it’s toes (so to speak). I want you to start the round on the first tee thinking of a word that starts with the letter "A". Say the word to yourself as you are getting set to go through your pre-shot routine. "Aardvark". Then go through your normal pre-shot routine and hit the shot. Then your second shot should be a “Bagpipe” as your approach shot. Next putt is a "Cactus", etc… The fun starts when you are faced with a really hard chip shot to a downhill lie over a bunker with water behind the green and your word is "X". Don't pick xylophone, pick a better word like xenophobia (racial intolerance). Make your mind a playground of the obscure, and you will actually free it up to relax in what was a stressful situation.



Ok, silly I know, but not as silly as the next trick. Your eyes need a way to stay sharply focused during those 2.1 seconds of swing. Staring at a spot for 5 seconds before you make your swing can cause them to relax. Relaxed eyes can loose focus, blur a little and cause wonder. Try looking at a few points in a sequence. The flag (or target), then a point ½ way, then about 6 inches in front of your ball then your impact spot. Go back to the target, ½ way, 6 inches and impact. Pause for no more then 1 second and swing.

[WillingToListen]

Re: I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

I'm going to take a shot here: It is your ability to focus.

Some days are good. Other days your eyes wonder all over the place. It could be what you ate that day, what you didn't eat, what you did, and who you did it with. But your symptoms sound like you are having a problem hitting the same spot. Golf is brutal if you are not committed to every shot, focused in both your mind and your eyes. Keeping your mind free of clutter is essential to allowing it to be free to focus on the task at hand, if only for that crucial 23 seconds you are preparing to hit that ball.



Here is a trick to fake out your head a little...keep it on it’s toes (so to speak). I want you to start the round on the first tee thinking of a word that starts with the letter "A". Say the word to yourself as you are getting set to go through your pre-shot routine. "Aardvark". Then go through your normal pre-shot routine and hit the shot. Then your second shot should be a “Bagpipe” as your approach shot. Next putt is a "Cactus", etc… The fun starts when you are faced with a really hard chip shot to a downhill lie over a bunker with water behind the green and your word is "X". Don't pick xylophone, pick a better word like xenophobia (racial intolerance). Make your mind a playground of the obscure, and you will actually free it up to relax in what was a stressful situation.



Ok, silly I know, but not as silly as the next trick. Your eyes need a way to stay sharply focused during those 2.1 seconds of swing. Staring at a spot for 5 seconds before you make your swing can cause them to relax. Relaxed eyes can loose focus, blur a little and cause wonder. Try looking at a few points in a sequence. The flag (or target), then a point ½ way, then about 6 inches in front of your ball then your impact spot. Go back to the target, ½ way, 6 inches and impact. Pause for no more then 1 second and swing.

Hey man, thanks, Im definitely gonna try that word game tomorrow. Its so messed up, because whenever Im about to step up to a shot during my shank period, my mind is always thinking negative, and I cant get negative thoughts out of my head, even though im trying. This is vice versa with when Im playing good, I will get confident and feel like I can do anything, which is not always a good thing because it causes me to be over confident. I want to be able to take my mind off the mechanics during my swing and just....swing.

[Brian 39]

Re: I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

I suffer from the same problem and occasionally have days that are atrocious where i cannot hit a ball properly.

I can only speak for my own personal experiences but I have found that I have simply forgotten one or more of a number of setup and swing elements that I have been thought.

I think for everyone, some elements of swinging a club come naturally and others you need to be thought and you need to practice and occasionally remind yourself of. For me, there are approx 8 things between setup and the swing, that I have been taught by pros I need to pay attention to. When I'm playing regularly and well, most of these are forgotten because they have become natural.

When it goes bad on the course, I can't for the life of me figure out what I'm doing wrong and for sure negative thoughts and images affect your game more than you think they might at the time.

I'll then go to the range, start from scratch with all the basics of grip and setup, hit a few balls, then think about elements of my backswing, downswing and follow through, hit a few more and more often than not, I'll suddenly realise the one or two things I've forgotten about and am not doing properly.

You need to get back on the course and hit a few practice holes on your own if you can rather than playing a normal round with friends.

I haven't successfully managed to make this change around in the middle of a round unfortunately but it has worked well for me and without the need to keep going back to the pro. In fact, I was going to see my pro recently for an emergency lesson after 2 appalling rounds of golf and he called at the last minute to say he couldn't make it. I went to the range anyway and pretended he was there (you're skitzo and I have imaginary golf pros!) and went through all of the faults he had corrected for me over the last year or so and to my surprise realised there were 3 basic things I had been doing wrong that I had just forgotten about and had been working fine for me previously. These 3 faults were gripping too tightly, leaning to the right during the backswing and swinging with my arms rather than shoulders.

Next game, I played to my handicap having played to twice my handicap in the previous 2 rounds.

Hope some of this may make sense to any other erratic golfers out there.

[WillingToListen]

Re: I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

I suffer from the same problem and occasionally have days that are atrocious where i cannot hit a ball properly.

I can only speak for my own personal experiences but I have found that I have simply forgotten one or more of a number of setup and swing elements that I have been thought.

I think for everyone, some elements of swinging a club come naturally and others you need to be thought and you need to practice and occasionally remind yourself of. For me, there are approx 8 things between setup and the swing, that I have been taught by pros I need to pay attention to. When I'm playing regularly and well, most of these are forgotten because they have become natural.

When it goes bad on the course, I can't for the life of me figure out what I'm doing wrong and for sure negative thoughts and images affect your game more than you think they might at the time.

I'll then go to the range, start from scratch with all the basics of grip and setup, hit a few balls, then think about elements of my backswing, downswing and follow through, hit a few more and more often than not, I'll suddenly realise the one or two things I've forgotten about and am not doing properly.

You need to get back on the course and hit a few practice holes on your own if you can rather than playing a normal round with friends.

I haven't successfully managed to make this change around in the middle of a round unfortunately but it has worked well for me and without the need to keep going back to the pro. In fact, I was going to see my pro recently for an emergency lesson after 2 appalling rounds of golf and he called at the last minute to say he couldn't make it. I went to the range anyway and pretended he was there (you're skitzo and I have imaginary golf pros!) and went through all of the faults he had corrected for me over the last year or so and to my surprise realised there were 3 basic things I had been doing wrong that I had just forgotten about and had been working fine for me previously. These 3 faults were gripping too tightly, leaning to the right during the backswing and swinging with my arms rather than shoulders.

Next game, I played to my handicap having played to twice my handicap in the previous 2 rounds.

Hope some of this may make sense to any other erratic golfers out there.

Yeah, I definitely need to pay a visit to a local golf pro, because I think that could solve a LOT of problems. Golf is a mental game and I think that is seriously what I need to work on most, is my mental focus and concentration. Because I have the ability physically, as do most of us, but it can all be messed around with in the head, agreed?

[SlicersHell]

Re: I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

If your luck is anything like mine, you'll go to a pro and have one of your good days. Last lesson I took, I hit the ball better than I ever have. I started with a 6 iron; long and straight. She just watched me hit ball after ball, and basically just complimented me the whole time. She suggested maybe trying this or that, but when I made the change and didn't hit it as well, she said I shouldn't mess with a good thing.

It was a free lesson, so I didn't mind too much. What sucked was that in practically no time after that, I was back to my old ****py form.

So yeah, I have the same problem. Sounds like losing focus as Greg suggested, and the lapse in attention causes some inconsistency in setup, perhaps.

[ubizmo]

Re: I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

If you think Greg's word game is weird, try this...

Although I'm a bad enough ball striker on the best of days, there are degrees of bad. It's frustrating to top the ball, for example, but in my view it's far worse to connect but hit a push shot 45 or 60 degrees off line, taking your ball into the bushes or the next fairway. A couple of weeks ago I was hitting one of these after another. It was just maddening. I'm a pretty laid back guy, and I play golf strictly for fun; I don't generally get too upset at bad shots. If I did, I wouldn't be playing the game anymore. But on this occasion it was getting to me. Push after push, hunting for the ball, causing my friends to have to wait for me...was sucking all the fun out of being on the course. I was ready to throw in the towel for the day, something I'd never done before.

As much to save my sense of humor and let off steam as anything else, I tried something unusual. I tried talking to my clubs. I'd set up my shot and say, "Hello 5 iron. Take a look around. Think you can find your way back to this spot? I'd be grateful if you would." etc. Amazingly, it helped! Not so amazing, I suppose. It was a way to relieve the mental pressure without throwing clubs etc.

There's one other, less weird, thing that has helped me sometimes. I guess everyone knows what it's like to feel sort of "grim" while setting up a shot. A way to defuse that feeling is simply to smile. Doesn't have to be obvious, but it seems to release some of the inner tension.

[WillingToListen]

Re: I think I am "Golf SkitzafreniK". PLEASE HELP!

Hey guys, I went to the course today and Im actually gonna be heading out in a bit again (watching pga championship). I originally had a tee off time of 806, but i woke up and realized, "maybe I should go to the range first", so I did. Let me tell you, if I would have gone to the course first, I would have walked off at the 2nd hole. For the first half of my large bucket, I was shanking off the toe EVERY single ball, not one would launch in the air. Then, I thought to myself, I have to let my body lead my body, and I decided to focus on my weight shift, and it miraculously worked. A change in my weight shift totally rehealed my swing, weird huh? So I went to the course and I had a solid drive on the first (down the middle left with a gap wedge to second) and what do you know, I shanked it. So i dropped one or two balls and launched them beautifully in the air, and from then on, I didnt shank one shot. It felt good to revamp my swing that quickly, just thought Id share.

P.s. thanks for those tips guys, I tried those mental tips and they helped me just swing through the ball and not think negatively, due to the fact that I wasnt letting myself have any time to think negatively.