Change Your Beliefs and Change Your Game

I have learned one thing during the past thirty-five plus years of working with golfers at all levels.  The people that struggle the most and have the hardest time getting better are actually held back by their own beliefs.  The hardest thing to accomplish when working with average golfers is to get them to stop doing something they are trying hard to do.

I finally came up with a quote that sums it up fairly accurately:

“The difference between good ball strikers and poor ball strikers is that good ball strikers are trying to do the right things with a high degree of success and poor ball strikers are trying to do the wrong things with an equally high degree of success.”

Most people that take up golf are introduced to it by friends and family that pass on bad advice like keeping your head down or keeping your left arm straight or one of my real favorites, “try to take the club straight back.”  All of this gets ingrained along with other bad tips from friends, plus all the bad information in golf publications and the internet.  They just never have a chance so they get more frustrated.

The really frustrating part is when someone does give them good advice they generally try to fit it in with their old beliefs which seldom works out well.  The first step in that process is understanding that it is NOT about swinging the club.  It is about hitting the ball.  If you improve your ball striking your swing will improve.  Working on improving what your swing looks like may never get you to good ball striking.

Two Solutions

Solution one, which is the best, is to find a good instructor that will take a personal interest in your progress and success.  You will know you have a good one immediately because he will ask questions to learn about you as a person and a student and will help improve the things you are doing well.

You will also know you need to keep searching if he is more interested in selling you a package of lessons than learning about what is going on with you.  If he treats you as just the next appointment find someone else.

Solution two is for those individuals that are determined, for whatever reasons, to DIY.  You have a much tougher route to success because it is so hard to find good information from any source.  Save yourself a lot of money and frustration by just ignoring all the claims that this video or that DVD will fix you.  It almost never does regardless who is promoting it.

Buy yourself two books. “Practical Golf” by John Jacobs and then move on to “Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect” by Dr. Bob Rotella.  If you want to become a scratch player then I might add another several to the list but those two will get you to a level of very enjoyable golf.

Cover Photo via Flickr