Many times golfers come to me complaining that they “can’t put two nines together” – they either play a good front nine and poor back nine, or a bad front nine and a good back nine. Golf is a fickle game, and on any given day that just may happen, but if you start to see a pattern of this occurring, it’s probably something you might want to take a closer look at. My opinion for this is that golfer’s are too focused on their score – a problem for nearly all of us that play this game.
Golfers may start out poorly on the first few holes, get discouraged then play poorly for the rest of the front nine. Then they add up their score for the front nine, realizing that if they shoot the same on the back it will be a poor round. They then begin to relax and “not really care” and end up playing much better on the back nine. The opposite occurs (good front, bad back) for a different reason. A player gets in the zone on the front and starts really playing well. While making the turn, he or his playing partners add up his score for the front nine and the player realizes how well he is doing.
Then comes the kiss of death – he thinks “if I shoot the same number on the back” I’ll have my best score, or I’ll break 90 or 80, etc. Putting more self-imposed pressure on himself (all pressure in golf is self-imposed); he plays poorly on the back, and “ruins” what could have been a great round.
The moral of the story is, don’t constantly add your score up in your mind. That’s why you always hear tour players, when interviewed about how they feel about tomorrow, with a chance to win the tournament, they respond “I’m going to focus on one shot at time” – they are focusing on staying in the present, not thinking about what happened in the past, or what could happen in the future. It’s an easy thing to say and intellectualize, but a challenge to incorporate into your mental game. But when you do, you’ll be surprised at how well you can play with that mindset.
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