How to recover after a bad round of golf

Often one of the biggest challenges that we all face with the game of golf is getting over a poor round. When we go out and play particularly badly, it can seem literally like the end of the golfing world as we know it. And one of the tricks that our mind plays on us is we start to think in terms of permanence. We start to think that what we've just experienced is going to last forever. We start to if we're not careful build a story around our competence.

We look back on the round that we've just played and we highlight the really poor shots, the missed puts, the out of bounds, the duffed iron shots or chip shots, and the story can start to grow in size. And as it grows in size the sense of permanence becomes even stronger and it's that sense of permanence that can become so disturbing for us. But one thing that we know from life in general, let alone golf, is the basic tenet of impermanence.

Literally everything comes and goes, without getting too deep and philosophical about it, even though I think at times like this some philosophy is of real benefit. You know, night becomes day, spring becomes summer, becomes autumn, becomes winter that the ebb and flow of impermanence. It runs through literally everything that we do, what we, what we have today, we won't necessarily have tomorrow. In all kinds of different areas.

This is so obvious and so true. Yet in terms of the game of golf, we tend to create these stories, these narratives around permanence. Also, I think this sense of a desire for permanence is one of the things that gets in the way of our progress. We so much crave the idea of consistency, we so much crave the idea of developing a golf swing that will never let us down, that will reduce all of the bad shots. We hear terms like consistency bandied around by golf commentators on tv all of the time. And you know, he's found some consistency. He's playing so consistently when even at the very highest levels of the game, impermanence runs through everybody.

There are occasionally outliers that come along that, like Tiger Woods in the past and perhaps more recently Scotty Sheffler, who seemed to hold on for a while to some level of consistency, but even the greatest players of all time, it doesn't last. It never lasts that long.

So I think, with this sense of impermanence and being okay with that and making friends and making peace with the impermanence, we can then start to get back on track and it then comes down to, instead of the, instead of the this stories that you create about what's just happened.

I think it is very important to fall back on one of the key themes that runs through the whole Mind Caddie programme and that is about using effective questions. When we use effective questions, we can move on, and I think as good a three questions that you can ever ask after a poor round in fact, virtually every round that you play is, very simply, good, better and how.

Even in the worst round that you've ever played, if you ask the question of what was good today, you'll find something. It might be your putting, it might be your chipping, it might be your recovery play, it might even be your attitude to the poor shots that you hit. Find something. It might be your putting, it might be your chipping, it might be your recovery play, it might even be your attitude to the poor shots that you hit out there. But something that you did today will have been good, I promise you.

If you look for it and as you look for that, and you write it down in your journal, I think then it creates a little bit more of a balanced perspective on what's just happened out there.

Then, what needs to be better? Just really home in on what needs to be better. And once the emotion starts to die down on the shots that you've hit, you can start to see patterns. Is the pattern? There aren't too many patterns that can happen out there. The ball goes to the right or goes to the left. That's probably a clubface orientation, a lot of poor iron shots, heavy and thin. It's your ground interaction. So what are the patterns that actually happened out there on the round that you've just played?

Home in on that there will be patterns. So what needs to be better? And then, specifically, how? How are you going to go about working on that? How are you going to go about working on those patterns to get you back on track, to get your game back where you know it can be and start to access some of the skills that you do possess? And then, finally, I think, the possible question

Ultimately, maybe the most powerful question as golfers that we can keep asking is whether it is possible that the next shot you hit could be a good one.

Well, unless you create a story counter to that, it is possible. It is possible that the next tee shot that you hit could be a good one. It is possible that the next putt you hit could be a good one. It's only when we shut down to possibly do we then create this permanence, this narrative, that this is how it's going to be. So I think an overall philosophy to take forward is to embrace impermanence and be okay with it because the more we resist impermanence, the more we tie ourselves in knots, craving something that will never happen, a certainty for the future. When we make friends with impermanence, we can ride the ups and downs, the storms that the game throws at us, and then we can get very much back on track. So the poor round can be disturbing, it can be destructive, but it's our reaction to those poor rounds that's the key, and always it's about the perspective that you take and the questions that you ask yourself.