The 3 P's of how to get really good at golf: Practice, process and patience

YouTube can be amazing if you go down the right rabbit-holes

Photo by Samantha Ball on Unsplash.

“Impatience is an argument with reality.”

                                                Rick Rubin, music producer

I’m sure we’ll pay for this later—it’s March 4 as I write this—but today feels like a gorgeous spring day: the sun is shining, there’s just a puff of wind, and kids are cavorting around my neighbourhood in short sleeves.

My brother and a whole mess of guys I know played golf today. That’s way early. March 4 is still winter. A part of me says it’s not right and I blame climate change, but it’s hard not to like.

It’s enough to make one impatient for spring. But as the Buddhists would say, craving for spring is how we create our own suffering. I know, what a buzzkill.

Golfers excel in creating their suffering. Ever since the gutta percha and mashie, golfers have searched for solutions to their foozles and troublesome swings in books, magazines, from their friends, cart girls, anyone.

But now we have instant answers: Suffering a slice? Chunking your chips? Patty-caking your putts? Go on YouTube and you’ll find more answers than you have questions. Can you say rabbit-hole, boys and girls?

Speaking of suffering, nearly every man I coach comes to me confused by tips they got from YouTube. I always refer them to Tiger Wood’s advice about YouTube. (Interestingly, women don’t seem to be as enamoured with YouTube to solve their golf dilemmas. And there’s lots of online women golf instructors.)

I don’t blame anyone from looking for help on YouTube. I depend on it for learning songs for my band, and I’ve picked up some great tips on playing bass. The combination of narration and video makes YouTube an amazing resource for learning to do just about anything.

As a deep golf nerd, I completely understand the attraction to a well-crafted video. Only a golfer would understand the quiver of excitement that you feel when you perceive that you’ve just absorbed an enlightening insight that promises to transform your banana ball into a soft draw.

But you know how this turns out. It’s like an Ingmar Bergman movie that starts with the protagonist looking gloomily out the window at the unrelenting rain, but then—a glorious deluge of sunshine. Oh, joy. Oh, Bliss. Alas, the rain starts again and the movie ends. Bummer.

I’ve lived this metaphor. The search for golf salvation, the feelings of hope as the door to transformation appears to crack open, but then the dreaded denounement as we succumb yet again to misery. The fix failed. Like the last one. Like the last 20 or 30.

But wait! There’s a revolutionary way that you can make your breakthrough! NOW!!

Be patient.

Yes, be patient.

Developing your golf game is a creative process. I find so many parallels between music and golf, and even business. Music producer Rick Rubin says that when an artist tries to follow-up a hit by following a formula or replicating certain trendy sounds, the result is usually terrible. When we try to force a certain result, we interrupt the creative process.

“Impatience is an argument with reality,” Rubin writes in his book, The Creative Act.

Here’s where I think Rubin absolutely nails it, especially for golfers: “Time is something you have no control over. So patience begins with acceptance of natural rhythms.

“The implied benefit of impatience is to save time by speeding up and skipping ahead of those rhythms. The desire for something to be different from what we are experiencing in the here and now … Paradoxically, this ends up taking more time and using more energy. It’s wasted effort … Patience is required for the nuanced development of your craft.”

To develop skill in golf that elevates your ball-striking and improves your scoring requires commitment to a process. The golfers who make the greatest gains commit to a practice and a process that becomes more important than their results. When you commit to a process, the results will come.

A commitment could be one of the following:

·      Working with a coach

·      Developing a practice plan that you stick to

·      Having one practice session a week devoted to your short game

·      Devoting your season to learning how to hit shots that fly on a certain trajectory, or eliminating the fat shot, or how to hit solid chips and pitches

·      Learning the relationship between path and clubface to shape shots *

·      Learning how to create a proper divot

·      Having an intention for each round and staying committed to it

When you commit to a process, you learn from your own experience, your awareness grows and your skill develops.

As the golf season approaches, I invite you to be radical this season. Be a rebel.

Be patient.

And sure, let’s hope for an early spring.

*Rather than look for swing tips on YouTube, I suggest you search for the many excellent videos that explain hard-to-understand concepts such as the low-point in taking a divot, the relationship between club path and clubface in shaping shots, how the bounce works on a wedge, and more.

If you are interested in golf coaching or my Commit to Freedom workshops on improving commitment and accountability in organizations, please send an email to tim@oconnorgolf.ca.