By Lisa A Mason

Playing bad golf isn’t always a bad thing. Many people are or know someone that’s a bad golfer. Just because you don’t hit the ball straight or on target each time doesn’t mean you can’t learn to play good golf. Learning to play golf your way is one of the best ways to go from bad golf to good golf. Bad golfers need to practice on making their game better but in the meantime can play their game well.

One of the most common problems that bad golfers have is they don’t set up to the ball properly. Grip, alignment and posture are the three most important things you need to remember when you approach the ball. This is where bad shots are made. As a bad golfer, you need to work on making these three things the priority for your golf game.

Until you learn to fix these problems however you can take your bad game and use it to play good golf. This only works however if you’re consistent with hitting bad shots. If you hit the ball to the right every time then you aim left of your target. You’ll want to avoid aiming so far left that you’ll end up in the trees, water or sand. Aim the ball well enough that if you do hit a straight shot, you can still play it.

Knowing the course and how far you hit each club is a great way to play good golf. You might not be able to beat good golfers that hit solid shots but you can keep yourself from scoring in the 100′s. If you consistently bogey every hole that’s a good thing even if it’s considered bad by most golfers. Consistency in golf is a good thing even if it’s consistently bad. Bad golfers can play golf just as well as others if they have consistency.

Another thing to avoid when you’re actually playing is to not try to correct your golf swing or anything else when you’re playing a round. Many bad golfers and even good golfers try to correct their game in the middle of a round. This is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. If you’re a professional golfer with years of training under your belt then you can fix your game on the fly. Everyone else needs to work on their game on the driving range and practice greens.

Remember that consistency will keep you playing better golf even if it’s bad. Remember that planning ahead and keeping a positive attitude will also help you perform better. Play golf your way and learn to play it well. Just because you think someone has a good golf game doesn’t mean that trying to copy it will make you a better golfer.

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By Roy Palmer

Have you ever had the experience that you putted before you were ready? You were in the middle of thinking about playing it and then all of a sudden, oops, there it goes. What you thought was going to be a carefully thought out putt just turned into a bit of a howler. You get the feeling it wasn’t you who just played the shot but some mischievous outside force that had taken over your actions.

Let’s take this away from the course for a moment and look at the same phenomena in a different situation; getting out of bed. In his book, Principles of Psychology (1890), William James wrote

“We know what it is to get out of bed on a freezing morning in a room without a fire, and how the very vital principle within us protests against the idea… We think how late we shall be, how the duties of the day will suffer; we say, “I must get up, this is ignominious,” and so on. But still the warm couch feels too delicious, and the cold outside too cruel, and resolution faints away and postpones itself again and again just as it seemed on the verge of the decisive act.

Now how do we ever get up under such circumstances? If I may generalize from my own experience, we more often than not get up without any struggle or decision at all. We suddenly find that we have got up. A fortunate lapse of consciousness occurs, we forget both the warmth and the cold; we fall into some reverie connected with the day’s life, in the course of which the idea flashes across us, “Hello! I must lie here no longer” – an idea which at that lucky instant awakes no contradictory or paralyzing suggestions, and consequently produces immediately its appropriate motor effects. It was our acute consciousness of both the warmth and the cold during the period of struggle which paralyzed our activity. This case seems to me to contain in miniature form the data for an entire psychology of volition.”

This experience is put down to what scientists call ideomotor movement, an unconscious or involuntary bodily movement made in response to a thought or an idea rather than to a sensory stimulus.
It’s also often referred to as “mischief-making” and has a role in dowsing, playing with an Ouija board and, I believe, in those crucial moments before a putt.

The feeling that the process has just run away from us and taken control out of our hands is because we’re thinking too far ahead. By focusing on how we’re going to do the activity before we actually need to perform that activity sets everything in place long before the muscles are needed – a bit like revving your engine at the lights.

The actions that will carry out the movement are ready, waiting and gaining momentum as you think of taking your putt. A threshold is reached and suddenly the activity happens. Unfortunately, you weren’t able to consciously decide when you were going to do it for yourself. So how can you prevent this mischief-making activity at the very moment you really don’t need it? You have to be in the moment and focused on the here and now. In this state of mind you’re not racing ahead of yourself and queuing up those movements that will kick in unexpectedly.

When you’re over the ball, be aware of your breathing, the movement of your ribs and the toes in your socks. If you’ve measured up your shot you no longer need to think about it; it’s taken care of. This way you can stay in the moment and focus only on the task in immediate hand and consciously decide when you’re ready to putt.

You can practice this before you even get out of bed in the morning! When you wake up tomorrow see if you can consciously choose the moment you get out of bed. Note how you can achieve this and apply the same technique on the green. See if it doesn’t help.

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By Bob E. Jones

The most aggravating mistake in golf is for your 8-foot birdie putt to be tracking right at the hole — and stop six inches short. Now doing that once, well, that’s golf. But if you do that all the time, if you leave strokes on the course like that every time you play, here’s how to get those seven inches that you need.

Fear. You’re afraid you’ll hit the ball too far past the hole so you hold back. If you hit the ball past the hole, in your mind there’s nothing to stop the ball from going ten feet before it stops rolling. It won’t, you’re a better putter than that, but you see no obstacle beyond the hole that would prevent the ball from just rolling and rolling, and that makes you nervous.

So you settle for leaving it short. This becomes your psychological comfort zone. Let’s change your mind. Hit practice putts that will deliberately miss the hole and end up about two feet beyond. Practice like this in the 6 to 15-foot range.

Use just one ball. Watch the ball go past the hole. Get accustomed to seeing the ball go by and not being bothered by it. Next, walk up and hit the ball in the hole. Convince yourself that you can make the comebacker.

Do this over and over to convince you that you have the skill to hit the ball past the hole and leave yourself with a slam dunk coming back.

The second reason you leave putts short is that you’re concentrating too much on line, trying so hard hit the ball on the line you’ve chosen that you hit the putt too delicately and it doesn’t get to the hole.

To combat this mistake, do two things. First, practice hitting putts that go by the hole, as you just read. Then, find a spot on the green about six inches from your ball, along the chosen line, and putt the ball across that spot. If you do, I guarantee the ball will go where you intended, and get to the hole.

One more thought. You might try playing a round of golf with only one objective in mind — to hit every putt hard enough to either go in the hole or past it if it misses. Don’t be concerned about how far past the hole it goes, don’t worry about your score. Just get the ball past if it misses.

You might hit a few home runs early in the round, but if you keep at it, you will adjust quickly and start making a few. That will get you playing offense on the green, and that is how to make putts and lower your score.

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