When you play golf, do you often find yourself landing well short of where you expected to be? After a good range session, do you assume you’ll hit the ball just as well and just as consistently out on the course? Do you turn up to lessons telling your pro what you think you should be working on, based on what you’ve seen on YouTube?
If you answered yes to any of these, you may well be a deluded golfer, and in my humble opinion, after more than 20 years of coaching, it’s one of the most damaging mindsets a player can have and one of the hardest to change.
The definition of delusion is: ‘A false belief or impression that is held despite clear evidence that it is not true or cannot be true’
Ultimately, the bigger the gap between a golfer’s delusions and reality, the more unhappy and dissatisfied they’ll become with their game. Here are some of the ways that mindset causes real damage.
Believe Consistency Is Easily Achievable
Consistency is hugely misunderstood in golf; a lot of golfers wrongfully assume it means hitting the ball straight and well every time when in reality pros understand that true consistency is simply a tighter range of misses.
If you are a casual golfer that plays a few times a month and huff and puff when missing greens, you need to give your head a wobble. Even PGA tour players hit an average of only 12 out of 18 greens in regulation per round, meaning they miss the green a third of the time. Here’s another smelling salt for you; when it comes to putting, outside of 10 feet, only 50% of putts are holed.
(Image credit: Paul Severn)
Poor Decision Making
If you think you can hit shots you occasionally pull off, rather than the ones you can reliably execute, you have got yourself a one-way ticket to: unrealistic lay-ups and carries, unnecessary hero shots, flag chasing, and playing way too little club, which ultimately results in a lot more golf shots.
The reason golfers end up here is because they treat their perfectly struck 7-iron as the standard rather than the outlier. They measure themselves by their best shots, not their averages.
Golf doesn’t care about your best, scores are built on averages, dispersions, tendencies and patterns. A golfer who thinks they hit their driver “about 230 straight down the middle” will…
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