Re: Hello and Greetings to All!!

hi sam, welcome to GTO. i newbie too to this forum & golf too. try post on http://www.golf-tuition-online.com/g...struction.html and someone should be able to query you to figure why your handicap isn't going down. good luck & have fun j g

Re: Hello and Greetings to All!!

Welcome Sam.

As a 5, you probably are doing one of a few things.

1) Either have a great short game and putting, but finding that you are in the weeds a bit too often to cash in on that great putter and wedge.

2) Have a steady tee ball and approach, but collapse around the hole.

3) The whole game is all there, but somewhere along the ride, you wonder into a bad hole, and that sends you into a 3 hole flaming death spiral only to pull it out in the last few holes...

So, I am sure it is something inbetween, completly different, or right on the button...let us know so we can help steer you around.

Re: Hello and Greetings to All!!

Hello Greg,

I think you are daed on the money.

I am a great driver and iron player with very good putting skills but I lack to have any chipping skills.

My friends tell me that I chip worse than a beginner. Whenever I miss the green on my approach, I can't seem to get up and down.

It's not that I don't practice chipping, I practice alot and do very well when I practice but for some reason when on the course, I seem to either duff it FAT or knock it thin over the green. I think it's more of a mental thing than skill.

I get very nervous over the ball on the course but during practice my mind is very calm and body is very loose.

This chipping mental issue is costing me at least 4 to 5 strokes per round.

How can I fix this mental issue? Do I need to go to one of those mental doctors for golf?

Please help....

Sam

Re: Hello and Greetings to All!!

There is no question about the confidence issue...any shot you know about having not executed well in the past will sit in the forfront of your mind all the time. And when you are on the course and already know you you have a problem chipping, have make bogey after bogey off the green from 12 feet away ...(you know the rest).

Better performance breeds confidence. Confidence alone does not necessarily create better performance -- if your technique is flawed, but you are confident over it, you still have a flaw...where proper technique without confidence is simply a consistancy issue, and that is so much better to deal with.

So, the question is how to start to build some confidence in your chipping? (because what you said is that you have proper technique, right? Otherwise, if you have flaws in techique, we need to fix that first).

You said, "It's not that I don't practice chipping, I practice alot and do very well when I practice but for some reason when on the course, I seem to either duff it FAT or knock it thin over the green. I think it's more of a mental thing than skill."

Let's start with your practice routine. I am going to assume you take a bag of balls to a practice hole, go through a few rounds, mixing up the distances and types, hitting low runners and high floppers to various holes...and that is good. You should. You need to know what each shot type requires, and the different methods to execute them. An hour later, you get tired/bored and call it a day, happy you practiced and "hope" it carries over to the course. (Help me out if I am off base here...you may be doing more then this or less, I'm just guessing here)

But what is missing? Any sense of pressure.

In my section on Comprtition drills: Golf Lessons - GregJWillis
I talk about creating artificial competition in your head using simple games...creating consequences, and if you do not succeed in the drill's objective, you start over.

So this is your first task...to practice with consequences.