Hands up if you are a fair-weather golfer? There’s no shame in admitting that you avoid the golf course when the weather turns bad. If you have the luxury and time to jet off to warmer climes and be a snowbird somewhere idyllic at this time of year to play golf in a t-shirt, then lucky you.
The vast majority of us are left to deal with whatever the winter throws at us – rain, wind, low temperatures, waterlogged courses, maybe even frost and snow. Yet I want to tell you why playing golf during winter months is a great opportunity to shoot some of your best scores of the year. In fact, in the last month I’ve reduced my handicap to 1.9, my lowest course index of the year.
Why is it that so many golfers have a negative association with winter golf and how much of this belief is actually just in the mind? Anticipation of a negative experience will normally lead us to low-level performance. You think you can’t play well in bad weather, so you don’t. This is called neuro conditioning and is the effect of our golfing environment and culture on our mind. I often hear language like: ‘I can’t score in the winter’, ‘I’m a warm weather player’, ‘I don’t play well in the rain’, ‘I’m wearing too many layers to swing properly’, ‘I can’t feel my hands’, ‘It’s too cold for me’, ‘I don’t want my handicap to go up’, ‘the greens are too poor to score’ and so on…
It’s easy to get stuck in a negative cycle of belief that winter golf is tough. We feel what we think and we experience what we feel. Now let’s put those negative perceptions aside and get down to the reality. As far as I’m concerned, there are many advantages to playing winter golf. I hope that reading my take on things will help to realign your perception and change your attitude.
WINTER GOLF – THE BENEFITS
Preferred Lies
From October until March (sometimes later) the Rules of Golf permit preferred lies from the short grass, allowing us to clean our golf ball and replace it within six inches of that spot, no nearer the hole. You can also get relief from casual water, plugged lies in the rough, water in bunkers and other punishing scenarios. What a brilliant advantage! You can effectively and legally use the rules in the winter to make the game easier. Choose your lie wisely – it’s not cheating! Fairway woods are much easier to sweep away when the ball is sat on a nice lush patch of grass rather than a tightly mown fairway or a bare lie.
Take advantage of…
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