Format: Medal (two-round competition)
Venue: [Home course]
Score: 76 (joint 2nd) & 90
Handicap mark: 3.3
Themes in reply: Disappointment within a round; being competitive
Hi Colin,
I hope the back is bearing up and you are safely back from the North.
Anyway, here’s the 2 rounds I played this weekend which will no doubt make interesting reading for you!
Saturday – weather was ok with a fairly stiff south easterly wind (down the first). It’s played of the back boxes (blue).
I played well on Saturday. I hit the ball well and putted really good too. I went out in 40 (4 over) having 3 putted the 1st and 7th. I also dropped a shot on the 6th and the 9th. After that I parred from the 10th to the 14th, had a great birdie on the 15th (index 1), parred the 16th and 17th, and had a bogey on the 18th for a total of 76 (4 over). The standard scratch for the day was 75 so I had a 76 – 4 for an net 72 meaning I came down 0.3 from 3.6 to 3.3 handicap.
I was particularly pleased with my holeing out – I single putted from the 12th through to the 16th – 5 on the bounce which really makes a difference.
The 76 leaves me in joint 2nd place with AB. The leader is on 74 and another player is on 77. It’s really between us 4.
Sunday – weather was heavy showers and the wind was much stronger than Saturday from the SW (across the 1st from the left)
1st – The 1st as you know is a difficult driving hole when the wind is strong off the sea. Nevertheless, I hit an ok drive and good iron to the green and made a 4.
2nd – I hit a poor drive, hacked out of the rough, put my approach onto the green but 3 putted. I must say here that the greens were disappointing. It’s the 2nd most important comp. in the club’s calendar and they hadn’t been cut. They are all different speeds depending on how recently they have been hollow tyned. I’m not much of a complainer but there were a number of unhappy players.
3rd – I made a good 4
4th – I hit a lovely 3 wood into the par 3 . However, I putted up to about 3’ and proceeded to miss. Instead of just hitting the ball for the back of the hole I tapped it and it wandered off to the right in the wind.
5th – (par 5) I hit 2 good shots and chipped up to about 5 ‘. To give you some idea of the difficulty of putting in the wind I now have a putt across the slope from left to right but the wind is blowing like hell from the right and I have no idea how much it will affect the ball. So I aim for the left lip but the ball just goes straight in the wind. So I par that.
6th – Par.
7th – Par.
8th – 3 putt for a bogey.
9th – I hit a really good 3 wood and I’m hitting 9 iron in. Its difficult to judge in the wind and I hit a good shot but it catches the slope and rolls into the bunker and I take a 5.
So I’m out in 41 which isn’t too bad but it gets a lot worse.
10th – The wind takes my drive right and as a result my second shot is straight into the wind coming in across the green which makes it narrow. I hit 7 iron really well but it goes straight into the bunker behind the green. I splash out ok but leave my first putt short and miss the next for a 6.
As I’m walking to the 11th tee the leader is going down 15. He comes over to tell me that he is out of the comp having picked up on the 7th . He hit his first out of bounds (which takes some doing) and picked up after he had taken 5 shots in a bunker and was still in there!
I wish he hadn’t spoken to me because I think I went a bit defensive.
11th – I had a 5 having hit a poor tee shot.
12th – 3 putted for a 6.
13th – I hit 2 really good shots to be just short of the green, thinned my chip through the green putted back to about 4 foot and missed the next one for a 6.
14th – I hit the ball into that f*****g bunker and took 4 to get out, 3 putted for an 8!
Now I know my chance has really gone so I start to play better.
15th – Miss a putt for a 4
16th – A good 4
17th – A birdie 4
18th – The drive is right into the wind which has got much stronger. I hit a really good drive, smash a 3 wood and I’m still 20 yards short!! I chip on but not close and take 2 putts.
So, that was a disappointing round. Because it was so windy and the best 2nd round score was by AB (81 and he won the comp). I’m pretty sure it will be a non qualifier as far as handicap is concerned.
Anyway, what was the difference between the 2 rounds? Ok it was much windier and we had a few squally showers but the main difference was the loss of momentum due to poor putting. I should have been 3 shots better for the first 9 (2 3 putts from nowhere and missed a tiddler on 4)
I also 3 putted the 10th and 12th and I had putts on the 11th and 13th that would have gone in the day before. So, I should have been maybe 5 over after 13 and then I would not have had an 8 on the 14th. So lets say I had a 5 on the 14th that puts me to 7 over and I drop 1 from there bogey, par, birdie, bogey. I would have been 8 over which is an 80 and I would have won the comp!!! It’s easy so why didn’t I do it then!!!!
Putting was difficult in the wind though and because the greens were slow you had to hit the putts to get them up to the hole which I didn’t do. Possibly my 3 putt on the 2nd put me off a bit. I hit it pretty hard because it was uphill and into the wind and it went 5 ‘ passed.
So let me know what you make of it all!!
Regards,
John
P.S I’m playing again on Wed at Radyr in Cardiff in a bit of a corporate day thingy – we won it last year.
Dear John,
Well, the first thing to say is: well played! It is always a great feeling (afterwards!) if you have been “in contention”. The second thing to say is: sorry I haven’t replied sooner – I went to see my sister in the South of France. Thinking about it, I could have accessed my e-mail from their but it never crossed my mind. It’s a shame because having put the effort into writing it all down it would have been nice if you could have had a “fresh” analysis.
Context
The thing that strikes me about your e-mail is its size. To have written in such detail means that you must have been disappointed, which in turn means that you must have been hopeful, which means that you must have thought that you were playing well enough to have a chance.
This is significant because you didn’t think that you were playing well enough a couple of weeks ago when some poor rounds culminated in a 27 points round (from 30 putts, mind you!). This means that you have recovered your form very quickly and, to such an extent, that your handicap has come down again!
My view is that you have recovered very quickly because you have stuck to the regime and not gone chasing “explanations” such as “hands ahead of the ball”. It is important for me to stress that I am not saying that your hands being ahead of the ball is not the reason that you lost a little form, what I am saying is that you cannot remedy or fix swing problems, you can only keep on giving your body and mind the tools it needs to find “timing” and then the faults will fix themselves.
Greens
It is disappointing when greens are not up to standard because it increases the influence of luck on the result. However, strictly from a competitive point of view, it is useful to consider such things as adverse conditions as being in your favour because you know that it is going to upset a number of your competitors more than it is going to upset you.
2nd round
4th – The missed putt from 3’ is connected to the putt that preceded it. I think that you are putting so well these days that a putt left 3’ from the hole is disappointing to you. That disappointment was still clouding your thinking when you hit the second putt, which is why you could tell it was a “thinking-less” “tap” towards the hole rather than a fully visualised/rhythm-feeling shot into the hole.
A target for your next few rounds is to face up to your disappointment as it happens. To do this, see the disappointment as a thing in its own right and something that has to be faced, rather like a difficult conversation with an employee or a family member. Do NOT try to work out what was the cause of the disappointment because this will tempt you to look for excuses rather than face up to the fact that you are disappointed.
So, you hit a belting 3-wood onto the green and are looking at a possible birdie and a definite par. For some reason you don’t strike the putt well and are now faced with a 3-footer. If you spend the next few moments analysing why you didn’t strike the putt as you would wish, then you won’t have time to face up to your disappointment and “clear” your head for the next task in hand.
Also, any analysis is worthless because you already know the routine for the next shot and that it is not going to change because of the last shot. Each shot routine is the same for every shot and INDEPENDENT of any other shot.
In other words, the ball is at position A and needs to get to position B. Analysing how the bloody hell it ended up at position A does not help the task of getting it to position B. In fact it is yet one more thing that gets in the way of the task of getting the ball to desired position B.
Getting back to the case in point: when the ball comes to rest after the first putt is struck, say to yourself in nice clear “head-words”: “f***** hell that was s**t”. Then smile to yourself, feel the sunshine on your face, enjoy the feeling of doing something you love and then start to absorb the line and speed of the next putt. Take a deep breath, remind yourself that without the routine there is no “timing” and without “timing” there is no holing. Then stroke the f****r in.
10th – Ditto.
Conversation with the first-round leader on the 11th tee
I don’t know what to make of this. I think it needs bundling up with “facing up to disappointment” and “the greens aren’t up to scratch”; that is, you need to learn how to turn “adverse” events to your advantage by seeing them for what they are and allowing the impact of the event to sharpen even more your conscious contribution to your subconscious’ efforts to produce perfect shots.
If you were NOT allowing non-productive and woolly concepts like “defensiveness” to cloud your thinking but you were simply walking up to the next shot and applying the routine and accepting the outcome, then the news of a competitor bombing out of the competition would have excited you and the extra adrenalin produced by the news would have helped you to maintain sharpness etc.
You understand how and why this routine works, rooted as it is in the belief that the golf swing is executed by the subconscious. If you commit to this belief then it is simply a matter of applying your intelligence to the task; in effect consciously forcing your subconscious to produce “timed” shots.
So, when the guy comes to you with the news that he is no longer a threat, you smile, offer polite condolences, say the “head words”: “f*****g great” loud and clear to yourself, take a deep breath, feel the wind on your face etc, etc. No other behaviour fits the model because no other behaviour will clear your thoughts and free up your conscious brain to allow it to feed your subconscious with the information it needs to produce the next perfect shot. You are down to -3.3, you have proved that it works!
The difference between the two rounds
In general terms there is very little difference; it just seems like it because the outcome is quite a few shots. In both rounds it sounds to me like you played well given the conditions.
In the second round you got a little “nervy” at crucial points and your routine lost its focus and sharpness, thereby causing your “timing” to just lose its edge. It’s fractional, even when it amounts to 14 shots.
Any further analysis will take you back to “hands ahead of the ball” baloney and dark alleys. Much better to face up to the fact that when you got into contention you “tightened-up”. You have the tools to prevent this happening, so you have to ask yourself why you didn’t use them. My view is that under pressure you still revert to old think and the result is nervousness because you lose clarity of purpose. If you learn to stay clear in your thinking then the nervousness will become an advantage because it will make you even sharper. After all, nervousness is a completely natural phenomenon, we are meant to be nervous, it makes us take action. The trick is to see it for what it is, embrace it and use it for our own needs. Remember, the effects of nervousness is exactly what happens when you get attacked by a sabre-toothed tiger, it is just that it all happens too quickly for you to identify it as nervousness. But it is the same chemicals looking to produce the same effect ie “throw the fucking thing and make sure you hit him!!”.
Putting in difficult conditions
The danger to your score presented by adverse conditions comes in the form of the fact that your conscious brain will delight in using the excuse of adverse conditions to take over from your sub-conscious the process of hitting putts.
In your e-mail you use phrases such as: “the greens were disappointing”, “they hadn’t been cut”, “all different speeds depending on how recently they had been hollow tyned”, “a number of players were unhappy”, “to give you some idea of putting into the wind”, “I have no idea how much it will affect the ball”, “I aim for the left lip but the ball just goes straight in the wind”, “ and because the greens were slow you had to hit the putts to get them up to the hole which I didn’t do”, “Possibly my 3 putt on the 2nd put me off a bit. I hit it pretty hard because it was uphill and into the wind and it went 5’ past.”.
All these comments are undoubtedly true, and completely unhelpful. They are unhelpful because they are conscious thoughts and so would have definitely clouded your thinking on the day. This is how you putt:
1. As you approach the green you make sure you have accepted the outcome of the last shot. If you are disappointed then just face it. No analysis. Check you are “clear” of the last shot by forcing yourself to observe some natural phenomena like the wind, or sun, or clouds, or wetness. SMILE!!! Never, ever forget that you are a very lucky boy to be doing this, and that it would be disrespectful to virtually the whole human race if you weren’t doing your utmost to enjoy it.
2. As you get the putter out and mark the ball etc, allow your recently “cleared” head to absorb the conditions. Do NOT turn these into concrete judgements because if you do your conscious brain will hijack them. So, if the greens are obviously fast, do NOT say to yourself “these greens are fast today”; do NOT form the words that make up the sentence, allow the thought to exist as a “word-free” judgement.
Also, the time it takes to form the observation into a judgement will stop you absorbing other relevant information. Also, the first thought you turn into a concrete judgement will dominate all the other observations you make.
To absorb the conditions you need to let it all simply occur to you. You need to stay relaxed and be confident that your subconscious is working overtime on making sense of the “conditions soup” that you are giving it. If you allow your conscious anywhere near this process you will risk a less than perfect shot. Divert your conscious’ attention by giving it the task of remembering these instructions!
3. Do NOT get hooked on “line”. Build up a “sense” of the line without coming to a concrete verbalised judgement. At some point you will be able to “see” the line of the putt all the way to the hole. You need to let this come to you. Don’t panic. Relax, and it will come.
4. Also allow the speed of the putt to come to you. Again, avoid concrete judgements at all costs. Do NOT think words like “hard” or “slow” or “tap”. Just get a sense of how hard the putt needs to be struck. If it is a long putt then let the distance contribute to the sense of speed that is going to be required, but do NOT turn an observation into a “worded” judgement such as: “this is a long way, I’ll have to hit it quite hard”.
5. When you are ready, settle over the putt. Do NOT fuss over your stance (alignment). If you have developed a clear vision of the line then your body will position itself correctly. If it doesn’t feel right, move away from the putt, re-visualise the line and try again.
6. When you are over the putt, visualise the ball rolling into the hole at the required speed.
7. Bring to the forefront of your mind the amount of oomph with which you want to hit the ball to get it to roll at the same pace as you have just visualised.
8. Get that feeling of oomph to settle on the ball so that it feels as if it is stopping your putter moving away, as if it was a weak magnetic field.
9. Bring to mind a sense of the pendulumic rhythm that is going to be your subconscious’ main weapon in its attempts to produce “timing”.
10. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
11. Swing the putter away from the ball and sense it leaving the gentle “tug” of the weak magnetic field that is the oomph you have imagined being there.
12. At the top of the backswing, get the sense that you are at the top of a child’s swing. That is, that you have come to a temporary standstill but that you know absolutely that gravity is going to pull you back to the centre of the swing. It might even be the feeling that you get when you are about to jump down off something; you have given yourself to gravity but you haven’t started moving yet. You can feel the pull of gravity it is just that it is going to get you moving in the very next instant.
13. When you have definitely got that feeling of the putter wanting to go back to the ball then just let it go, as if it is going by itself. [It is worth mentioning here that from personal experience I have noticed that when I get this to really work, it feels as if the putter is decelerating towards the ball. My only explanation for this counter-intuitive sensation is that it is some sort of “physical illusion” caused by the mind sensing the movement a split-second after the movement has happened!! I don’t know for sure, but I do know that when I get that decelerating feeling after the top of the cliff feeling then the results are spectacular.]
I realise, of course, that this looks like a huge, complicated process. But, in essence, it is simply elaborating on a few common sense principles:
- Do NOT turn the subconscious art of putting into a conscious activity
- Give your subconscious everything it needs; space, time, freedom and information (in the way that it likes to receive information ie as a soup of hazy impressions)
- Be absolutely confident that if you “time” the putt then it is going to go very close, no matter how difficult the conditions are!
Taking responsibility
This is the list of quotes from your e-mail that I mentioned earlier: “the greens were disappointing”, “they hadn’t been cut”, “all different speeds depending on how recently they had been hollow tyned”, “a number of players were unhappy”, “to give you some idea of putting into the wind”, “I have no idea how much it will affect the ball”, “I aim for the left lip but the ball just goes straight in the wind”, “ and because the greens were slow you had to hit the putts to get them up to the hole which I didn’t do”, “Possibly my 3 putt on the 2nd put me off a bit. I hit it pretty hard because it was uphill and into the wind and it went 5’ past.”
Put all together in one string like this it is easy to see how easy it is to get your thinking cloudy under the pressure of competition (and being in contention, of course). This is completely natural and barely noticeable at the time.
To try to minimise the amount that it happens you have to keep reminding yourself of how it all works:
- The ball is lying at position A
- It needs to get to position B
- I know what I have to do to get it to position B, and I know why I want to get it to position B
- I have to take responsibility for making myself only do those things that I know will maximise the chances of the ball moving from position A to position B
- I have to take responsibility for making myself NOT do those things that I know will reduce the chance of a favourable outcome.
- It also might be helpful to remind yourself that once you have decided to enter the competition then you have committed to playing the conditions as you find them. Spending time coming to an opinion about the conditions, sharing that opinion with others, justifying that opinion to yourself by spending time gathering supporting evidence, is all a waste of energy, terribly distracting and will not help you find “timing”. Therefore, take responsibility and do NOT do it. It doesn’t help, it doesn’t work, and at worst it has the feel of looking for excuses in case you might need them.
Your responsibility to the rest of us is to enjoy yourself. If that means moaning about the conditions (and it does to a surprising number of people!), then carry on by all means. If enjoying yourself means using your brains to try to hit a long succession of perfect shots, then do that.
You know that you have mental strength. With a slight re-think you can start maximising the benefit of that natural competitiveness when you are in the throes of putting together a round in wind and rain and randomly tyned greens (f*****g groundsman!).
Regards,
Colin
PS I know you are pure of spirit and so I don’t expect you to pay much heed to what comes next; I mention it only as a matter of intellectual titillation.
Coming to concrete opinions about conditions during a round is counter-productive as I hope I have shown. Of course, if it is counter-productive for you so is it counter-productive for your competitors! This simple enough observation can be powerful in the wrong hands.
I am sure that you have come across plenty of players who use this type of “psychology” to affect their opponent’s play. For instance, you walk on to the first green and tell your opponent how concerned you are about the state of the greens, the general policy of the club towards its major competitions, the stupidity of random tyning etc, etc. The effect on the opponent is that he is forced to consider these observations, and if he is polite enough to formulate a reply then he will have to form opinions of his own.
One of the great “talkers” was Lee Trevino, who used this method of distracting his opponent so habitually that he ended up not knowing he was doing it.
The cleverest trick played on me was by a darts player who now plays golf. He came in to the pub and joined the little comp we had set up for the evening. I was unknown to him but it was obvious I could play a little. As soon as it became apparent that I was going to end up being his main competitor, he proceeded to “big me up” but beyond the level I knew I was capable of; in other words to the onlookers he made out that I was, in his opinion, really good. When it came time to play him, I was amazed by how much I was adversely affected by his public over-praising. Simply put, I couldn’t live up to his hype. Very clever.
