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Lately, I’ve been battling what I’ve identified as a mid-life crisis. Not the typical crisis that leaves rational men questioning life, love and the style of car they drive, but one of much greater importance. This crisis is of the golf variety. Over the last few years, with family and business taking a larger and larger chunk of my time, golf has slowly become an afterthought. I’d go weeks without playing. Then it became months. And I didn’t miss it. In my job, I need to play a certain amount of golf, but pride won’t let me just go out and slash it around. For me, playing golf badly is like going to a beautiful beach on a sunny day and purposely pouring sand in my eyes. Over time, I found myself scrambling to play what I considered bad golf. It was embarrassing. It got to the point where I was turning down opportunities at amazing courses I would normally kill to play. For the first time, I could actually see how people could give up the game. I needed to be talked off the ledge because the game was making me miserable. I needed a plan. I thought about how stupid it would be to quit on something I love, but the experience had become unenjoyable. Part of what I do for a living is interview and work with a number of the best golf professionals in the business. Over the last few months, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with several about how to help others play better. Rarely have I applied any of this free knowledge to myself. I started to think about what they said and formulized a plan to re-energize my enthusiasm. Jamie Mulligan from Virginia Country Club in Long Beach is a golf professional. I’ve collaborated with him on numerous occasions. He preaches that the process dictates the outcome. With that in mind, I developed my process. For me to play better, I have to play and practice regularly. I set an achievable goal of two rounds per month and two full practice sessions. My wife actually approved of this plan if it meant I’d come home in a better mood. Before going to the range for the first time in nearly a year, I needed to hear from a professional how far my skills had eroded. Dr. Jerry Elwell is a golf instructor at the PGA of Southern California Golf Club who has worked with many of the best players in the world, including six Hall of Famers. What makes him great is that he gets as big a charge out of helping struggling hacks like myself. After a few swings he said, “You’ve been spending too much time behind the computer.” Tell me something I don’t know. He told me that my time away from golf had made me “too casual or slouchy” at address and that I needed to get “athletic” in the way I swung the club. He immediately widened my stance. He also noticed that I was trying to generate all my power with my arms instead of my rotation. He had the video of my swing to prove it. He simplified my movements with the focus on what felt like a much smaller swing. These two tweaks significantly reduced the amount of wild shots I hit each round. Next came actual practice and I knew that I no longer had all day to get it in. I needed to be focused and work on the shots that I would face on a regular basis. I go back to Mulligan’s teaching and his talk about “committing to the shot” and the importance of getting into a “mode” on the golf course where you can see the shot in your mind before hitting it. Practice sessions consisted of mostly short iron shots that allowed me to focus on the smaller, simpler swing I was implementing. I would only hit a handful of drivers. Each shot had a specific goal. I’d visualize a shot from the course and attempt to execute it. Most full-swing practice sessions lasted only about 30 minutes. From there, I’d move to the chipping green, an invaluable place to shave strokes. If the place you practice at doesn’t have a chipping green, find one that does. Most golfers hit fewer than half the greens in regulation during a round, so this is where you can see a huge impact. Again, since time is an issue for me, I focus on shots that I know I will see on the course, such as long pitch-and-runs and lofted pitches over bunkers. Pat Kemball from the SCGA course is another professional I worked with extensively last year on short game instructional articles. He advocates experimenting with different clubs around the green. He also likes to see the ball get on the green and start rolling as soon as possible. This increases the odds of getting the ball close. My putting suffers from rust nearly as much as my short game. “I’ve watched countless golfers spend hours on the range working on their swing then walk by the putting green only to hit a few putts,” Kemball said. “Some even bypass the practice green all together. With somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the game spent with your putter in your hand and so much emphasis placed on hitting the ball a long way, putting can easily be overlooked.” Kemball encourages players with limited time to keep their feel sharp by hitting lag putts from one fringe to another while trying to stop the ball as close to the edge of the green as possible. For short putts, he suggests taking eight balls and placing them in a circle about 3 feet away. Hole all the putts in the circle before moving back a foot and repeating the process. This helps with those short putts and provides practice from every angle. I can now get in a solid practice session in about 75 minutes and feel a sense of accomplishment when I’m done. It took me two practice sessions and two rounds before I felt comfortable on the course again and now I’m anxiously looking forward to my next round. Hopefully this simple plan can save some other stressed-out hack the misery of suffering through the golfer’s mid-life crisis. n |
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