Procrastination destroys golf scores
Procrastination. Maybe it's just "laziness." Sometimes that’s the case. However, many times, there’s an underlying cause to "laziness" that’s actually keeping you from doing the thing that you want to do in life. Today, since we are a golf website (newsflash!), we are going to look specifically at golf and why many, many golfers find themselves delaying their practice habits, which actually leads to higher scores, less fun, and increased frustration in the game of golf.
1) A fear of criticism from family, friends, or even someone random at the local driving range
Now, more than ever, we are living in a generation that is overly quick to provide their opinion. Our culture is much more reactive than it’s ever been (thanks, social media). If it’s been a bad day on the links, we want to sell the clubs. If it’s a good day, we want to enter tournaments and start playing competitively. Yet, many times, what we need to do is respond.
There are always going to be those who are quick to supply you their opinion on what they think is wrong about your swing or your scoring mentality when you’re on the golf course:
“Why are you going for the green here?”
“You are so over the top. That’s why you hit it fat.”
“You’re playing the wrong tee box”
Often times, it’s important to know, that those who are quick to offer their opinion are often viewing you through the lens of themselves. For instance, if they are working on their backswing, the first thing they are going to examine about your swing is either A) how great your backswing is (which leads to a compliment) or B) how your backswing really needs some work. Often times, what they are working on probably isn’t what you need to be working on. Let’s be further honest—many times, it’s not even what they need to be working on within their golf game.
Criticism, especially constructive criticism in relation to your golf game, should only come from a person you really trust with your golf game. Whether that’s PureGolf or somewhere else, a criticism should be followed with instruction on how to better it with a complete roadmap/plan attached to it.
That said, criticism may come from yourself simply due to how much time, money, and effort you’re putting into your game. Almost like there’s this expectation that you have to get good really quickly to justify what you’re doing with all your free time. Golf, as great of a game as it may be, is something that rarely rewards you quickly. It’s almost a reflection of life in how slowly it takes to get rewarded for all the hard work. When does life ever really go the way we think it should go and how quickly it should get there? Not all that often.
That said, let others speak. Let them offer their criticism (which more than often is a criticism of self being projected onto you), then move on. Let it go in one ear and out the other. If you really hold onto it, more criticism will follow (from them or from others), and you’ll be holding onto way too much to really advance your game, often times leading to golf paralysis, which causes you to have seemingly thousands of thoughts over a ball so you don’t even know how to swing the club anymore. If you truly have a roadmap for success, a short term insult/critique is simply a pebble in the road—pebbles ultimately mean nothing in the long haul. However, the roadmap also frees you up with your family, friends, and that random dude at the driving range. It allows you to brush it off, reset your mind on the roadmap, and buckle in for what’s ahead.
2) Chasing "Perfection"
Dr. Bob Rotella said it best with the title of one of his books—“Golf is not a game of perfect.” It doesn’t get much simpler or more true than that simple statement. Though, personally, I love the way Brad Faxon, debatably the greatest putter to ever live, rephrased it: “If we throw away expectations, we’d be better.”
That’s really the hardest part about golf, isn’t it? We expect ourselves to pick up the club after a few hours of work and be able to hit the ball in the middle of the clubface every time.
Do yourself a favor. Imagine some kid fresh out of high school walking into your office--at a position in a company you've held for YEARS-- swiping all the sheets of paper off your desk, rearranging all of your pens in your cup, brushes you out of the chair so he can sit down in it and attempt to guess the password of your computer. You’d just sit there, staring, completely baffled by what was going on in front of you. Who the heck does this guy think he is? You, now completely astounded, decide to speak up after a few seconds of this—“Whatdya doing…?” The high school student, lifts his eyes away from the computer, turns his head, looking squarely at you, brushing his long hair out of his eyes, smugly replies, “I’ve been taking Algebra 2 for a couple months now. Sooo, I’m coming for your job. I should be able to do it no problem.” He rolls his eyes because you're distracting him. Then, resets his gaze on your computer screen. You laugh it off, fully knowing a high schooler could never perform your job, but it’s actually kind of cute that he thinks he can. Heck, what does Algebra 2 even have to do with your job? Literally, nothing.
This is what amateur golfers do in relation to professional golfers every single day. We demand we hit the ball like them, achieving roughly similar results. We look up how far the average PGA player hits their 7 irons because, we too, feel we can hit it that far. Yet, the fact of the matter is that we haven’t put a mere pinch of time into our games when compared to their games. We, for some reason, think that because we’ve seen them strike the ball so purely that it will come easier and quicker to us than it ever did to them.
Do you understand how insane that is? It’s worse than a high schooler taking over your office and attempting to do your job. It’s a slap in the face to professional golfers all across the globe who compete for millions of dollars every week.
Golf is not a game of perfect. In fact, the hard truth is that where you spend time developing your golf game will cause other areas of your game to regress. So, different parts of your game are in a constant state of improvement, maintenance, or regression across all areas. That’s why this game is so flipping hard!
Can someone actually tell me what "perfect" means inside a round of golf?
We’ve actually asked golfers to tell us what a perfect round of golf is and the answers are all over the place—is it a score? Is it hitting 14 fairways and 18 greens with only 1 putts? Is it shooting a 72? Is it shooting 59? Nobody knows because we all have different opinions on what “perfection” is inside this great game.
Though, the ironic thing is that every golfer is trying to do is the exact same—we aren’t trying to make our good shots better. We are trying to make our bad shots become better and better. Within a game where literally every possible little thing that could matter (grip size, grip material, weather, shaft length, shaft material, downhill lie, uphill lie, flat lie, type of grass, etc) does indeed matter and impact you in some way—we simply should want the bad to become.... less bad. The freeing part of it all? All this could naturally happen if we simply let go of expectations.
Imagine a round of golf where you just went out, swung the club, and wherever the ball landed, you just got to smile, walk towards it, grab a different club, and swing again. That’s the fun we all need and deserve! That’s expectationless golf—a cure for any perfectionist.
3) No Clear Direction (plus, the secret formula for success)
Almost every golfer in the world is a victim of this one due to loosely based goals and insurmountable time frames that we randomly place on ourselves. Golfers are, often times, inefficient at goal setting. Simply saying,
“My goal is to be more consistent,”
“I want to hit the ball longer”
“I want to break 100”
aren’t very good goals. Every golfer in the world has those goals. Quite frankly, those goals all happen naturally if you just stick with the game with a consistent practice and playing schedule. The really important thing to do is learning how to set commitments so goals are reached.
Goal setting starts with commitments—and many times, those commitments need to be given by someone who understands you, your schedule, and your skill level in golf. It’s something that needs to be as simple as being able to check the box at the end of an event that you performed. Commitments lead to goals being checked off; and those commitments may need to be performed for years in order to check off one goal. It’s a simple formula:
I will (insert commitment here) so I can (insert goal here).
Is there a timeline attached to it? When is my commitment due by?
The goal is then met as a result of the multiple commitments being completed over and over and over again.
Let’s give you an example to put that into perspective: a brand new golfer has the goal of breaking 80. How must they go about breaking 80? They need to allocate time to building a swing, but also to short game (pipping), as well as putting. They need time at the driving range as well as the short game area as well as the putting green. They also need access to equipment that fits them. They also need access to some decent, local golf course—so is that just going on a website and booking public tee times; or, is it a matter of becoming a member at a club? How often should they play vs. how often should they practice? What about tournaments? And what about instruction?—they’ll probably need lessons somewhere in this journey.
Within that goal of breaking 80 are several commitments that need to take place.
Above all, that’s why PureGolf is elite in terms of what we do. We value our clients’ time and money more than any other golf company in the world. We provide our clients a roadmap for success that starts with their homework—sometimes the homework is fun and easy; other times, it’s a grind on work that simply must be done to better your game. When they’ve completed their homework (and only then), do they need to come back and see us. If they come back sooner, they’re simply going to be wasting their time and hard-earned money. That’s part of the personalized roadmap we provide.
If golfers became more long-term thinkers (more of those who respond and are capable of playing at a higher level, fully recognizing there’s no “quick fix”) vs. those who are short-term thinkers (golfers who are far more reactionary, constantly on the brink of quitting, and often suffer from inconsistencies across their golf games and way of thinking. They constantly search for the quick fix that never can be found), golf would become far easier with less pressure on the golfer to perform with this ridiculous expectations of self.
The roadmap is the ultimate cure for procrastination--it leads to saving money, saving time, better ball striking, more confidence, and ultimately your best scores you will ever shoot.
TL;DR:
(too long; didn't read)
A Golfer who follows our formula for reaching goals will dramatically lower their procrastination habits; they will commit to long term goals, they will stop seeking perfection, and they will have a clear, defined roadmap leading to a much higher success rate when it comes to achieving their own, personal success in golf.
The formula is:
I will (insert commitment here) so I can (insert goal here).
Is there a timeline attached to it? When is my commitment due by?
The goal is then met as a result of the multiple commitments being completed over and over and over again.
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