Archive for March 11th, 2011

If you want to play better golf, focus is the key!

Ever notice how targets in golf get progressively smaller the closer you get to the hole? Here is what I mean. On the tee box, your target is the fairway. Most fairways are 20 to 50 yards wide. Approach shots are played into greens which are smaller targets than fairways. Once on or around the green, you try to chip or lag putt the ball to within a few feet of the cup. And then finally, the ball is played into a hole that is 4.25 inches in diameter. That is a drastic change in target size and it happens on all 18 holes.

Here is another interesting observation. A missed shot when playing towards a large target is much easier to swallow than missing a smaller target. It seems like expectations increase as target size decreases. Again, here is what I mean. If your intent is to hit the right side of the fairway and you end up hitting the left side, it’s likely the other three players in your group say, “Nice shot.” You could have missed your target by 30 yards but it’s still considered a good shot because you hit the fairway. What if you were to miss a 10 foot putt by 30 yards? That would quite possibly go down in history as the worst golf shot ever. The same 30 yard miss carries different weight because of the size of the target and your level of expectation.

You can miss a tee shot by 30 yards and still consider it a good shot. But what if you miss a 3 foot by an inch? It’s a bad putt, right? Do you see how the pressure builds as we approach the green and ultimately the hole? This is dangerous because as the targets get smaller, your level of expectation grows. And as expectations grow, so does pressure.

So how does focus help?
Read the rest of this entry »