Maybe It's Me

[Gregory]

I have been told by many that my biggest enemy in the six years I have been trying to get better at this game is myself. I have had no less than 6 instructors, and the only common element to the failure is me. All I ever wanted to do, at least to start with, was to shoot bogey golf. Average 5/hole-that’s it. And while I’ve done that a few times, my success is always fleeting. And once the bad shots commence, I go into over analysis mode, and I’m toast. My practice swing and actual swing bear no resemblance to each other, and my hands and arms just seem to want to dominate my swing. While there are many things I like about this program, I find myself not having the patience to spend more than an hour a day to go through all the different elements. I’m just tired of spending so much time, money, and effort, having people tell me how much potential I have, only to be right back where I started. I don’t want to give up, but I am 60 years old, and time’s a wastin’. I don’t know if a trip to Arizona is the answer or not. Any suggestions and/or comments are more than welcome.

[Tathata Staff]

Hi Gregory,

Thank you for reaching out to us, we hear your frustrations and completely understand. We see you joined the program mid May of this year. How many lessons have you completed? Is there anything in the program that you feel like you don’t quite understand or even agree with that you would like further clarification?

We do have other supplemental training options for our 60-Day Program students. The options are our online chapter follow-ups and swing submittals or visiting us here in Scottsdale for a live Follow-up or Golf School. You can find these training options under the menu tab “Additional Live Training.”

Thank you Gregory again for taking the time to write out your comments on the forum here.

We look forward to hearing back from you.

[Les]

Greg, welcome to the club. I’ve been a bogey golfer most of my golfing life. Gotten my index down to a 9 at one point but pretty much mid-high teens. Over the last 4-5 years I have been playing golf swing instead of golf. Now, I have a pretty solid swing (thanks Tathata!) yet my scores are the same. So, using some deductive reasoning, if my scores are the same despite my swing getting better then what is left? Me!

Lately I have been concentrating more on removing my emotions from the outcome of the shot. Basically learning not to control what I can’t control. I can’t control the swing, I can’t control the ball flight, I can’t control the bounce of the ball. I can influence them to some degree (swing quality). What I can control is how I approach the shot, how I plan the shot, where I put my focus, and the stories I tell myself before, during and after the shot. This is difficult to master because it requires one to unlearn habits we all have from an early age. The fact is that a golf shot or a golf score does not indicate how good we are as a person. It just shows how well or not well we were able to get around a golf course on a particular day.

Nicklaus says he envisions his shot all the way to the green and back to his club. He sees the flight, the trajectory, where it lands, how it bounces and he can do this from where the ball lands back to his club. And then he just executes and moves on. This is what I work on now – using focus and imagery to influence my shot. The better my process is the better my scores will be.

I also am focused more on scoring rather than just executing pretty golf swings. Scoring is a skill that takes time to develop. Ever play with those old guys who just plink and plunk it down the middle yet when they get to the green they always seem to get up and down for par or bogey at worse? They know how to score. I am working to develop that kind of short game where I can get up and down from around the green to give myself a chance at birdies, pars, or bogeys at worst.