The Golf Geek
Prescribing the Next Step for the Time-Starved Golfer
Is Familiarity Keeping You Mired in Mediocrity?
Posted on 04. Jul, 2011 by Allan in Wisdom
(a revelation from a domestic re-organisation)
Changing your mindset can be as simple as changing your seat.
I’m a creature of habit.
I had “my” chair in the living room, and I’d get rather curmudgeonly if anyone else sat in it. I’d give it up for a guest, but otherwise it was my spot. And what a spot it was – right in front of the TV and in the stereo’s “sweet spot”. And although I don’t watch much TV now and use headphones to listen to music, I
still kept my seat.
Until earlier this week.
We had to paint the ceiling, so all the furniture got piled up in the centre of the room under dust sheets.
Rather than put everything back as it was, we decided to rearrange; after 6 years it was time to shake things up. We moved the sofa to where my chair had been and put the two armchairs at the far side of the room, creating a seating area where the focal point was out through the patio door and not the TV.
What I wasn’t ready for was the effect.
Instead of having just one seat I to sit in, I have several. This opens up a whole range of options and I find myself using the room much more creatively, considering what fits best with what I want to achieve.
And it struck me – the same thing is true about our golf.
It’s so easy to get let familiarity rule – we have our course, our range, our chipping area. We do the same things over and over, and yet we wonder why our skills don’t progress.
We often hope to get the same range bay, go through the same practice routine and then leave.Does this prepare us for a game which throws up unusual situations almost every round?
Our practice is familiar, comfortable and safe.
And it’s stunting our growth.
Mix it up.
Do something different.
Make practice varied and random – make it simulate golf . Immerse yourself in the experience. Get away from the range and play some pitch-and-putt. Play a round with only one, two or three clubs. Create a random game at the chipping green. Play 3 shots left-handed. Take a ball into the trees and practice heroic escape shots.
Play a different type of course, and adapt your game to it. Dedicate a whole round to playing artistically, without regard to the score card. Choose to play a course as the architect intended, curling shots round dog-legs and over trees.
Do something extraordinary.
Change your view and escape the rut you didn’t know you were in.
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5 Responses to “Is Familiarity Keeping You Mired in Mediocrity?”
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I once read that habit is basically a labor saving device for the brain. It sees “A” and is programmed to then go immediately to “B” then “C” and so on. So breaking the habitual is really an act of waking up. The challenge in golf is that so much of the game is familiar and we are even encouraged to institute things like a ‘pre-shot routine’. Yet that can keep us from being aware of what we’re really doing at the moment. It’s part of the tightrope we have to walk when playing.
I think that’s spot on, Paul. Habit does allow us to save time, but at the expense of awareness. It’s really interesting you bring up pre-shot routine; I’d had no success with that until recently. I’d been going through the motions of the routine, doing all of the steps suggested by many eminent psychologists and performance coaches…and had far more success when I just walked up and hit it.
But I knew there was more to it than that…and it wasn’t like I hit a great shot every time I skipped the routine (otherwise I’d be blogging about why we should drop the per-shot routine!).
It came down to purpose.
The routine I was using had no purpose. The only reason it existed was because I’d been told I should do it, so the only purpose for my pre-shot routine was to have a pre-shot routine. It’s so easy to fall into this trap, but it’s the anithesis of what’s actually being advised.
The purpose of the pre-shot routine is to ensure the shot is properly planned and executed as visualised as often as possible. It’s to ensure we set up to the ball as close as we can to the same way every time, with body and club aligned to the target we picked behind the ball. And it should be fluid to ensure we don’t get “stuck” over the ball.
In short, the pre-shot routine exists to get us fully engaged with the shot we have to hit and to give that shot the best chance of success.
Hardly rocket science, but it took me a long time to work it out.
Many thanks for an insightful comment, which may well have sparked another blog post!
Allan.
My definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but seeing the same poor results. Golfers say they want to get better yet when they try new things that are foreign and uncomfortable, they don’t stick with them and revert back to their old habits.
Many people use to leave after a lesson only to come back having the same issues we worked on prior. They didn’t trust the changes and weren’t patient enough.
Good points on the pre shot routine. It’s used to (like you mention) plan and visualize the shot along with drilling in the repetitiveness (one instance where repetitiveness in golf helps) so that you become comfortable in pressure situations. But if you a free wheeling, fly by the seat of your pants, using a pre shot routine for this reason may not work because you prefer randomness.
Hi Jordan, many thanks for your comment…and please accept my apologies for the tardy reply. I am a pretty free-wheeling, seat-of-the-pants guy; that’s why a really rigid and long routine doesn’t work for me. But a short sequence of movements which I trust get me set up in the right position with my club face square and aimed down the correct line…absolutely. I do quite like randomness, but I’m more fond of the ball flying on the path I intend!
Thanks again
Allan
“mired in mediocrity” – what a great phrase! I can think of anything that describes my golf game better. And it doesn’t seem to matter how many hours I pour into practice, I remain mediocre on the golf course. I should probably be grateful that I’m as good as mediocre, since that’s better than being bad. However, I really wanted to be “good”, so being mediocre Is a disappointment.