Not meant to be the ultimate method. It just makes sense to me at this time. Perhaps it will for some of you as well.


Teaching one's self to play golf. A method.


Introduction

Golf is comprised of many different aspects all varying in difficulty. All varying in complexity. Typically, there's the tee shot, the fairway shot and the approach. That last one can be either a full iron shot, a pitch or a chip. Then there's the recovery shot which itself can be either from the rough or the sand bunker or even from shallow water. Then there's the putt. The long one and the short one, the straight one and the breaking one. All of these shots make up the game of golf. Some combine two or more of the above. Like I said, all varying in difficulty and complexity. Some are easier than others. The 3 foot putt, for instance, is much easier than the 30 foot putt. This is the point of this essay. Easy is easier than not.


Easy does it.

Easy is easier than not. This means that when it's not easy, it's difficult. It's more complex or takes more skill. It takes more practice or more experience. All of this takes more time. But easy can easily be learned. It can be learned quickly. We become good at it early and can apply what we learned soon after we begin. Easy does it. This implies that difficult does not. There's some truth in that as we will see below.


Graduating to difficult.

It's not for no reason that we start with kindergarten. We don't know anything, we must begin somewhere. Easy is easier than not. Let's start with easy. Go on from there. Once we've mastered the easy stuff, we can graduate to more difficult stuff. We go on like that until we get a job and start paying rent and pretty much do grown up stuff. But we started somewhere, that place was easy. We graduated to the difficult stuff only after we'd become good at the easy stuff first. Or good enough, at least. As it concerns this subject, the easy stuff would be the 3 foot putt. And the most difficult stuff would be the 1 wood from the tee. The math is simple, 3 feet is much easier than 300 yards. Everything in between varies in difficulty gradually from easy to difficult. Keep that in mind.


Parallel skills.

As we learn the easy stuff, we learn other skills, parallel skills. Skills that can be transfered to the more difficult stuff. For instance, with the 3 foot putt, we learn that we are more successful if we strike the ball with a square clubface than not. This skill can be transfered to the 150 yard approach, for example. And it would work pretty much like it does with the 3 foot putt: We are more successful than not. These parallel skills are also easily and quickly learned because they are developed while learning the easy stuff. In turn, these parallel skills make the difficult stuff easier and quicker to learn later on.


Confidence. Get some.

Mentally, doubt is what makes us fail. Confidence is what makes us succeed. As we practice the easy stuff, we build confidence. We build it easily and quickly because we build it on easy stuff. "This is easy. I can do this." This is confidence. With confidence, we trust our skills. Our lack of confidence, doubt, would otherwise affect our skills negatively. We would doubt, hesitate and finally fail. It's difficult to shake our confidence when it was built on easy stuff. Because again, this is easy, we can do it.


The expert. At something.

Being an expert means to be better than most. Even to be the best. It means to know your stuff so well that you can be certain of the outcome. It's easier and quicker to become an expert at the easy stuff than it is with the difficult stuff. I may not be an expert with the driver but I've become quite the expert with that 8i. I did that with extensive practice and determined efforts. The result is that I am certain that when I hold a 8i in my hands, I will achieve success. Can you say the same for any part of your game? If not, pick something easy and practice it until you become an expert at it. Until you know everything there is to know about it inside and out. It will serve you well and it will boost your confidence.


Make the difficult easy.

Ever hear the saying "they make it look easy"? There's a lesson. Maybe they make it look easy because for them, it is. Maybe it is easy for them because they made it easy. They found the easy way to do the difficult stuff. Maybe that's why they make it look so easy to us. If it's too difficult, they probably don't do it anyway. Unless they absolutely must. Even then, they don't often do that. And when they do, they give themselves all the leeway they can so that the next shot is easier as a result. So when faced with a choice, choose the easy shot.


Make a habit of success.

When in doubt, take the easy way out. It's simple, when it's easy, success is common. Practice the easy stuff often. Practice success often. Make success your daily meal. Make it a habit. As the proverb says, habits die hard. Better make good habits than not.




The alternative.

We begin with difficult. We never graduate to more difficult because we're already there. When we want to progress, we must do it downward in difficulty. That is not an encouraging prospect for the ego and confidence. "Oh I can't do it, gotta go back to basics. Gotta go back to the newbie stuff." It takes us much longer to become any good at the difficult stuff. So it takes us longer to develop the parallel skills. So it takes us longer to apply them to other easier stuff. So it takes us longer to learn anything else. We fail often because it is difficult. Because we must learn everything at the same time. We must learn the difficult stuff, the parallel skills, boost our confidence, learn success, etc. All this in a constant environment where failure is much more common than success. Because we started with the difficult stuff first.

Basically, we went to university at age 5. We're still stuck for years because we lack all the necessary knowledge of all the easy stuff we bypassed to be here. Because we lack the confidence that we would have gained from becoming good at the easy stuff. Unless we think of our confidence in our ability to fail at the difficult stuff. "I can't do it and I'm certain of it: I tried countless times." Because we've never become an expert at anything except perhaps failing since that is so common. Because we can't improve what we haven't developed. Because we can't maintain what we don't know. Because we don't know how to make the difficult easy since we never learned the easy stuff to begin with. Because our habit is to fail.


A good challenge.

I don't mean to say that you shouldn't try the difficult stuff once in a while or even every day. I mean when you know you can't do it and still try, it's not a challenge anymore. It's a guaranteed slaughter for your confidence which in turn affects your skill. If you want to kill your confidence and build doubt, try stuff you know you will fail. And if you really want to feel bad about yourself, do it in a tournament where you have a few dollars on the line. Or a million. But the shot you know you can do, yet is still difficult enough to give you a good challenge, try it and try it often. I'd call this practice but you may just call it a challenging experience. Be prepared for failure anyway. And if you do fail, fall back to a shot you know you can do so that your confidence, and subsequently your skill, is not affected by this tryout, this challenging experience. A good challenge is one that has a chance of success. Not a guarantee of failure. Anyway, as you practice more and more those difficult shots and succeed more and more, you'll become better at it eventually. They will become easier to do. And that's what it's all about. To make it easier to do.


Easy does it.