If I were to tell you I had a fix for your dieting woes and I could make you lose 15 pounds by tomorrow, would you believe me? What if I told you, it wouldn't even be hard? Come see me for an hour and tomorrow 15 pounds will disappear. Of course, you wouldn't believe me, nor should you (if I actually could make that happen, I wouldn't be giving golf lessons and I'd have a very large house on Longboat Key). You wouldn't believe me because most people understand that in an effort to lose weight, we need to burn more calories than we consume. When we do that over an extended period of time, we will lose weight. There is no quick fix to weight loss (or at least not a healthy one). This same concept would apply to strength training or any other skill we want to develop. Consistent effort over time tends to lead to change. If we put in the right effort and stay on track, then the changes are also positive. Most golfers, however, have the belief that there is a "fix."
For those that have followed along recently, I wrote about my 5 weeks of prep to be ready to compete in the National PPC Qualifier. As you know I did not get the result I wanted. I did not play poorly, and I saw improvement from where I started at the beginning of the 5 weeks. I was very happy with the work I put in and completely believe in the plan I laid out. But the scores I shot were not good enough to qualify and move on. So why wasn't what I did good enough?
The reason my results were not good enough was because I did not put in enough consistent work earlier to develop everything I needed to compete at that level. In school I was always good at cramming for a test or writing a paper at the last minute and still getting good grades. Golf, weight loss, physical training or any other skill-based endeavor does not reward procrastination. They reward discipline, perseverance, consistency and focus. The 5 weeks of prep I put in certainly made me better than I was before and gave me a chance. But trying to cram that much work into that short a time window was always going to require a lot of things to go right for me to get through.
I created this flowchart as a rough outline of the everything that goes into your golf game. There are 2 major subheadings under "Your Game:" Scoring and Areas of Practice. The scoring subheading covers what you can track on the golf course and are the 4 different parts of the game. The other factors are aspects that can affect your ability to score but are much more challenging to measure or define.
Areas of practice/work covers all of the different elements that can be worked on to help you play better golf. As you can see there is an incredible amount of work that can be done to help you play better. And all of the orange boxes could be unpacked in great detail with dozens of subsets per box.
When you look at this flowchart, what do you see? For most people, I believe it would be overwhelming to look at and try and figure out where to begin if you want to get better. The good news is that you don't have to try and do everything all at once, nor would you be able to do. What you can do is use this information to help determine where you need to begin and what your path to progression may look like. It may also help you understand why getting better is so difficult.
I compare golf to weight loss or strength training often. If you have goals in either of those areas, you understand that to reach them you will need to put in a focused effort to a plan over an extended period of time. You will have to monitor your progress and make adjustments as needed. And then you hope that you chose a good plan, and all the work will be worth it. Getting better at golf is no different. I just think golf has sold players on the idea of a "fix" or a tune-up for a long time and that messes with expectations and frustration levels.
Going forward I will be writing about long term planning for your golf game. I will utilize areas in the flowchart I created and focus on small segments to help your overall game. And, to hold myself accountable, I will be doing a monthly check-in with that I have been doing. 5 weeks was too much of a crash course to get ready for me. I'm very interested to see where I can get myself with a year of consistent, dedicated work.
If you have any questions, always feel free to email or call me. Comments and feedback are always welcome. And since the most feedback I received was probably about the pictures of the kids, here's a couple from some recent family time. Enjoy the journey.
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