Slow drivers in the right lane, people who whinge constantly, tailgating drivers, people who complain they can’t find the right $1000 dress when you are shopping at Target for their specials.  Mostly these things don’t really affect you personally unless you get caught up emotionally with them. 

Do you notice that most of the things that seemed to drive you crazy are actually out of your control?  You’ll have opinions on sport and politics and for the most part have little or no influence to create change.  Where you do have the ability to influence change is with the things that lie within your control.  The emotional weight of not addressing something that is “on your mind” can be enormous.  This is where procrastination can be like a mental disease.

Addressing changes that we need to make can be scary.  Usually that fear dissipates fairly quickly once we take action.  I know in the past I have procrastinated over starting things or changing things, but once I committed to a course of action and took the first step the rest of the work seemed so much easier.

What about you and your golf, is there something that you are absolutely mad about, yet you still put up with it?  It is likely to be the one thing you talk about when you say “If I could only get this done, if I could just get rid of this problem, all my problems would be solved.”  What is that one thing?

Regardless of whether it is hitting more fairways, holing more short putts, improving your chipping or learning out of a bunker shots, it is best to tackle the problem as a project.  A project implies there is more than one step to take in order to arrive at a solution.  This is absolutely true of any project you have for improving your golf.

As an example, let’s suppose you want to improve your putting in the 9 to 15 foot range.  Leverage points to improve your putting could include the following

• You don’t aim correctly.
• You don’t practice your putting.
• You have a poor putting technique.
• Your putter doesn’t fit you correctly.
• You have back pain which prevents you from standing correctly.
• Your green reading is poor.
• Lack of concentration/focus
• Any of these lead to a lack of confidence.

These are examples of the things that could be causing you problems with your putting.  The reality is the solution lies in a combination of a number of these things.  An example, some of the steps in creating a solution could include.

• Have a putting lesson once a month for the next three months.
• Practice your putting stroke at home each evening for 10 minutes focusing on stroke path, putter face control and stroke length.
• Do string line drills on the putting green to learn how to judge break correctly.
• Do a competitive putting drill involving putts in the 9 to 15 foot range and complete the drill three times a week, recording your scores.
• Visit your club professional for a putter fitting.
• Practice a visualisation exercise for 5 minutes each evening where you imagine yourself confidently holing putts.
• Visit your optometrist for a sports vision test.

When you look at an area of your game as project, you’ll quickly see that there are multiple ways to improve.  It’s worth discussing these with your coach as a coach will be able to offer solutions tailored to you and include items that I may not have listed.

As Einstein suggested: we can’t solve problems with the same level of thinking that created them.  For the golfer this means that just persevering without a planned approach is likely to continue your woes, because it was this thinking that got you in trouble to begin with.