One of the biggest problems I see with the average golfer is hyper-focus ball flight and the instinct to immediately “fix” what went wrong on the next move. When you do this, you can quickly ruin your round.
Anytime you make an adjustment to compensate for a previous mistake, you’re walking down a dangerous path, because a bump — or even a hole — isn’t a trend. It takes time to identify and understand your pattern of absenteeism, and once you do, the goal is to work with instead of fighting it.
Typically, this is how it goes off tee 1. A player block one into the right trees, and on the next shot—punching, no less—they try to negate that block by closing the face or releasing the ball more aggressively through the stroke. The result? The next shot goes too far to the left and then the cycle repeats. Right, left, right, left. Military golf. Never fun.
I tell my students to collect data during their warm-up, paying attention to the consistency and patterns of their mistakes, and then see how that plays out on the course over the first few holes. If your shots are doing X in the string and keep doing X on the course, you’ll likely have created your own pattern for the day. At that point, hug him and play with him for the remainder of the round. Fighting your tendency alone makes it nearly impossible to control the flight of the ball.
The problem is that most amateurs either don’t warm up or fail to notice a trend because they aren’t practicing with a target. So when they see a ball fly into the first hole that doesn’t match the shot, they they want to strike, they panic and immediately adjust to the next swing. But how do you know the shot wasn’t just a one-off or an isolated one? You don’t.
If you fit in at every move, things only get worse. A putt, two shots, or even a hole isn’t a trend—it could be as simple as timing, nerves, or a tricky lie on the opening hole.
Give yourself time to realize your mistakes. Once a trend becomes clear, you can target accordingly for the rest of the round.
If you want to dive deeper into understanding photography patterns and lost trends, spend some time with him Scott Fawcett’s DECADE Golf System. It’s built around knowing your tendencies, aiming out of trouble and managing mistakes.
Check your mistakes and you will check your score.
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