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But first I would like to give you some background of who I am, where I came from and where I am now.
Like I said earlier, I never really intended to improve my golf handicap, but as it started to happen, I found myself wanting it and enjoying it all. I found myself looking for ways to improve my golf game. So let us look at how it all happened for me.
After playing more golf for a couple of years and slowly improving my game, maybe not Always my golf handicap, but lower scores were definitely happening. Unfortunately not always in the golf league and this is used for establishing my golf handicap. I was also following the game of golf more than ever. Watching golf every weekend on TV, reading the golf magazines, looking at many new products at the golf stores and finally decided it was time for me to improve my clubs. I was playing a set of irons and woods I had for many years. I decided to start with a new set of irons and later a new set of woods. It does not matter which ones I bought. Just know they were one of the better clubs on the market. I bought them at the end of the winter and this gave me a month to get used to them before the next golf league season that was about to start. I always felt the way to measure your improvement was not how you did on Saturday or Sunday, but how you did when you played in your league, where there can be some pressure and each score will affect your golf handicap. Before buying the new clubs I had turned my golf handicap from a 5-7 range to a solid 5. After a couple of years of using the new Golf Clubs my golf handicap did improve to a nice 3. After one more year of playing a lot of golf, I had established my golf handicap at a very solid 3. Now after approximately 4-5 years I had improved my golf handicap from a 5-7 range to a solid 3. The solid 3 had at times also dipped to a 2 but never stayed there, so I still have to say a solid 3 golf handicap. During this time I also tried many things to help my game. Putting styles, different drivers but none seemed to really help or hurt much. But there was one thing I did that I must add to my list of what helped me improve my golf handicap. I changed my golf swing to help improve my game. My natural golf swing is to play a slight fade. Not a slice but a very controllable fade. The period I bought new clubs I also changed my swing to allow me to hit a draw. Why, because I thought all the good golfers hit a draw. I thought it might be something I should try for myself. I did well with the draw. My golf handicap started to lower. I was becoming one of the better golfers in the leagues that I played in, but somewhere deep inside me I just knew it was not really me. At times I had to fight with it, but not enough that it would make my score go higher. After a couple of years I realized that the draw was not making my scores go higher, but was most likely holding me back from shooting more consistent lower scores. That is when I decided that I would start to hit my more natural fade at the start of the next golf season. But what this experience with the draw did, was allow me now to hit the ball either way. I still will mainly hit the fade, but I use the draw when needed. It is a great weapon to have in the bag. Ok, so how did I lower my golf handicap from a 3? I feel there were a few things that happened to help me do this. One I just mentioned, by going back to my natural swing. Another factor could be I spent more time on my short game over the last couple of years and greatly improved in every area. Chipping, Putting and Sand Game. I always considered my strongest part of my game to be the Irons so I concentrated more on the short game. I now consider myself to have a very strong short game. The final factor was the mental game. The way you deal with the ones you are playing with. The way you handle success and failure during a round of golf. This is as much important as the physical part of the game. When you have lost the mental game in a round of golf, it is almost impossible to get back till the next time you play. Most likely you will not have a nice round of golf when your mental game is off. The mental part of the game is probably the most overlooked part of the game. Golf, like many sports, is as much a mental game as a physical game. I like to think of the mental part of the game as 4 different areas. Pre-Shot Mental Routine The Intimidation factor Disappointments during a round of golf Success during the round of golf
Many things can happen prior to hitting the next shot. You might have a pre-shot routine or not. One thing that is certain, you must have the right attitude prior to hitting your next shot. No matter what is happening around you, you must see this next shot as a good one, better yet, a Great one. I never see anything but the best results from every shot I hit. I know that is easy to say. And we all have certain types of shots that can scare us, or we just played a bad hole and are having trouble seeing anything good happening again soon. I try my best to never let anything affect my thoughts while getting ready to hit the next shot. In fact while I am actually over the ball ready to hit, there is absolutely nothing that can distract me. If I am in the middle of my swing and something happens around me, like someone makes an unexpected noise or a ball hits a tree very close by, I just do not even hear it. Preparing yourself mentally prior to hitting the next shot is as important as the actual hitting of the shot. You must be ready to always hit a good shot. I have always had the concentration needed when actually hitting the shot, but I feel I have improved on my preparation more than anything. I feel that my preparation to always see the best results from each shot has helped more than anything. Failure during a round of golf is just going to happen. What we do after it happens is crucial to stop the mistake from happening again. First of all we have to accept that we are going to hit bad shots. For me when I hit a bad shot, my concentration and preparation for the next shot is at a maximum. Some of my most memorable shots were from being in trouble. Like I said, we have to accept the fact that bad shots are going to happen and deal with them the best we can. We can never let one shot take us out of the whole round of golf. We have all had it happen to ourselves. Jack Nicklaus said he never played the perfect round of golf. I definitely have never played my perfect round of golf. I try each and every time, but when I think about it, I hope I never really do. For me, I think my biggest mental problem is when I have success. It sounds funny, how could success be a problem, when that is what we are trying so hard to make happen. For me, success can break my concentration on the next shot. Say I have just birdied a hole that I have had a problem with in the past with this hole or it is just a tough hole. Of course I am happy, but I sometimes find myself forgetting about what I should be thinking about. And that is getting ready mentally for the next shot. Of course my confidence is up, but I find my concentration is off. It is something that I have noticed and it is something I know I need to work on. Yes there is an intimidation factor in golf. How many times have you stood on the tee and the person you are playing hits a monster of a drive. And then on the next hole does the very same. Many players do not even need the second monster drive to be intimidated and get you out of your own golf game. Over the last 4-5 years, I played against better players than myself. Players who thought they were better. Players who wanted to make you think they were better. Just every type of player you could imagine. If you learn by all this experience you will realize that the game of golf is a total game. You are not going to beat someone by just hitting great drives. But you can definitely intimidate someone with your driving and attitude. I finally learned how to deal with all the different types of players that you will come across. Of course we can all get intimated, but we need to recognize it and get rid of it. And eventually no matter what type of player you come across, you will learn how to deal with them. We must know our own game. Our strengths and weaknesses and not let what everyone around us is doing affect our game. So what happened next? Now I was playing golf in two leagues, so I had two different handicaps. The two courses I was playing on were two completely different types of courses, and a different golf handicap on both could be expected. One course was more difficult than the other. My golf handicap had reduced from a 3 to a 1 on the more difficult of the two courses and the other course my golf handicap was a zero. I am quite proud of what I did by lowering my golf handicap from a 5-7 to a 1-0. And if you knew me, you would also know that by no way am I completely satisfied. I can be very hard on myself, not only in golf, but in my life too. I did not intentionally set out to lower my golf handicap, but once I did start to see my game improving, I loved it and wanted more positive results. For me I found the following steps were key to lowering my Golf Handicap Playing more golf Knowing my strengths and weaknesses Improvement in my game through new equipment My Course Management My mental part of the game
As I said earlier, I moved from Ohio to the Netherlands in February of 2002. I have been here in The Netherlands for over a year and I have not played golf once. I am getting anxious to start playing and see what my golf handicap is after a year off. When I arrived here I discovered a number of things different with Golf from what I was used to. Hey, I have just had an idea for another article, my Golf Experience in The Netherlands.
If anyone has any comments on this article or would just like to talk golf. Please feel free
to write us. You just can never talk enough about the game of golf.
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Daves Personal Handicap Story
I grew up in Northeast Ohio. I started playing golf at around the age of 10. Not really
playing golf, but more of just hitting golf balls in a park close to home. As a kid growing
up, golf was really not a popular sport with me or my friends. In Ohio Football is always
number one, then Baseball, then Basketball, and who knows where on the list golf really was. But as I grew older and eventually stopped playing all the other sports in school and the different leagues in the area, golf was still there. I played more golf after getting to the driving age. I developed the love for the game at this time of my life and the love of the game has never gone away. I now live in the Netherlands, after meeting the woman of my dreams and we made all our dreams come true in early 2002 with us being together.
Most of my adult life, by the way I am 48 years young, my golf handicap was around the 5-7 range. I played in a golf league most of the years one evening a week, during the summer. At different times I played more, like once on the weekend, but never really faithfully. I was playing fairly well for not really playing a lot of golf. The first big change in my golf life came by starting to play more golf. The more golf I played, the more serious I found myself taking the game. However, by just taking the game more serious, it did not mean my golf handicap would become lower. Not only was I playing more golf and taking the game more serious, I actually started to like the game more than ever before. I just could not wait for the next time to play. On a golf day I found myself going over every hole and how I wanted to play those holes. I started playing golf year round. This is not always easy in Northern Ohio. There was only one golf course in the area that would stay open 12 months a year. So we played golf every weekend during the winter too. I did not know it at the time but now I can see how the winter golf experience was so valuable. This experience helped me to deal with the weather, and the weather with golf, as with most outdoor sports, can influence the game more than we truly realize. By playing more golf and in every weather condition imaginable, I can see how it helped me. It did not immediately lower my golf handicap, but that was to happen soon.
