Above Par

What You SHOULD do to play your best golf

October 13, 2021 Kathy Wood Episode 39
Above Par
What You SHOULD do to play your best golf
Show Notes Transcript

We can finish a round and talk about all the things that we should have done....things that should have gone a different way. We can do it in the middle of, around as well. then it starts to affect other shots and the other holes. 

What it looks like is: 

I should've made that putt. 

I should have gotten up and down. 

I shouldn't have short-sided myself. 

I shouldn't have hit the ball in the rough. 

We “should” and “shouldn’t” ourselves about different shots that we have on the golf course.
It can become a habit that feels horrible.

In this episode, I share with you 3 main areas where we think we should have done something different, how it affects our performance and what to do instead.
Learn more here:
KathyHartWood.com
KathyHartWood.com/chat

Welcome to Above Par. I'm your host, Kathy Hart Wood. I show you how to take more of your talent to the golf course without practicing harder, taking more lessons, or buying new equipment. I show you how to end the frustration of under performing so you can start playing to your potential. This is where you are gonna learn how to think Above Par, so you can play below par. Let's get to it. Hey there my golf friend, it's nice to have you back and listening. I really do appreciate you spending some of your time with me here and I appreciate the notes and the comments about how much this podcast is helping you in your golf game, and I really do love that you're noticing that this is applicable to really any part of your life, it's how we're managing our mind and how we're thinking and how we're managing our emotions and the things that we say to ourselves, how we treat ourselves and how we treat other people. It applies to every area of your life. It's like if you're doing one thing on the golf course, chances are you're probably doing it off the golf course and vice versa, so if you can start making some of those connections, I think that's gonna be really powerful for you in your life and also on the golf course, and that has to do with today's topic, which is what you should do to play better, and it is a loaded title for sure, because I wanna focus on the word should and it comes up so often when we play golf, I'm 100% guilty of this, I did it all the time when I was competing for a living, for sure. And what we do is we can finish around and talk about all the things that I should have done, things that should have gone a different way, we can do it in the middle of around as well, and it starts to affect the other shots and the other holes. So what it might look like for you is that I should have made that putt, I should have gotten up and down, I shouldn't have short sighted myself, I shouldn't have hit the ball in the rough. We should and shouldn't ourselves about different shots that we have on the golf course, we should ourselves about different scores that we made on individual holes, I should have pared that short par five, I shouldn't have made a triple bogey on a hole, we can also go through and should ourselves about mental mistakes. It would look like I shouldn't have pulled out that club, I should hit a shorter club, I should have paid more attention, I should know better, I should be able to focus better. I shouldn't be so nervous, I shouldn't get so mad, I shouldn't get so frustrated, I shouldn't care about what other people think, but I do, and what happens when we should ourselves should is really could with blame. So what you're doing is you're blaming yourself or even shaming yourself for what you did and how you performed, we can start doing it too, just like over and over, it becomes a habit. It was just a little way of beating ourselves up, and what will happen is a lot of times people will argue with me, "Well, yeah, but I should have. It was only a three foot put. I should have made that really easy shot." And we start arguing with reality, and any time you argue with reality, you're gonna lose. Well, I talk about different ways that you can really get into the right frame of mind about what you really should do on the golf course is by collecting the data, I cannot express enough how many clients I have who have expectations that exceed reality, and what that means is that they can't hit those shots on the range, if you went out and hit 10 balls with every club in your bag, and you took the data. I've talked about this before, and you just took a look at the numbers and then get on the golf course, you expect to hit it even more than that, better than that. There are three big areas where I see this pop up, one is in the driver. We have these high expectations for how many fairways we should hit, it's important to understand that is the longest club in your bag with the biggest range of miss because there's so little loft on the face, but yet we have these high expectations that we should not miss that shot, that we should not miss fairways, that we should hit it solid all the time, that it should not curve that much, that if it goes offline, it shouldn't go offline that far. But this is the thing you wanna go out and test to go on the range, see if you hit 10 balls and tried to hit between two posts about, let's say 30 35 yards apart, how many can you hit between the posts in a relaxed, calm environment before you go out on the golf course and we throw in some water and out of bounds and people. Before you add all that to your brain, which puts a little bit more pressure or stress on you, which means it makes it harder for all that talent to come out, if you could actually take out the exact percentage of shots on your average that you can do on the range in a calm environment out onto the golf course. That's amazing. You are doing really well. Mentally, you're able to transfer that skill from the range out to the golf course, but this is what happens, let's say if you went out on to the range and you hit 50% of those balls in between those two posts, that means that you're gonna miss about seven fairways, and then when you go out and you miss a fair way, you tell yourself you shouldn't have done that, you should have hit it better, you shouldn't have hit it so far to the right or to the left, or it shouldn't be in the rough, or shouldn't be in a bunker. But that's not true. That's not reality. Reality is, you're a person who misses 50% of the fair ways. The other one that shows up is in the wedges and chipping, so many people have extremely high expectations for how close they should hit their wedges and how many times they should wrapping down with their chip shots or even bunker shots, if that's your thing, some people are like, "Nope, not the bunker." But whatever it is, we have such high expectations from with our wedges and how close we're supposed to hit it, again, go to the driving range and can get a green that is the right distance for the whatever wedge shot you're trying to hit, hit 10 balls. See how close you hit that ball on average, I get so many clients telling me,"I expect to hit all my wedges inside 12 feet, and if I don't, I get really ticked off." That's better than a tour player. So then what happens is then we should ourselves, I should have done better, I should be better than this, I shouldn't miss those wedges, when the reality is, is the data that you collected on the range. That's the person who should show up with no pressure again with good lies. So we're arguing with reality when we have higher expectations than what our data is providing us, I always say that your mental game is the differential between what you can do on the range and what you can do on the golf course, for the most part, sometimes there's people who just don't hit it well on the range, but for the most part, there's more to the mental game, but we always wanna start there. Another area is in putts, so many people think they should make more putts than they actually have the ability to make. Go out to the putting green, test it out, 10 balls from different spots, not the same one, that's advantageous, you get an idea of how it's breaking and you get into a little bit of a groove there with your touch. Drop the ball in 10 different spots. How many 12 footers can you make? Don't guess. I have clients who guess. When I ask this question, What do you think? "Well, I think I should probably make like nine, eight, nine of them." "Oh my goodness, that is so good. That's better than a tour player." So the first way that we shut ourselves is when we think we should be hitting it better than we actually have the talent level or the data or the stats for when they don't match up. When we're arguing with reality, it's so unnecessary to blame yourself and shame yourself for something that you actually can't even do. It's like being ticked off, you can't run a four minute mile when you never timed yourself before. You don't even know if you can do it. I definitely can't do it. I am not a runner, this body right here was not built for running, and it's my joints don't enjoy it, my legs are too short and squatty. But anyway, I'm gonna make that analogy nonetheless, so if you were thinking like, "Yeah, I should run this in a certain amount of time." A mile in a certain amount of time. But you've never tested yourself. That is kind of like what we're doing on the golf course. We think we should do things that we haven't even tested to see if we can possibly do it, and understanding that it is totally different what you can do on the range and what you can do on the golf course for the most part, the other area that we should ourselves is in mental mistakes. I shouldn't have made that mental error, I should have known better about where to hit it and the club to hit, and I forgot the wind, and I didn't step away from the ball when I knew I should have stepped away from the ball, we blame ourselves and shame ourselves for making mental errors, and this is what I have to tell you, you are going to make mental errors because you are human. You are going to make mistakes, beating yourself up over making a mental error serves no purpose. There is no upside to it, you are going to make mistakes, you're going to make mental mistakes, calculation mistakes, data collection mistakes on the golf course, you're gonna mis calculate the wind and you're gonna pick the wrong club that is part of the game. But blaming yourself for making a mental error, there's zero upside to it, you're blaming yourself or being a human. The other area where we blame ourselves or should ourselves is that we should have scored better, we should be scoring better, we should be a better player than we are right now, and basically what you're saying to yourself is that I should be someone different than I am. Again, you're arguing with reality, you are a person who is shooting the score, how do we know because you did. That is the reality of the situation, so we can't argue with it, and when you blame yourself or shame yourself because of who you are, it feels horrible and you shut out the opportunities to pause and learn, because in any given situation, it is an opportunity for you to learn and grow, but when you shame yourself, you shut that down, you just beat yourself up when you can have your own back and understand that you're doing the best that you can. That you're learning and you're growing. And taking a look at what can I improve on? Instead of stepping into that role of just blaming yourself and shoulding all over yourself, then you have opened the door for you being able to grow and learn and improve, the more often that you say you should be different than you are, you should be hitting different shots and you are or you shouldn't make mental mistakes, you shut down your growth, so what I want you to do is really start paying attention to all the times you should all over yourself. How many times do you should yourself on and off the golf course? My friends, it's one of those things we wanna almost go on a should diet, just really tune in to every time you hear yourself saying it, or let me offer this to you too, How many times you say about other people, because basically what you're doing too is you're shaming or blaming them as well, and that doesn't feel good either. It doesn't feel good for you, it doesn't feel for the other person receiving it. For instance, if you had a partner and you were playing golf and they missed a putt and you said,"You know you should have made that putt." Now, would you do that? I hope you say, no. Right. In your mind, you might have said it like, "Oh, that was a make able putt," but they are human, you have a spouse who didn't take out the garbage and you say,"You should have taken out the garbage," you are blaming them because they could have and they didn't. It doesn't feel good for the receiver of that, it doesn't feel good for you, so catch the number of times that you say should, whether it's about you, yourself, your talent, your score, the shots, your mental errors or anything that you're doing off the golf course, and check in and see how many times you're shoulding other people in your life and let's go on a should diet. So that for you to play better, and going back to the title of this podcast, what you should do to play better is start eliminating the word from your vocabulary on the golf course, have your own back and quit arguing with reality, and the more that you do that, the more you open yourself up for more growth so that you can take your game up to the next level, besides feeling a little bit better about that around when you finish. Alright, my friends, have an amazing week and I'll talk to you next time. And remember, my friends, if you need a little extra help sorting out your thoughts and your emotions so that you can take more of your talent onto the golf course or just have some peace around the game, it really helps to have someone to help you look at your thoughts and emotions. It's the fastest way to get better, and I'm happy to chat with you and you can find the link at KathyHartWood.com/chat. Alright, have a beautiful day.