There’s no substituting real competition

As much as I practice and try to perfect my golf game out on the putting green, it will never simulate the pressures and stresses of playing in a full-on tournament.  I’m very aware of this shortcoming in my practice routine and wish that there was a simple solution (once I am actually playing golf there will be a solution, namely to actually play in as many tournaments as I can enter.).  Christopher and I spoke with Dr. Mark Guadagnoli a little while back and what he suggested, and what he has the members of the UNLV golf team do, was to jog around the practice green to get your heart rate up and once it’s up try and calm yourself down in a relatively short amount of time (roughly 30 seconds to a minute) before attempting a putt.  Physiologically, the racing heart in this scenario is not much different from what you would experience out on the 18th green of a competitive game where there is something at stake.  That said, there is NO real substitution for experience, but at least it looks kind of funny when I set my putter down and start jogging around the green!

For the time being (ie fall through winter) I’m going to stick with mechanics and learning how to make solid and consistent contact with the ball.  And, I’ll continue to jog around the greens whenever I can’t talk someone into playing a chipping/putting game with me.  As soon as I can play a full course, though, I expect everyone to come out and watch whenever possible, it will be time to start putting the pressure on!

Speaking of this, I played five holes with a regular Monday golfer Matt today and he won three holes to two.  I’m not upset to have lost to him, but I feel like even this little friendly game got my heart rate up a bit and caused me to miss a five-footer that I REALLY should have sank..