Your Average Golf Shot

No matter how much we practice, build our game, learn about it, know what we are capable of doing, and when to do what, there is no escaping the moment of truth -- the time when you have to take the club away and hit the shot. Golf, no matter what your level of skill, is played in this moment. To make golf easy, you need to make this moment as easy on yourself as possible.

How do you do that? How do you make the beginning of a shot a movement full of confidence rather than infected with doubt? Quite simply, you play well within yourself, well within your capabilities. You play shots you know you can hit, which do not require your best, but only your average skills.

Reflect for a moment. I’m sure you’ve been through this before, many times. At the driving range, you hit one shot after another that is as fine as you can hit You begin to push ahead to expand your limitations, and often succeed. After all, that’s what the range is for -- not only to maintain the skills you do have, but to take them to a new level.

But when it comes time to play, things change. You’re not out there to find out what you possibly could do, but what to apply what you know, really know, that you can do. That’s a very different way of hitting a golf ball. You get conservtive. You don’t go all out, you don’t play on the edge. Your game closes in to what you feel absolutely sure you can do.

That’s why, for example, while we’re learning an improvement on some technique, but have not yet mastered it, we abandon the improvement and go back to what we know, even though we are aware it is what we are trying to move away from. We go back to what we have confidence in being able to do it well, even if it is not what we actually want to do.

There is an average quality of shot that you hit, not your very best, not your worst, either, but one you know you can toss off whenever you want to. That is the shot you should play golf with. Asking more of yourself than that seldom pays off. Trying to hit shots that rate nine or ten is often what leads to hitting shots that rank one or two.

As you take the club away, don’t expect great things of yourself. Hit your average shot, one that gets you in the middle six. That will prevent the pressure to perform from becoming too great. It will lead to a more satisfying and relaxing round, and I might also say, a lower score.

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