The theory of relativity

I’ve been reading a bit and watching some science documentaries about relativity and so wish to apply it to my golfing game.  I’m not exactly going to get “deep” on this one, but have just noticed some connections.

It’s all relative.  Especially confidence.  Just two weeks ago I was at the peak of my very young golfing career.  I felt like a king amongst men when I walked out onto the putting green, knowing matter-of-factly that no matter where a ball might lay I could get it in the hole in two strokes tops.  And, I knew that 90 percent of the time I could chip up a ball to within my striking distance from anywhere within 20 yards out.  Now, just a short break away, my wavering confidence has me questioning 20 foot lags like it’s the final day of the Masters.  I know that it will just take a few days to get back into the groove, but it’s still interesting how your confidence can dictate your game and how quickly it can all change.  Relative to last week, my confidence is down and in turn so is my game, not sure which caused which..

Also in the relative confidence world is my skills with different clubs.  I’ve come to the conclusion that to become confident in something all you need to do is add in something harder, or more complicated, and you are instantly a success with the original task.  It might not be exactly this simple, but what I have noticed is that when I add a new club to my bag whatever I was previously working on instantly becomes something that I know and therefore my confidence with is grows exponentially.  For example, when I only had a putter I knew that I was working on my putting and was probably not that good at it, but when I added a pitching wedge, my putter became old faithful and would swing like a charm.  At that point, chipping was my focus and I never knew what would happen when the pitching wedge was in my hand.  Soon later I adopted the sand wedge and, again, the pitching wedge AND putter were known skill sets.  So, now that the sand wedge is my focus I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing with it and hit the ball without confidence.  Guess I just need to add an 8 iron and I’ll be a sand wedge expert!

There’s a lot more involved here, of course, but the main realization that I had today was that as you increase the difficulty of a task the former goals begin to seem relatively easy.  In a year or two, I’ll probably look back and think how easy I had it being able to work with just three clubs, but for the time being I’m just trying to build enough confidence to move onto the next iron!