Golf is still hard...

Golf is still hard.If you've watched any of my YouTube content then you are probably sick of me preaching patience, one shot at a time, and managing expectations to avoid anger.You may have thought... "Oh thats really easy to say coming from a scratch!"But it's not. It's really hard. This last week I found myself as lost as I've felt on the golf course in a long time. Four straight rounds where I have had no idea where the ball is going and on top of that, my putter seems to have abandoned me in my time of need.Thats golf. Improvement is not linear. It has peaks and valleys. After a couple months of golf feeling as easy as it ever has for me... I wanted to snap a club over my knee and I came closer than I’d like to admit.

I may have lightly tossed a club or two. I’m not proud of it… But it happens to the best of us.

I found myself not having very much fun. My expectations and my play were not in sync. I was missing greens, missing putts, and falling into a poor pitiful me cycle of self-fulfilling bad golf. So how do we snap out of it? The first part is acceptance. Golf is hard. Really hard. Somedays we don't have it, even as our games improve. Grind one shot a time and let TANGENT track what's going on. With round review, you'll quickly see what parts of your game are struggling and be able to work on the right things to get back on track. For me... It's approach and putting. A quick glance at my round history shows those areas struggled.

These are below my typical performance and I could tell something was off. More than just an aberration. A single round of dysfunction can be chalked up as an off day. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it… but 4 rounds in a row! I have been ready to pull my hair out. So let’s use TANGENT to dive in starting with approach where it is clear that I’ve been struggling with direction. This lines up. I’ve felt like I’ve been hitting the ball solid, but its not getting on line.

Let’s take it another step. Do I have a bias to one side? Anecdotally, I felt like I’ve had a case of ‘the lefts’. I’ve missed some greens pretty wildly left of target and the data supports it. Shots to the left have cost me a lot of strokes and its been a frustrating existence not being able to get the ball right of my target.

Lastly, let’s evaluate putting. I like to enable Putt Details in the TANGENT golf app so that I can really learn how I’m missing my putts and focus my practice. Looking at the data from my last 4 rounds, there is a pretty obvious trend…

I’ve had a slight bias to the left and some issues with speed control, particularly leaving putts short.

So what now? I have a pretty good idea where I’m struggling… How do I fix it?

I’ll use this data to organize some practice this week and start climbing out of the funk. I’ll do some aim and alignment drills with irons and really focus on getting the ball to the right of my target. This is likely a face control issue where I’m just getting too closed. I don’t need to know the details to just work on getting the ball to the right of the target.

I’ll roll some putts as well. The putting hasn’t been catastrophic, but it has hurt me. My next round I’ll spend just a few more minutes getting used to the reads and speeds.

No need to panic. We’ve been here before. The peaks and valleys of golf improvement. With a little focused practice and a little bit more of that patience… I’ll be back to playing great golf in no time.

Thats the power of TANGENT.