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Have you ever noticed just how much golf is a game of opposites? 

I’m sure you have, even if you did not commit that revelation to memory and use it to improve your scoring average.

Frankly, the extent of opposites is quite staggering.  

The more obvious of these opposites is our all too often quest for extra distance, be it off the tee or into the green.

How many times have we stood on the tee, teeth clenched, hands choking the golf club in a wild man’s grip, as we prepare to hit the ball 300 plus yards down the middle of the fairway?  

Invariably, when we do that, the ball simply does not seem to understand its role in this exercise and ends up anywhere but 300 yards down the middle of the fairway, at least of the hole we are playing anyway.

Miles left, miles right, pop ups, tops, duck hooks and wild slices are the norm when we do that, rather than the shot we were striving so hard for.

The same applies to approach shots into the greens.  

We so often will choose to hit a hard seven iron rather than a more controlled six iron.  

The result of such a choice is usually a swing speed way outside our capabilities, and we end up resembling Zorro the Great.  

The consequence is often a bogey or worse, as we then must proceed to extract the ball from some unintended, and undesirable, location.

For the record, I’m convinced that the golf gods send electric signals out over the golf courses of the world that cause interference with our thought patterns.  

These electric signals momentarily warp our thinking into believing that we can actually do things we’ve never done before, that we can do them having never practised them, with a swing we shouldn’t use.  

Quite amazing that we should think those thoughts but we do, or at least most of us do anyway.  That is the power of the golf gods, for they are all-powerful.

There are some amongst us who do not think like this.  

For the most part, they are playing professionals and truly good amateur players who have found a way to block the electric signals.  

These players go about their business in a non-descript manner.  

They rarely try a shot they’ve never tried before and rarely swing above their normal swing speed.  

They plot their way around a golf course and, for the most part, go unnoticed, for they are rarely, if ever, in trouble.  

What these players have figured out is that low scores are not built by fantastic shots.  

They know that low scores are built by playing patient golf, using a golf swing that is well oiled, practiced and reliable.  

They know that golf is like a game of chess with the object being to get the golf ball back to the house one shot at a time, with as little stress and risk as 

possible. n

Have you ever noticed just how much golf is a game of opposites? 

I’m sure you have, even if you did not commit that revelation to memory and use it to improve your scoring average.

Frankly, the extent of opposites is quite staggering.  

The more obvious of these opposites is our all too often quest for extra distance, be it off the tee or into the green.

How many times have we stood on the tee, teeth clenched, hands choking the golf club in a wild man’s grip, as we prepare to hit the ball 300 plus yards down the middle of the fairway?  

Invariably, when we do that, the ball simply does not seem to understand its role in this exercise and ends up anywhere but 300 yards down the middle of the fairway, at least of the hole we are playing anyway.

Miles left, miles right, pop ups, tops, duck hooks and wild slices are the norm when we do that, rather than the shot we were striving so hard for.

The same applies to approach shots into the greens.  

We so often will choose to hit a hard seven iron rather than a more controlled six iron.  

The result of such a choice is usually a swing speed way outside our capabilities, and we end up resembling Zorro the Great.  

The consequence is often a bogey or worse, as we then must proceed to extract the ball from some unintended, and undesirable, location.

For the record, I’m convinced that the golf gods send electric signals out over the golf courses of the world that cause interference with our thought patterns.  

These electric signals momentarily warp our thinking into believing that we can actually do things we’ve never done before, that we can do them having never practised them, with a swing we shouldn’t use.  

Quite amazing that we should think those thoughts but we do, or at least most of us do anyway.  That is the power of the golf gods, for they are all-powerful.

There are some amongst us who do not think like this.  

For the most part, they are playing professionals and truly good amateur players who have found a way to block the electric signals.  

These players go about their business in a non-descript manner.  

They rarely try a shot they’ve never tried before and rarely swing above their normal swing speed.  

They plot their way around a golf course and, for the most part, go unnoticed, for they are rarely, if ever, in trouble.  

What these players have figured out is that low scores are not built by fantastic shots.  

They know that low scores are built by playing patient golf, using a golf swing that is well oiled, practiced and reliable.  

They know that golf is like a game of chess with the object being to get the golf ball back to the house one shot at a time, with as little stress and risk as possible. 

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