Save that card from being ruined!

Stand back and give your self some room

You’ve been looking forward to your round for ages, in fact it’s the only thing that’s got you through the working week, and having started with a nice gentle par at the first, you’ve followed it up with a sensational birdie at the second. With the world seeming a much happier place you head to the third, a gentle hole ready for the taking. As thoughts of eagles and birdies rush through your head you pull the big dog from your bag, and prepare to unleash a bomb. Striking the ball it looks good as it leaves the club before violently deviating from it’s intended course and heads past the out of bounds markers like a weapon of mass golf round destruction. A promising start ruined in one shot, you hack your way to the 18th with thoughts of what could have been, another card ruined.

But it doesn’t have to be like this, one bad hole or shot doesn’t have to ruin your day, if you know how to recover like a pro by following some simple steps.

Give yourself a break

We all make mistakes, it’s part of being a human, and it’s certainly part of golf. But making a mistake is not a sin, in fact the only sin, is not learning from your mistake, and doing it again!

The majority of us do not strike the ball as consistently as the professionals, which means that the distance and direction we hit the ball will also not be as consistent. We can’t all hit our 7-iron to the same yardage every time, and the variety in distance and direction could be the difference between finding the green, and finding the water in front of the green. Keep this in mind when playing your shots, and give yourself some margin for error, so when things do go wrong, you have given yourself the best chance of missing serious trouble.

Easy does it Tiger

The only thing you can do after a mistake is recover, and to recover you need to let go of the mistake quickly, forgive yourself and learn from it, something top professionals learn quickly.

Looking back at the 2nd shot of Tiger Woods on the 16th hole at Augusta in the Masters of 2005, one of the best recovery shots in modern history, he had actually made a mistake with his tee shot and his ball was laying in the semi rough leaving him a perilous chip onto the green. In fact the commentator at the time described it as being “one of the toughest pitches to be playing at Augusta”. Tiger prowled the green focusing only on the next shot, plotting his way out of the situation he was in. The rest (and the mistake) as they say, is history; make sure the mistake you’ve made remains history and focus only on the recovery.

Redemption is a reward

By firstly accepting that you are not perfect and will make mistakes, you will be on the first step to reducing the impact. Give yourself a break, and try to be more like another golfing great, Walter Hagen, who was known for making plenty of mistakes, but his secret was the way he recovered from them. He even gave himself an allotted amount of mistakes per round that he chalked off as he went. Secondly, be positive and committed to your shot, but ensure you factor in that if the shot goes wrong, what the outcome could be, give yourself some margin for error in the shots you play.

Look back at any great round you’ve played, and at some point you will find a great recovery, which not only helped save a round, but also spurred you on to greater achievements, make sure you see it as part of the great game of golf, and enjoy the challenge and chance to recover is style.