Byron Kalies

“90 % of the game is all mental - the other half is physical” - Yogi Beera

Yogi attempting to explain his philosophy to a group of non-cerebral golfers

You’re on the green at the uphill par 5 514 yard 3rd at West Mon Golf Club (the highest golf club in Great Britain). It’s blowing a gale and there’s that curious West Mon weather which is a mix of wind, rain, hail and snow. It’s like an angry, but dexterous, polar bear throwing hard rice pudding at you. It stings. You’ve hit the best driver, 3 wood, 3 wood, 3 wood and you’ve just 3 putted from 8 feet. You look at your frozen golf partners and silently ask “Why do we do it?”. They silently shrug back at you and you move to the next tee.

The mental side of Winter Golf is pretty much the same as Summer golf except that it’s magnified. It’s tough.The main problem, for me at least, seems to be an accelerated lack of confidence, and a short term memory. There’s also a concept called private logic;
.
The first day of Winter golf feels like you’ve never seen a golf club in your life before. Where a week ago( at least in your head) you’d hit an 8 iron to the centre of the green today you’re taking a 6 iron and still leaving it short. The logical part of your brain is saying - “hit a 5 next time. It’s obviously wetter - no run on the ball, colder air, bad lie, uphill ” yet the illogical (private logic) part of your brain would remember the 1 occasion you actually hit the green with an 8 iron and conveniently forget the dozens of times it fell short. It would argue that a 5 iron would be ridiculous and that your playing partners were all hitting 7s or 8s (irrespective of the fact that they were better golfers and still leaving their shots short).

Your mind is composed on 2 parts; logic and private logic. The logic part is well… logical. The private logic element taps in to all your private fears, insecurities, doubts.

For instance, setting aside the shot selection angle for a minute and turning to the condition of the course. Winter golf conditions vary considerably. Some days it’s frosty, the next day it’s raining - the same drive can go 290 yards with a good bounce and a following wind one day - then sink into the soft mud at 200 yards on another day. You know this and your logical part of your bran knows this. However your private logic part of your head still goes through the stages of change; immobilisation, denial, anger, bargaining, depression ………

As I said at the beginning everything is magnified. An 80 yard pitch to the green that would be fairly routine (to think about, not execute) in Summer is a potential nightmare in Winter. In Summer you’d select a club, aim for a spot on the green, swing the club, miss the spot, miss the green and trudge after the ball. In Winter you think about the ground (hard, soft, normal), the green (temporary, cut up, slow) the club you choose (pitch it all the way, bounce it in). In the end you’re so busy worrying about everything you’ll concentrate so hard on getting a wedge 2 inches onto the green 3 yards up from the pin that you forget how to swing the club and end up taking an air shot.

Similarly putting - by the time you’ve worked out how much break to allow, what the wind will do, what would be the best position if you don’t make it, whether the mud is lying toward you or against you, you forget to hit it and leave it 6 feet short (which for a 5 feet putt takes some doing).

Now I’m not saying this doesn’t happen in Summer it’s just exaggerated.

The realisation I’ve finally arrived at is that Winter is not a enchanted time. Winter pixies do not sprinkle their magic Winter pixie dust over Bargoed Golf Club and reverse the principles of Nature - downhill is still downhill. The laws of physics still apply to golf balls in December. Greens that are on a slope in August are still sloping in January. The 14th is still 172 yards long.

Roll on Summer ………..

I finally get golf.

I understand all the mysteries of the game.

I even remember the day I achieved this state. It was the final competition of Summer 2009. I had been in a particularly relaxed frame of mind- I’d played some decent shots, some pretty poor shots- but it all seemed to fit. The ball went more or less where I wanted it to – If I hit a bad shot I ended up in a bad place. When I hit a good shot I ended up in a good place. I had reached the golfing equivalent of achieving karuna. Now if only life was as simple as this….

The following week Winter Golf began…

I’m not sure ‘Winter golf’ is the right term. It’s not really golf is it? Or ‘it’s golf Jim but not as we know it’. Perhaps we should call it something else – ‘flog’ perhaps..

The following week Winter Flog began…

In the course of 7 days the golf course had changed from a pristine, emerald, slightly undulating, tightly mown, interesting, tree-lined, water-featured, offering a different challenge on every hole, sandy bunkered and undulating (oops already said that), slick, challenging, but fair greens into a scene resembling the trenches from World War I. There were temporary greens, temporary tees, temporary everything. There were 487 new rules all designed to stop you hitting the ball, and a totally new attitude to go with it. A week ago there was a riotous rabble of jolly chaps and smiley ladies laughing and having such a hoot of a time. Now this was real male, manly, macho time. The testosterone was so intense you could sense that the neural areas of the brain the metabolites were influencing changing patterns of behaviour due to increased neural connectivity and neurochemical characterization.

Winter Macho Flog had begun…

It doesn’t help that this the golf club is at the top end of the Rhymney valley, feels slightly further north than the North Frigid Zone, is 29,030 feet above sea level and colder than a mother-in-law’s love (oops sorry).

There was a time when I was a big, big fan of 365 days a year golf. I even played in the ultimate macho competition – The Winter League – ‘Cock of the North’ as it was called, which summed it up on so many levels. One of the many, many rules of the league was that you had to play on a Sunday morning - whatever the weather – or forfeit the match ( and feel the shame and derision of not playing). The only way out of this was if you and your partner and your opponents mutually agreed to call it off and call it a draw. The winners of the Cock of the North and the club poker champions were invariably the same pair;

Scene – 8:28 on a Sunday morning in the clubhouse looking out at a blizzard;

“I really fancy it today.”

“Me too. I had an early night and whacked down a load of vitamins so look out today.”

“Me too. I love it when it’s nice and fresh.”

“Bracing”

“I find I play better with a touch of frost bite in my fingers – helps my putting.”

pause…..

“Let’s call it a draw and I’ll get the first round”

“Agreed”

“Agreed”

“Brandy for me.”

……………………………. happy days

But non-league Winter golf is supposed to be fun. When you’re teeing off from a rectangle the size of a small face flannel it’s not too much fun. When you’re slipping around in the mud like Bambi on ice it’s not the best feeling. It has prompted one of the best retorts I’d heard on a course though. After getting harangued for putting his opening drive out of bounds a colleague was heard to remark that it was because he had a bad lie on the tee.

However, you eventually succeed in getting your drive away and march resolutely after it praying it’s in the rough or 151 yards from the green. Because (and I’m not sure how universal this is) in our club if you’re 150 yards or less away from the flag you must play off Winter mats. These abominations ( and yes I know all the arguments about why we use them) are the most annoying piece of gold equipment since tassels on the front of golf shoes, and just as useful. They are roughly 2 feet long, 1 foot wide, six inches thick and curled up at the edges like a 3 day old cheese and lettuce sandwich. To be honest it’s easier to play out of a bunker.

You reach the ‘green’. Green it ain’t. The dictionary describes green as;

a. “The hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying between yellow and blue, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 490 to 570 nanometers; any of a group of colours that may vary in lightness and saturation and whose hue is that of the emerald or somewhat less yellow than that of growing grass; one of the additive or light primaries; one of the psychological primary hues.” ,

i.e. a colour

or b “ The culmination of a golf hole, where the flagstick and cup are located and where a golfer will “putt out” to end the hole. The area of closely cropped grass surrounding each hole.

i.e. a green

Well green the colour it definitely is not – more a greyish, reddish, blacky-brown and ‘an area of closely cropped grass” - I don’t think so either. It’s like trying to putt on a field that has been ploughed by an angry farmer with a team of heavy, drunk shire horses.

However this is only part of the problem – the physical. Mentally….. next time………..

“A game is an ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined predictable outcome.” – says Eric Berne

“OK”, I reply, “tell me more”

“in time…” he replies cryptically.

We play golf. Eric and I, against some friends, let’s call them Alan and Des. Eric is, by nature, a little deliberate, but we toddle along happily enough until I hit a nice 4 iron approach to the 5^th which takes a bad bounce into the bunker.

“Typical” I rant. “Always me. I must be the unluckiest golfer in the world.”

Eric looks on

“Seriously though – if there are any bad bounces going around I’m sure to get them.” I chunder.

On the green I ask Eric to have a look at my putt. I’m not sure if it’s straight or slightly left to right. Eric refuses. I miss the putt.

Alan and Des help each other out and, of course, start winning. By the turn they’re 3 up and smiling – which is unusual for Alan and Des.

On the 10^th Alan steps onto the tee with an iron. Des advises him to hit a driver. Alan feels that an iron would be safer. They discuss….vigorously. Des, as acting captain, decrees that Alan must hit a driver. Alan asks Eric what he should do. Eric says nothing. Alan calls Eric a shit and hits a driver out of bounds. Glaring, at Eric, Alan snatches an iron and also hits it out of bounds.

An hour later Eric and I win 3 and 2.

I await the debrief in the bar.

Eric decided early on that he wasn’t going to help me. In his words;

“ You seemed to be playing some sort of ‘poor me’ game….’boo hoo’”, he mimed, fairly accurately, “ I’m a bad person. Nobody loves me.’ This gives me a clue to the type of reaction I could expect if I did help you.”

We time travel back to the 5^th green……

Eric looks at my putt and advises ‘left lip’. It is – it goes in – we halve the hole.

On the 6^th I ask for advice. He advises me – I miss. The game continues and pretty soon I’m asking for advice for every shot. I’m not blaming Eric, quite the opposite – I’m joking and happy to have someone to sympathise with. Eric’s game however goes to hell.

We time travel back to the bar.

“Look out for “poor me’s” – they want sympathy and support which can be useful but psychologically it’s incredibly draining. It’s not healthy.”

“But what about Alan and Des?” I ask

“It’s a potential drama triangle “says Eric as we time travel back to the 10^th…..

… Des, as acting captain, decrees that Alan must hit a driver. Alan asks Eric what he should do…..

Eric skilfully freezes the scene and talks to me.

“It’s a classic drama triangle. Alan is the victim. Des is the persecutor and I’m the potential rescuer. “

“So why don’t you rescue?” I ask

“Look and see,“ Eric says in that strange tone people adopt in training videos. He then unfreezes the action.

Eric gets into a discussion with Alan about what he wants from the hole – does he want to go for a birdie, or is he happy with a steady par.

Des asks Eric what the hell his game is, “Don’t confuse my partner.”

Alan joins in and asks Eric what the hell is to him anyway.

Before long the roles have completely changes – Alan and Des are now the persecutors and Eric’s the victim. I join in and try to rescue Eric;

“Hey leave my mate alone.”

Pretty soon we’re all dancing between persecutor / rescuer and victim and we end up having a free for all on the 12^th green and are being questioned by the police for causing a public affray. Before they can arrest us we time travel back to the bar.

“I think I’ve learnt a very important lesson today” I say.

“Which is?” asks Eric.

“You should be extremely wary of helping golfers.”

“…. or real people” adds Eric

Keith’s specialist subject on Mastermind

There’s feedback and there’s feedback. Feedback in business / management / offices type environment is supposed to be constructive, positive, helpful, observable, blah blah blah. All good, all sensible and all designed to help. It works too. It even works in real life.

Unfortunately it doesn’t works on the golf course. The golf course is a strange, other worldly, parallel universe type- place which doesn’t always obey the laws of the rest of the world. It’s a place where different rules seem to apply;
What would happen if you followed the training courses rules giving feedback on a golf course? For example;

“When you hit your last shot I noticed your head lifted a little sharply and as a result your shot only travelled about 10 yards. As your partner I was disappointed in you and would advise you not to raise your head the next time. I hope you appreciate this feedback?”

Once you’ve extracted the 5 iron from your bottom you’d probably think twice about offering feedback like this in the future.

There are some golfers though that seem to have no problems offering feedback - whether you want it or not. These people tend to belong to that strange indigenous tribe called “the vets”. Not wishing to stereotype them, but I’ve got to, they are a bunch of no good, irritating, interfering old gits who are obviously so bored and have so little going on
in their lives that they’ve got to make your life a misery. Now this obviously doesn’t apply to all of them… but I’ve yet to meet one it doesn’t. For instance, I’m happily playing the back 9 around 8 o’clock in the morning. I’m on my own and can’t see a soul. Playing down the 12th I duff a 6 iron and it trickles along the ground into the bunker, so I drop another ball and hit the 6 iron onto the green. Before I can congratulate myself there’s a vet racing toward me in his golf cart giving me a earful for practicing on the course and reminding me of the standing, or lack of standing of a single player on a golf course. Plus others things such as dress code etc.
Before I can respond he’s zooming away into the distance in a hurry to tell others what he’s done. Don’t you just love them ……. Jerry Sadowitz has similar thoughts on old people and feels they should be shot at birth. I laugh and have to remind myself that it won’t be too long for me…

Beyond vets though there are others that are gifted in the feedback process - your playing partners. Or, more specifically, one of your playing partners… there’s always one and they tend to be called something innocuous like, oh I don’t know… let’s call him Keith.

The Keith’s of this world are really, really trying to be helpful, I suppose, but ………..
“It’s all to do with the position of the tee after the drive,” come the words of the wise. Keith was bending down looking at a 2 inch piece of plastic that you stick in the ground to support your golf ball, as if it were a medieval gold coin on an archaeological dig. He examined the area looking for all the world like a native American tracker from those old cowboy films. My florescent pink tee landed a few feet left of where I had hit my shot and a few yards behind it.
“The sign of a good drive is when your tee end up directly behind you.” he announces, untroubled by the fact that my golf ball is in the middle of the fairway and has travelled over 200 yards (a rare feat, granted).
“Tees to the left mean it’s a slice. Tees to the left equals a hook.”
“And how is that supposed to help?” asked one of the others in our fourball.
Unconcerned he continues, “Tee in front signify a slight fade with a touch of draw if you’re playing into a left to right wind.”
He looked at us as the Dali Llarma looks at his followers, “It’s a scientific fact.” This signified the end of the conversation.

The next hole he picks up a discarded tee. It’s plastic. He doesn’t approve. “Pros would never use rigid tees like this. They’re too hard and would alter the flight of the ball.” The 24 handicapper who owns the tee, is distraught. Keith can barely keep the distain from his voice as he holds the tee up. ” No. You’ll never find a pro using a plastic tee. It’s good to be wooden. It’s a scientific fact.” This, again, is the end of the conversation.

Keith knows a lot about tees. He is to tees what Gillian McKeith is to poo. Whilst the rest of us watch the ball soaring from a good drive, Keith keeps his eye on the tee. Somehow he even manages to do this on his own drives. He has never lost a tee in his life.

‘Rubber tees and winter mats’ would be his specialist topic on Mastermind.
He’s never lost a tee and rarely loses a ball. To be fair, no-one playing with him ever loses a ball either. He knows the course so well that he has some kind of mental map of every blade of grass, every tree, every ant, in his head somewhere. Halfway through your backswing he’ll announce, “Just short of the bunker behind the small bush.” And of course that’s where you’ll find it.

He’s also an expert of the rules of golf, local rules, the committee, the captain, the relative merits of 18 different makes of golf ball …. but that’ll be for another time….

“Bar or lounge?”

Philosophical prelude:
Many people have asked about the Saturday ball school. They ask me to describe them. How can I? They are rich / poor / young / old /…..Suffice to say they can be summed up by a common set of values, a common set of principles handed down by their fathers;
“There are only 3 rules to remember in this life….
1. Never hit a woman.
2. Never cross a picket line.
3. Always buy your round at the bar.”

Rene Descartes on the first tee, Golf and Country Club, Heilloo, Netherlands, 1648:
“Rene – could you hand me my driver please?”
“Why would you want that implement, sir?”
“For to hit the ball my good man – now hurry up there are lieden waiting”
“But it is my job to question. So once again I ask why would you want this all titanium, 9.5 degree loft, driver?”
“Because I’m on the tee, it’s a par 4 and over 300 metres. Now please..”
“But sir, again I ask, why a driver ? “
“Rene, you are a bit of a thicko, aren’t you. Let me explain it to you slowly…. If I hit the driver 230 metres I will be 230 metres closer to the hole. I can then hit a wedge, 2 putt and make a par.”
“And where will this be happening?”
“On this hole, the first – if I ever get to it.”
“I mean, where is this happening – philosophically?”
“!”
“It’s happening in your mind, isn’t it? You see the next 5 minutes played out in your head – but that’s not reality is it? The mind and body are separate.”
“I get that but I also dreamt somewhere that visualising helps with this. It will be called psycho-cybernetics and In USA a group of schoolchildren will be separated. One group will practice shooting free throws every day. The second group will sit on the bench and imagine themselves shooting free throws. The third group we do nothing and unsurprisingly will be the worse when tested. There will barely any difference between groups 1 and 2.”
“Ah but that’s not for another 300 years. At present we are stuck with this Cartesian anxiety.”
“Oh I see – bit of a joke there. But tell me, oh wise one – what would you suggest?”
“Well, having become familiar with your game over the past few years, which is possible as golf (or kolf) has been played here in the Netherlands for many years, I have yet to see you hit a drive 200 metres in a consistently straight, forward direction.”
“I see. So this philosophical argument is merely a distraction to show me up as a rubbish golfer, or kolfer as we sometimes say here in North Holland.”
“Not entirely I was testing out my method of doubt. It’s my theory on challenging assumptions. I find it useful to assume that everything you believe is put there by a deceitful, omnipotent being who can deceive you in even your most basic assumptions.”
“And what would be my most basic assumptions today?”
“That you want to hit a driver, which assumes you want to hit the ball, which assumes there is a reason for it, which assumes you derive some pleasure from the game, which would lead to a bit of a discussion on pleasure and pain in the future. Incidentally a proponent of this, Jeremy Bentham will be born exactly a 100 years from this day and will take up the challenge by revealing that mankind is governed by pain and pleasure”
“All very well Rene. However there is a crowd of many, many people waiting for us so please just hand me a club.”
“Here’s a 3 iron.”
“You were always going to give me this club weren’t you?”
“Of course”
The 3 iron sails down the fairway. After another prolonged discourse the 8 iron approach shot lands softly on the green and we walk toward it. As I start checking my putt Zeno of Elea walks toward me;
“You know that philosophically, your ball will never reach the hole don’t you?”
“Oh – don’t you F****** start!”

Forget Niccolo Machievelli, Sun Pin, Carl Von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu. If you really want to learn the art of war, battle and conflict join the Saturday morning ball school. This
‘friendly’ ball school is all smiles, jokes, banter and laughter. Yet deep down there’s a mass of psychological insight on display borne out of decades of disappointment, heartbreak and angst.

For instance there’s a psychological condition known as reactance that was developed by Kansas psychology professor, and non golfer, Jack Brehm. He looked at how people react to change. He concluded that most people refuse to be bullied into doing anything. There’s a psychological condition in humans that refuses to be told what to do. He explored this and called it psychological reactance. He found that if someone tries to restrict our choice we tend to react by trying to restore that balance.

He carried out an experiment where people who didn’t have a preference for 2 brands of cigarettes (A and B) were observed at a vending machine. One of the brands was deliberately sold out (Brand A) and the only brand available was Brand B. Logically, it should make no difference and people would, you would guess, choose Brand B. However, people were more likely to try to find another vending machine and buy Brand A. This was all because they felt they were being forced to do something.

Now I’m not sure if the members of the ball school have been versed in the musings of Jack Brehm and his psychological theories but they all seem to use his findings instinctively. Jack Brehm is one of the many psychologists whose work has been explored and translated into practical actions by the ball school members. It’ll be demonstrated as a look, a sigh, a silence. It’ll be a look behind you as you’re stepping up to a twenty foot putt and a sharp intake of breath and a helping word;
“Don’t take any notice of me but this putt’s more uphill than it looks. It’s really difficult to judge and well, if it were me I’d lag up.”
Thereby ensuring you hit it six feet past and miss the return putt.

Or the comment on the second tee as you practice your swing;
“I see you’ve changed your swing.”
You know this is an old trick but you’re still thinking about as you’re looking for your ball in the left rough.

Or you’re playing well on an unfamiliar course and approach the par 3 with a long iron. You notice your colleagues have all got drivers out. They’re not exactly telling you to hit a driver but there’s the assumption that you should. You recognise this is a ploy now so confidently hit your 3 iron into the pond.

Or you’re settling over a 6 foot putt. The innocent question,
“Are you putting for a 5 or 6?”
You lift your head, start counting and by the time you take your putt you’ve forgotten the line, the distance, everything and leave it a foot short.

Now these examples are fairly standard, innocent even… for the first dozen holes. For the last few holes though things change. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing for the club championship or a pound coin - the tactics are the same. There are some people who play differently when it comes to money. There’s a different mentality that kicks in - not meanness but … some kind of primal instinct. There are a number of golfers that play differently whether they’ve a score card or a £5 note in their hand.

Perhaps the area that causes more grief, stress and psychological torture is the grey, dark, undefinable world of gimmes. Gimmes are those putts that are conceded by your opponent when it’s obvious you would hole them… well that’s one definition of gimmes. Another definition is that it’s a device for psychologically wounding and damaging your opponent. The best psychological demonic experts can break weaker players with just a few words.

It’s demonstrated at the ball school with the 4 balls playing in pairs with a pound for
the winning pair. For the first 12 holes its…
“Pick it up, it’s only 5 feet for goodness sake.”
“Oh don’t be daft of course you can have that one - you can’t miss that.”
Or they’ll (in your innocent mind) very generously knock your ball back to you when you’ve just missed a putt with, “bad luck but that’s a gimme.”
However as it gets to the end of the round, and the scores are tighter it suddenly
becomes quieter on the green. You walk up to a two feet putt expecting your opponent to give it to you when suddenly they’re looking at something else and talking to their partner giving their full, total concentration.
Have they conceded it or not? You decide you’d better putt it. You hole it a little nervously when you hear “Oh, you didn’t need to putt that for pity’s sake.”
On the next hole you concede their putt and approach your four foot putt half-hoping to hear your opponent - again silence. As you settle over the putt you realise you’ve only had one or two small putts all day. In fact you’ve hardly had any putts at all. You’ve no idea of the pace of the greens. No idea how well you’re putting and you’re starting to get nervous. You know if you miss you’ll still have to the return putt - no more gimmes from now on. So you think about leaving it just a little short… which you do…. twice.

Now there’s nothing illegal in this. It is part of the game, part of the fun and the sooner you learn these new rules the sooner you can start using them on your opponents.

Aristotle would argue;
People don’t like change.
Golfers are people.
Therefore, golfers don’t like change.

Look 1 – Breaking The Habit
One fundamental reason people, and by inference, golfers, don’t like change is that they like the comfort of routine, custom or habit. At a basic psychological level there are 5 basic reasons they resist change; uncertainty, lack of confidence, anxiety, stress, confusion.
You spend £100 on a crash course with the pro to get rid of your slice. On the range it’s perfect. You hit ball after ball straight, straight, straight. Then you get on the first tee and all your frames of reference have gone. What do you line up with? Normally you’re aiming at the 18 tee, but now? What reference points are there in the middle of the fairway? As you prepare to hit the drive you’re really nervous. Everything seems unfamiliar – what do you do with your legs? your arms? How high do you tee it up now?
Anxiety creeps in. (by the way anxiety has best been defined as the anticipation of pain – it’s not the pain itself).
You hit a bad shot and the stress builds. For the past 6 months you’ve hit bad drives on this hole but have put it down to rushing, not warming up properly, a difficult tee shot, a big breakfast. Yet today it’s the fault of your new swing.
Stressed as you are it’s inevitable you hit the next drive badly and suddenly you’re hot, sweating and barely know the general direction you’re heading for.
You return to your old ways, have a miserable round and vow never to change your swing, or anything ever again.
Look 2 - The Coping Cycle

The Coping Cycle - A model for helping golfers : Adams, Hayes and Hopson

People and golfers go through a number of stages as they go through change. In the model by Adams, Hayes, Hopson suggest that everyone has to take this journey. For some, it’s seconds (they’re shown something new – they copy it, assimilate it and move on) others never get to the end of the journey (see story 1). People give up and go back. The joy of this model is that it gives hope. Golfers, and people, need hope – they need to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

As they move along this path their performance and self-esteem fall, then rise. This is inevitable – for everyone.

At the start there’s the inevitable defence and denial stage – this comes when us golfers are asked to confront our demons. We have not been playing well and although the figures, the jokes of our colleagues, the self knowledge points toward making change we rationalise… “It’s not a hook it’s a draw.”, “I’m an aggressive putter not a useless putter.”, “if it wasn’t for those 4 bad holes I would have broke 100” – any excuse to put off the pain of the first steps.

The next stage is the adaptation. This is when the change is finally happening. We’ve bit the bullet, accepted the inevitable and done something about it –new clubs, new shoes, warming up, or God forbid – even a lesson. This will be the lowest point in this whole change cycle process. Our self-esteem is at its lowest. Our performance is at its lowest. We know this is true.
When we’re working on a change to our swing all we can think of initially is your arms, your legs, your elbow, your head – anything except hitting the ball. At this stage everything else goes to hell. Where once it was only our driving that was bad now it’s our approach game, our chipping, everything – just because you’re going through a radical change and nothing seems natural.

The trick, of course, is to stick at this and recognise that it will be better. Remember when you learnt to drive – all unnatural and strange for a long time – now it is the most straightforward process you could think of.

Eventually we work through the stage and it just becomes how it is. This is how our swing is. We’ve internalised and adapted and we’re hitting it better – further, straighter …. It’s at this point that our putting goes to hell ………………

There’s a fundamental question you need to ask yourself when you play golf. This is not the obvious question golf books / non golfers would suggest the questions you ask yourself are;

it’s not;
a. how much am I  willing to spend on the game ? or
b. how much time am I willing to commit ?

Those aren’t real questions. Once you’ve got ‘the bug’ you know what the answer to those questions will be;
a. as much as I can afford  get away with
b. see answer to a. above

No, the fundamental question to ask about golf is, “What do I want to get from a round of golf; enjoyment or getting the lowest score?”

How you answer this question will influence your whole approach to the game. I read a book from John Daly recently and his first chapter was all about… turning up early and practicing – the irony, I thought. However it made absolute sense though. If you are serious about getting the lowest score you can then you need to spend 20 minutes or so warming up. Otherwise you will lose 3 shots each round (a conservative estimate to me).

How many players in your club spend 2 minutes let alone 20 practicing before a round? Stretching and taking 3 swings with a 5 iron don’t really count.

If you want to play golf for fun then don’t leave the house until 5 minutes before your tee time. Or, stay in the bar until someone comes in to tell you your playing partners have teed off. However, don’t be surprised when you come in with another 100+ round.

It may well not be as straightforward as that though. You, like me, may well feel that you really want to score as low as you can because that’s where the fun is. That’s the challenge. So we may occasionally get to the club a few minutes early and have a quick half-hearted putt before we stroll to the first tee.

Part of the problem is not a big deal but just requires some thought and a little courage. In psychology / management jargon it’s about making a choice - Do you want to look good? Or do you want to get the job done?

A classic example of ‘looking good’ instead of ‘getting the job done’ crops up when you are 3 feet short of the green. How do you deal with shots just off the green. Do you, like me, sometimes choose a pitching wedge from 6 feet wide of the green rather than use a putter?  I know a putter will get me closer on 8 out of 10 occasions yet somehow it doesn’t feel right. I feel that I should use a wedge. There’s a pressure on me, a macho, male thing about having to copy the professionals. I can see it in the faces of most of my playing partners - they all feel the same. They’d rather lose a hole going for that ‘tiny gap between the trees and fading it around the corner’ shot than adopt the sensible ‘just chip it back on the fairway’ route. This isn’t everyone – just most of them. The one that doesn’t do this plays off scratch. Perhaps there’s a lesson there.

Ironically the main problem comes when I’ve hit the best drive of my life on the shortish par 5 7th. I know now that I should hit a nice iron, chip over the pond and have a putt for a birdie.
However…. there are demons in my head saying;
“Go on, get a 3 wood and go for it.”, “When will you ever get the chance of doing this again?”, “Go on – wimp.”
So I do and it goes in the pond, I duff the chip, 3 putt and hit driver off every tee thereafter and come in at double figures over my handicap.

So are you saying be boring and don’t take any risks?
Well not really – I’m advocating take a sensible risk and don’t sulk if it goes wrong and don’t carry on taking risks if it works… if you’re committed to getting the best score you can. If you committed to having fun then, in the words of the enigma that is John Daly, “Grip it and rip it.”

However if you are committed to getting a lower score, as I am, then perhaps the next time I’m on the edge of a par 4 in 2 I’m going to reach for a putter, lag it up and tap in for a par……. well, maybe as long as none of my regular playing partners are watching.

It’s time to seriously think about change…when you put your drive for the 10th on the motorway; when they refer to the sand trap on the 14th as Byron’s Bunker; when your woods really are made of wood; when no-one dreams of giving you a 9 inch putt; when a 4 ball medal match plays through your friendly 2 player match play; when your putter carries the name of a long-dead, hardly-remembered golfer; when your 3 wood has the word spoon inscribed underneath; when your preferred ball is a Spalding Executive; when Titleist sponsor you….. to wear Nike…it’s time to think about change.

Perhaps it’s even time for a radical change.

You’ve done everything you can think of and still your handicap is in the 20s. You bought new clubs, new golf balls, 7 putters, used the interlocking grip, the baseball grip, the leading grip, the trailing hand grip, the Toga Death grip. You’ve stood closer to the ball, further away from the ball, practically on the ball. You’ve tried yoga, acupuncture and chewing gum to help you relax. You’ve tried drinking Red Bull to keep you focused. You’ve bought a shed full of magazines, DVDs, books. You’ve changed your diet, changed your ball marker and even your lucky black hat. Nothing works. You’ve tried absolutely everything short of getting a lesson from the pro.

You need help.

Psychologically people tend not to want to change. There are a hundred theories why this is so. A popular one believes it all stems from the time we were living in caves and any change was dangerous to our survival. In those times change really was difficult. If you wanted to change your swing there were no driving ranges, no nets to practice in, very few indoor practice areas. So change was only made when the price of not changing was so drastic, or life - threatening that you had to. Maybe you were slicing so much you were worrying velociraptors. That would make you work on your grip.

It is now almost universally agreed that people don’t like change because we simply like the comfort of routine, custom, habit. This seems to be true for most aspects of our lives. All our daily life we tend to sit in the same seats in the clubhouse, park in the same place, miss our putts on the same line. We see the vets in the same bunkers on the same holes every day.

We tend to read newspapers from the back, even though the sports pages are rarely at the back anymore. We leave a half inch of tea even if we have never used tea leaves for 20 years. We take a driver off the 8th tee although 9 times out of 10 it ends up in the rough.

However, would you change if your life depended on it? As a betting man I would lay odds that you wouldn’t. This is based on a report by Dr. Edward Miller. The report showed that people who undergo heart surgery are often left with a choice; in stark terms the choice is ‘change or die’. If they change and lead a healthier lifestyle after surgery they could avoid pain, further surgery and stop the spread of a variety of
diseases before one of them kills them. Or, they could stay the same; eat, drink and be dead.

Only 1 in 10 patients changed their lifestyle. It seems that they would prefer to die rather than change. Although this is initially difficult to believe it seems that people get stuck in a defence and denial attitude and simply refuse to accept it. This sounds ridiculous but when you think of people like George Best, James Belushi you wonder. You look at other people who get trapped in a potentially disastrous lifestyle that they simply can’t seem to change; Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson, Bill Cllinton and you believe it a little more.

So it takes a fair amount of pain and effort to change - so why bother? I have playing partners who approach a bunker with the same enthusiasm you display approaching a rabid rhinoceros. Yet they rationalise it away by remembering the one great bunker shot they played on March 28th 1987. And, then they say, “Well, how often am I in the bunker - once or twice a round if that - it’s hardly worth bothering. “

So they don’t and carry on…

I wonder what would cause someone to be sufficiently fed up with their game that they would actually do something about it? Well, if you did actually hit your playing partners on the tee with that hook you keep compensating for, or you were making more and more bizarre excuses not to play in medal competitions then this could well indicate that you are getting dissatisfied enough to actually do something about it.

So, if you seriously think about feigning injury and walking in, rather than play out of a
bunker you should probably start thinking about making a change…….it’s time to face your demons and do something about it.

Undoubtedly the most tortured, most anguished look I’ve ever seen on a golfer’s face came a month or so ago at Bargoed Golf Club. It was a normal friendly, tense, bickering, frustrating, but very entertaining Saturday morning Ball School. There were 4 in our particular multifarious group and, as is the custom, it was a stableford competition.

For non-golfers Dr. Frank Barney Gordon Stableford various described as a Glamorganshire, Penarth club member, a Royal Porthcawl club member, or a Wallesey club member invented the system and first tried it out on members of the Glamorganshire / Porthcawl / Wallesey club on the 30th September 1898.

Prior to the invention of Dr Frank’s system if you had a bad hole - and for me a bad hole is double figures - you could just as well walk to the clubhouse, get the beers in and watch Sky Sports until your friends joined you one by moaning one. Previously the only means of scoring was medal - which was OK for professionals, veterans and banditos but a bit frustrating for the rest of us.

His new system meant that golfers got 2 points every time they completed a hole as they should according to their handicap - subject to all the bracketed conditions further on. This is universally considered to be a great thing. However read the following tale and I’ll let you be the judge….

Back to the first tee at Bargoed……Having played for many years the handicaps in the ball school had sorted themselves out really well and we all tended to finish pretty close, most weeks. On this particular day, however, we had a newcomer, a brother of a friend of someone who worked with someone who was married to someone who knew my cousin. He was young, keen and excited. He looked out of place.

However, he was a very nice lad ( anyone under 40 at our club is a lad ) who had just taken up golf and was playing off 28. (For non-golfers you get awarded a handicap based on your current level of skill, honesty and ability to put up with the taunt ‘bandit’. If you have a handicap of 28 it means that Tiger Woods, Bradley Dredge and you should be evenly matched on a round of golf if you had a 28 shot start…. Well not exactly as Tiger and Bradley are (or were) probably off +10 or something, but theoretically a scratch golfer would give you 28 shots and you would tie).

None of our Ball School were Tiger Woods, Bradley Dredge or scratch golfers although one of them, the ‘one with the face’ (which I referred to earlier, and will come on to later) was playing off a handicap of 9 and co-incidentally, his wife knew Bradley Dredge’s mother to talk to.

The morning was progressing steadily and the scores were pretty close between our 9 handicapper and the newcomer. The rest of us suffered with the usual mixture of hangovers, bad lies, bad luck and over-optimism. After the 13th our 9 handicapper was on a steady 26 points, a few points behind the newcomer who lead the way with a worthy 28. The 14th hole is a fairly unremarkable but quite narrow par 5, stroke index 10.

The man with the face played the hole exceptionally well; nice drive, long iron, pitch and 12 foot putt to get his 3 points (for non-golfers, see para 3 above - keep up) and announce it calmly; “4 for 3″ (i.e. four shots and 3 points). He now felt he had a distinct advantage, especially as he had seen the newcomer hook into the trees from the tee. We had all gone a-rummaging and found the ball under the root of a tree. Somehow he managed to chip it back out onto the fairway. He then topped a three wood that still trundled 150 yards before it dived into the rough. We found this for him as well. He hacked it back out onto the fairway. The next shot bent like a banana, looked like it was going out of bounds, hit a branch and plopped in the bunker at the right of the green. He managed to find that one himself - extracted the ball from the bunker by some means and watched as it rolled and rolled to within a few feet of the flag. He strode up and confidently missed the putt by inches then backhanded it into the hole with a groan.

As we walked away from the green our newcomer was counting his shots. He counted them in the traditional golfing way of looking back up the fairway and mentally replaying the scenic route he had taken. We moved on to the next tee with the newcomer still counting. Our inane chatter politely stopped as the 9 handicapper strode to the tee, placed his ball and made a few practice swings. The newcomer looked up from his scorecard and quite calmly, quite loudly and to my mind, quite shamelessly announced that he had still scored a point even though he had played the hole as badly as anyone ever had in the history of the game. His actual words were “8 for 1.”

The 9 handicapper stopped and turned around. Then came the look. The look was one of utter, utter, total disbelief. The face that had seen 52 years of pain and anguish took on a new, tormented expression. The face that had seen highs and lows, weddings and funerals, death and destruction was now resigned to life just not being fair and there was nothing he could ever,ever do about it. It was the face that had finally learnt to accept the futility of human life. It was a face that had looked into the face of God and found disappointment. He was practically in tears. he was beyond tears.

The remainder of the round he never scored a point. He spent the rest of the time wandering off into far flung corners of the golf course looking for his ball muttering under his breath.

He now sits in a dark corner of the clubhouse cradling a pint of cider, smoking roll-ups muttering “8 for 1; 8 for 1; 8 for 1.”

Thank you very much Dr. Frank Barney Gordon Stableford.