Mental Golf

Hey guys, sorry for these very late entry. I was very busy for the past few days, fixing myself in my new campus and still wasn't really make myself adapt to here yet. But I can't lag you all too long, therefore I decided to spare some time to blog something for you all.

As I promise earlier, I'll touch everything like introduction and sort before going to the more detail part. Therefore, as for today's entry will be about MENTAL GOLF. As you all know, golf ain't just about swinging the golf club and whacking that golf ball. It involves body coordination to hit a shot, and definitely mental to articulate your game ; explicitly, implicitly or tacitly. But how does mental golf influence our game and what's the percentage of it towards a game??

What I can say is, the Game of Golf won't be that interesting if our mental is not part of the game. Because if it is just about hitting the golf ball into the hole, then it is truly a lame idiotic game. Our mental is one of the major factor that might cause a player, not performing well or up to their expectations. And as you play more, you will know how important it is. In fact, Mental Golf is part of a growing process in your brain for golf. You experienced and learn more through practise, involving yourself in tournaments and any exposures that involves not just one party. As for me, I had been through quite a lot of experience regarding mental golf especially in the part of improving myself.

An easy way to enlighten you all about mental golf is probably, is your handicap. As you all know, handicap 24 are classified as beginner, 18-24 are novice,12-18 are intermediate, 0-12 advance and etc. And during this part of evolving yourself in either of the category means different understanding in your mentality towards golf. This is simply undeniable. You all probably will understand why because you all will know that people who handicap are lesser will definitely have better advantage in golf. This may not be the fact but it has positive percentage that the thoughts are true.

As for me, I started my handicap of 24, jumping to 21 and then to 19. During this part, I summarize in a shorter form that my game were very blunt. And probably you will blow your hole randomly at any hole or holes in 18 holes. If the blunder starts early, sometimes there are still room of improving your game. But if you blunder were in the middle, then you will definitely struggle with your head running around here and there. Picking up pieces and can't regain your contention back. As for my advise for novice players, stay calm in your game. You will definitely make mistakes, and pretty a lot of them, just slow down your pace when this things happen. And if you are playing in your homeground, don't take bad memories as a phobia thing for you. Keep in mind that everytime you play a game, everything is different than the others and don't bring back bad memories.

My handicap then decrease from 19 to 14 and I was then a intermediate player. This category might be the most major part of your game. You learn and understand a lot more in this process. Probably during novice period, you are still new to the game. But this category is the part where you learn the most and even more than when you are an advance player. Why is it so? Simply, you know much detail of the game and definitely you know what you are doing in the golf course than beginners. But what is the common mistake in Mental Golf in this category?? In my opinion, players between handicap of 12-18 will face big problem in the last three holes. Last three holes in their mental are the most critical one. WHY?? Intermediate players are able to cover early and middle mistakes easily. BUT during the back part of the game, they are relatively unstable (whether they are playing well or not at the front part of the game). This is because usually intermediate players will usually reflect how well they play throughout in the course earlier on. Or how bad they play. And with that mentality, (if they are playing good) they will try to maintain their forms and that's when trouble come. If they aren't playing well, they will be thinking why they play so bad, and instead this influence them to be afraid of making those mistakes. Last three holes are critical in the sense of playing a good game or covering a bad game. That's the reason I can think of. And to cope with this matter, I simply recommend to intermediate players, not to think about any part of your game and just play the whole game. Even you are playing badly or vice versa, you shouldn't even spare time for thinking those stuff. Though you have plenty of time to think for a shot in golf, but sometimes is better not to do too much critical thinking and focus on automatic response in your game.

And for advanced players, mental golf are more polish at this stage. But they will still face problems but are lesser. And for advance players, blunders only happen when you put your expectation over your head. That's the only prob. You can't always think of the expectation you want to achieve but instead you must think of the other factors. Golf ain't perfect just like life, we just try to compensate and try to make it better than pushing ourself to the limit that we know sometimes is hard to achieve. Golfers at this stage should learn more about calming your brain time to time, and enjoy the game more than keeping the score low. Because players at this stage won't have much problems keeping the score low, but it is just mental that pulls them down. So relax and enjoy are the advise for advance players. Other factors will be discuss in detail in later post for mental golf. Sorry for the late post again..sorry.