A new year offers a fresh start and endless possibilities, making it the perfect time to reflect on your past season and set fresh goals for 2025. If you are fairly new to golf or have never fully committed to improvement, fear not I am here to help provide some guidance of where to start on the road to your best golfing year yet.
Find Your ‘Why’
In his 2009 bestselling book, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, Simon Sinek emphasises the importance of focusing on your purpose or your “Why” rather than solely on what you do or how you do it. Finding your “Why” for golf will not only give meaning to why you play but more importantly it will give you purpose and clarity on what type of golf you enjoy and what to strive get better at.
For example if I do this exercise…
Q Why do I play golf?
Me: I play because I enjoy the challenge, I enjoy the results of playing well from hours of practicing.
Q Why?
Me: I take pride in being good at a difficult game. I enjoy the solitary elements of practice and being under pressure in competition.
You can keep going by asking yourself ‘Why?’ to really help you gain clarity and understanding of what motivates you. So for me I know that I love practicing for the purpose of competition. However, you may discover that you don’t actually like competition but enjoy the social aspects of the game more. Give it a go, find your golfing ‘Why’ for 2025.
Set Goals
The beauty of setting goals is that they are completely unique and personal to you. They can be big or small, serious or fun. What matters is you feel good about striving to achieve them. A good system to consider when setting goals is to follow the SMART method which is to make them:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Timed
I would only look to set yourself 3 goals for the season, here are some different examples that fit the SMART method:
Play in my first stroke play competition by May
Reduce my handicap from 25 to 20 by September
Practice Putting for 2 hours a week.
These goals aren’t going to set the world on fire but that’s the point. They are simple, clear and achievable.
(Image credit: Kevin Murray)
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