Recipe for Perfect Lemonade

“Golf is not about the quality of your good shots, it is about the quality of your bad shots.”

Nick Faldo

 In golf and life we face plenty of obstacles. Despite our best plans, we often encounter plenty of lemons. With the proper mindset, we can squeeze sweetness out of the sourest situations.

• You do not need to hit spectacular shots to succeed – you need to avoid the spectacularly bad ones.
• Bad shots happen. Bad things happen in life. The key to success is how you react and not allowing the bad “event” to affect the next “event.” Despite all your preparation, practice and hard work, you do not have total control over what happens on the golf course. That’s just the way it is. What you can control is how you react and concentrate on the next shot. You can’t alter what has happened but you can certainly influence what will happen by the way you handle your emotions.
• Rarely does a great round of golf happen due to hitting the middle of every fairway and great approach shots. More often, it’s simply a matter of figuring out ways to get the ball in the hole even when you’re not swinging as well as you’d like.
• Most of you have played golf in a charity scramble tournament, and I’m betting that quite often you’ve thought that you had played well. You think “why can’t I play like this all the time? Think about it – you’re having fun, you know that if you make a bad shot,  there’s no need to be angry or dwell on it, because one of your mates may bail you out with a better one. And if they don’t? Who cares? You’re playing golf and having fun. There’s a lot to be learned there.

Recipe for Perfect Lemonade

1. NEVER dwell on a past mistake. It plants the seed for future mistakes by distracting your concentration.
2. Have a positive attitude – simply refuse to become overly upset. This will certainly affect future shots – we remember events most vividly when they are attached to an emotional event. The more upset we become, the more we will remember the event, and the more we will visualize the poor result in the future when we really need to envision a clear picture of the shot you are about to hit. HOWEVER, IT IS OK TO ENJOY A GOOD SHOT.
3. Obsessive attention to what you believe to be the cause of your mistakes rarely works for a number of reasons:
   • It’s unlikely that you can self-correct due to habit.
   • Lack of knowledge of correct swing mechanics.
   • If you are prone to be emotional, your judgement will be affected.
   • The driving range is the place to attend to swing faults and fixes, NOT the golf course. There is a huge difference between PLAYING golf and PRACTICING golf. Never allow the 2 lines to cross.
4. ALWAYS be in the PRESENT. The most important shot in every round of golf is the one you’re about to play.
   1. Make a decision about how you will approach the shot.
   2. Envision a good result and BELIEVE IT.
   3. Make a swing.
   4. Find the ball.
   5. Start over again.

 

“You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.”

Edwin Louis Cole