You are fresh off a very frustrating round of golf and you flirt with the idea of quitting. Maybe you even have the internal negotiation where you tell yourself you’re not going to take it so seriously anymore. You may even have been embarrassed for the terrible shots you hit, or the clubs you threw, or that tee marker you irrevocably damaged. You want to improve your golf swing but are tired of struggling.
So you start searching youtube and google again for answers to what ails you. You’ve taken lessons from more than a few teachers, you’ve read some books, watched Golf Channel instruction shows, you’ve even poured sweat on the range. And it’s not that you haven’t had your moments, or even weeks of satisfying golf where you wondered how it could ever be so hard. But one inescapably reality eats at you.
You haven’t improved in a long time.
One of the primary reasons you haven’t gotten any better is because golf plays tricks on our brains. Golf preys on the human psyche. There isn’t a sport that highlights our tendencies towards motivated reasoning and confirmation bias more than golf.
How many times have you had this thought? “I’ve got IT!” This is your mind fooling you. We so badly want to believe that we have solved the problem and discovered a previously hidden solution that our ability to delude ourselves is nearly endless. The primary way that golf brings this out in us is because inefficient golf swings can hit good shots. In fact, bad technique can hit lots of good shots in a row.
We start hitting it well and our pattern matching systems kick in and start identifying cause. For example, you may have thought, ‘I’m not slicing it now BECAUSE I changed my [grip, posture, takeaway, tempo, unlucky shirt, you name it].’
Broken clocks are right twice a day and occasionally you are too. However, by in large, you usually aren’t and the illusion of the magic golf swing pill is similar to the clinical trial placebo pill. The new swing thought/setup adjustment placebo effect is real on your golf swing too. The effect eventually wears off and you find yourself questioning why you spend so much time and energy on a hobby that often drives you crazy.
Maybe the most frustrating part of this is that you can improve your golf swing and golfers do get better. The principles for improving your skills can be successfully applied to the golf swing. We use the proven methods involved in learning or improving a skill and help you finally get what you want out of your golf game!