F-O-R-E Minute Friday - Stop Compounding Errors: Play Smart, Not Perfect

So look, I want to say let's be real here, but I never liked that phrase.

But let's be real here for a second, right? Let's talk about what happens right after a bad shot, right? Like right after you hook the opening drive last Sunday when you're playing with your buddies.

You know, talking about a friend, obviously, right? But look, we've all been there, right? I mean, you step onto the course, you're ready to crush it, and then bang, there's that hook, or bang, there's that chunk, right? Or just any, you know, insert any bad shot, right? Maybe even two bad shots.

And now all of a sudden, it feels like the whole round, right, is unraveling faster than you could even say like Mulligan, right? right but but here's the really really interesting thing and here's the deal golf is definitely a game of misses even for the professionals right if you think about it right if i let's say let's say i shot 72 right and if i shot 72 most of those shots right they wouldn't be amazing right they'd be middle of the road right And, you know, I'm thinking like four or five or to seven out of a scale of 10, right? One to 10, right? And then there are a couple that are going to be absolutely amazing, right? That magical almost, that 110 bunker shot, 110 yard, you know, green saw or a fairway bunker shot, you know, that you landed within six feet of the pit.

Right.

So you got two of those, no doubt.

Right.

And at least two of them are going to be absolute, like, you know, for lack of a better term, dumpster fires.

OK, so the key isn't avoiding these bad shots entirely.

It's knowing how to handle them.

And the first step after any bad shot is trying to catch or catching your reaction, right? Are you talking smack to yourself as an example? Are you slumping your shoulders, right? Do you have this like gremlin kind of feeling, right? That inner critic that's getting loud on one of your shoulders, right? And if you do, right, we got to shut it down, right? Absolutely got to shut it down.

so one of the things that i was sharing with a student which kind of was the onus for this uh for this podcast because i was telling about what i did as as a competitive golfer and when i hit bad shots and how i dealt with it and he thought hey that's a pretty good idea i'm going to try that and he came back to me a week and a half later and was amazed how well it was but one of my go-to's is like keeping my eye line up as an example right so i used to have a coach who used to call it like the bogey train like when when I would hang my head and shuffle my feet and slump my shoulders after I missed a shot.

But when I lifted my head or put my shoulders back, walked tall, and that was my very next move, well, you think you know where I'm going with this.

I didn't have as many bad shots.

And I kept my eye line up.

And you'll hear pros say this as well, right? They keep their eye line above the crowd, let's say.

They don't make any contact with the crowd, right? And they're not even focusing on anything except themselves and what they're doing, right? So you also have to look for positives in everything you do, right? My example, what if I hooked it into the rough? maybe I got a better angle to the pin, right? Maybe not, but maybe I did.

If you chunked one, right, maybe you could say to yourself, you know, well, look, at least my balance was solid, right? If you thin one, right, at least it went straight right up the middle of the fairway, okay? But finding these silver linings, okay, rewires your brain for optimism.

And it's a proven fact and a proven skill that it will absolutely have a positive impact on your score and quite frankly, your sanity, right? And I think you should remember, look, that one bad shot doesn't mean you're gonna have a bad hole or a bad round, right? Or even a bad hole, right? Or that you need some kind of swing over hole, all right? If you think about like, You know, amazing athletes, you know, the Jerry West of the world.

He has a show on prime time or prime video right now.

That's amazing.

The guy was absolutely an amazing basketball player, right? He didn't lose his mechanics after one missed, you know, free throw or one missed, you know, three pointer, right? And yes, they had three pointer back then toward the end of his career, right? But you have to trust, and I hate saying this in Philadelphia, but you have to trust the process, right? Unless, right, a pattern of misses start to tell you or say otherwise, right? So one or two bad shots are not a pattern, okay? Right? Me hooking the ball, all right, three or four shots out of 77 is not a pattern.

okay so it's it's frustrating there's no doubt about it but i hit some amazing shots as well right and 77 is not a bad shot not a bad score okay so listen bad shots are going to happen right tour players this is a this is a stat that always blows people away tour players only average three birdies per round amateurs are a good if you're around a 10 or 12 handicap you average about one right And if you're above that double digit threshold, right, you don't average any.

Right.

But with those odds, why are you going to be wasting any energy at all to be perfect? Right.