How to recover from a rough shot

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2: In a stroke play tournament it is difficult to keep your score going either when you start poorly or let one bad hole slip through the round.

At the Goslings Invitational at Belmont this week many players told stories of how their round and tournament was destroyed by just one hole.

Sadly I was one of those with a nine amongst my rounds.

The classic scenario is ‘I couldn’t put that hole out of my mind. I was thinking about how that score would destroy the scorecard beyond recovery even if I played phenomenally the rest of the way’.

And then sure enough, you start pushing to get the round back on track, and proceed to start hitting horrible shots and get frustrated. Then the shots get worse because of the distraction.

We all know how to deal with this, using the standard ‘put it out of your mind’ advice. I know Tiger takes ten steps and forgets a bad shot.

I am a former golf-is-way-too-important-expect-way-too-much-get-way-too-angry guy. The only way you beat this is to make it less important to score low.

Enjoy the game, enjoy the company, and enjoy the good shots.

Look at the blow up as a chance to see if you’re strong enough to still play well.

I fully realize this is easy to say, but it can be done.

Sometimes we need to accept that we have anger issues in general and it will get exposed on the course.

The game is actually fun when you don’t worry about the score until you’re done. The best method is to never keep the score while trying to beat this.

You have to stop looking at the whole round as the object of conquest.

Just play ‘I’ve been shocked at the results and the lower scores that have resulted in my game’.

The fact that I don’t worry about the score until the round is over has in no way affected my sense of accomplishment when the end result is good. But it has allowed me to play poorly and still enjoy the round.

Now with an important tournament on the line this is very difficult but not impossible. You just need to remind yourself that you are out there to enjoy yourself, nothing else.

Finally after the round is done it is very useful to look at what caused the ‘blow up’ to start off with, was it not taking the medicine when you are in trouble and trying to do too much out of a bad lie or tricky situation?

Was it the inability to execute a particular shot, a simple chip shot, for instance?

Try to see this as a way to discovering your chink in your armour and then once the problem is identified, see a PGA Professional and identify the way to improve.

Paul Adams is the PGA director of golf at Rosewood Tucker’s Point.