As you might guess, as the owner of a world-wide golf instruction website, I get a LOT of email from others in the industry. While some might look at this as "junk" mail, I like to read them because it gives me a perspective on how well we are doing at www.swingsurgeon.com to meet the needs of golfers worldwide. And every once in a while, I see something that we can incorporate into our own operations or use for a daily video tip. A couple of days ago, I received an email from a prominent sports improvement company--one that focuses on a variety of other sports as well as golf. They had an article in their newsletter that touched on a subject that I have talked about a lot in this space before.
And that's the importance of setting goals for yourself and getting in the habit of recording progress over time. And since this is the time of the year when golf in much of the Northern Hemisphere comes to a standstill, I would like to take a few minutes and talk about why this is so critical for anyone who plays golf for reasons other than exercise or social camaraderie.
I keep a small spiral notebook in my bag titled "Swing Thoughts" that I use to record a brief summation of a practice session on the range or a round that I play. I may not capture 100% of what I do but I would wager that I am making notes at least 90% of the time. Every year at the end of the season, I look back at what goals I had set for myself for the year just coming to a close and spend some time mentally grading my progress, or lack thereof, on each and every one. Everyone's goals will be different and they can range from setting a lower handicap target to a more subjective assessment of improved ball striking to a very specific goal of assessing a particular club in your bag that doesn't seem to perform up to your expectations. If it's this latter example, you will have to make sure that you practice enough with the offending stick to make sure you aren't the problem. And if you can convince yourself that it isn't 'the Indian" then you need to set a goal of getting a qualified club fitter to look at "the arrow" and make whatever adjustments are necessary. You see, if you have a club or two in your bag that you have no confidence that you can consistently hit a good shot with, it will be very difficult for you to take your game to the next level.
Keeping good stats is also an essential part of an effective goal setting program. This will give you a wealth of information with which you can zero in on those parts of your game that are consistently costing you the most strokes. Once that is a known certainty, and not just a vague notion, you can develop concrete plans to eliminate the problem and this will most certainly lower your handicap. Think about it, if you are a mid-to-high handicapper, eliminating just 5% of your mistakes can lower your index several points in rather short order. If you move on to the next 5%, and then the next 5% and so on, you may soon find yourself in that most coveted region of a single digit handicap!
Could this happen without an effective goal setting program like I've just described? Perhaps, but it rather doubt it could happen as quickly or to the same extent than if you commit yourself to setting stretch goals and then actively monitoring them over the course of several seasons. So let's use this last few weeks of the year to reflect on where we've come this season and, more importantly, where we want to go next year.
Keep it vertical!
The Surge
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