Head Game

As I've stated in an earlier post, golf takes place primarily between the ears. Unfortunately, it's not standard IQ that seems to dictate success over the course of 18 holes, but emotional intelligence. Perhaps it's a bit like the difference between "book smarts" and "street smarts." Call it "links smarts." Unfortunately, I don't seem to have it.

This thought comes to me because I recently had the opportunity to play a couple of rounds of golf with my older brother and his two sons, my nephews. My brother and his oldest son have played the game since they were kids. (His younger son took up the game only a few years ago, and we had never played together before.) At one time, my brother was a single digit handicap. His son is a solid mid-handicapper whom I have bested a total of one time. (And that was the most recent time we played, this past summer at the Presidio Golf Course.) I believe one is also the number of times I have scored lower than my brother. Believe me, those are both numbers I would like to see climb a touch higher.

Knowing, however, that placing too much emphasis on results is bound to affect my game, I made a conscious effort in the days leading up to our excursion to get myself in the right state of mind. I tried to remember the course we were playing was a tough one and would likely eat me up. I tried to relax and tell myself the score didn't matter. I tried to simply enjoy the beauty of the place, take a few pictures and have a good time.

As the round went on, though, and one bad shot followed another (save for the notable exceptions of a wicked 3-wood and a nearly perfect knockdown 5-iron), my attempts to maintain zen-like non-attachment were working about as well as my putter. Which is to say, not at all. I generally average 32 putts/round -- I took 41 our second day. Though I normally shoot in the mid- to low-90s, I failed to break 100 either day.

The thing that has me most in a funk is that this is almost exactly how my mind reacted when I played in my very first sanctioned tournament, almost a year ago. I told myself I didn't care about results, that I was going to enjoy myself and not worry about the score. But when I teed it up, I hit shank after shank and failed to break 100.

The worrisome part is that when I tell myself I should be caring the least, that's exactly when I care the most. My mind lets me down (or I let IT down, either way) and I find myself in a deep funk over disappointing myself -- both in terms of playing poorly and overreacting to my poor play.

The question now is, how do I prepare myself for the next time I play and really want to do well? Do I try again to put pressure out of my mind? Or do I give up on telling myself there's no pressure and accept that it's going to be there? Deep inside, in both these situations, I REALLY wanted to play well. Perhaps someone with "links smarts" would like to chime in and offer advice on how to detach myself from expectations.