Getting the most out of you when your best left on vacation

What do you do when you realize you don’t have your a-game for an important golf match? You know it’s your B game, and maybe your C game that will show up.

We’ve all been there, feeling like you need to go back to square one and re-learn a golf swing. For fairly skilled golfers, we tend to overreact when things go south, while starting to think the worst, especially after we hit a couple of OB drives on the first few holes and lay the sod over a few early wedge shots.

It’s important to grasp the fact that this episode of your swing and technique beginning to fail, making you feel like a bungling, inept hack, is only temporary. We must resist the temptation to become frustrated and angry.

Once we realize that we don‘t have our best stuff, we can go to plan B and improvise. Pro golfers often go from shooting a 40 on the front nine and then shoot a 29 on the back nine. That means they stick with their “process” and have faith that things will turn out fine.

When your play turns sour in the middle of a round you may start blaming yourself for not trying hard enough. Golf is not like football or soccer, where more effort and more exertion often work.

Trying harder in golf usually results in blow-ups, mess-ups and give-ups. Better to allow yourself to focus more, relax more and think less. The frustration on those down days stems from your expectation that you will go out and play your best game every time you tee it up, with your normal rhythmic swing and enjoy the satisfying result.

But the “gods of golf” frequently have other agendas. Because of the dozens of variables in golf, we never play the same game or course twice. We never really swing exactly the same on different days either. Remember, we’re amateurs.

On off days, when you’re A game is somewhere in hiding, it’s time to make good decisions and play conservatively. If your swing timing is uncooperative, you can’t over-power the golf course by swinging harder, it’s time to be patient and rely on your short game – chipping and putting.

It’s a good idea to avoid taking too many risks. Playing it safe and staying out of trouble will probably calm your already frazzled nerves. The golf swing is a funny thing. There are times when we think “I’ve got it,” and then, for some reason we struggle and sense, “I don’t got it.”

When you struggle with your swing on the golf course, it’s not a good idea to attempt some crazy move to try and fix it. We all should have a “go-to” shot in our repertoire that we don’t have to hit far but it will surely find the fairway. Some might call that shot a “stinger.” I call mine a safety valve.

Golf offers us moments of elation and times of disappointment. There are times when we play poorly, we go home and feel like we missed the cut. But we need to remember that it’s only golf.

I often marvel at the men and women who do that for a living. We have to believe our next round will be better. If you allow yourself to think in negative terms, however, it may be worse. For your next round, are you wondering, “which golfer will show up today?” Try to make your internal answer to that question, “The mentally tough one.”

Sometimes we go out on the golf course on a beautiful, sunny day with our good friends and never think much about how blessed we are to be outside, playing our favorite game. When the late Ely Callaway, former CEO of Callaway Golf, began marketing golf balls in the early 1990’s, he came out with a ball labeled “Rule 35.”

At the time there were 34 rules of golf in the USGA Book. Today there are 24 rules. Rule 35 for Mr. Callaway was, “enjoy the game.” If you find you’re not having fun playing golf with friends on the golf course, you’re playing the wrong game.