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The best way to approach the situation of being trapped by a tree, so to speak, is to put yourself into a trance.

Every golfer tends to miss a high percentage of shots that are in serious trouble, such as one where a tree limb is totally preventing a full backswing. And all too often, the reason for a mess is not the awkward lie, but rather a failure to be able to concentrate on the execution.

 Switch Your Thoughts 

You start to think about the tree instead of hitting the ball. What you should do for any such shot as this is to take your position over the ball and try a tentative backswing. Once you have established how far back you can take the club, repeat the restricted swing over and over until you feel comfortable enough to make the swing within your restricted zone.

Once you have done this, put yourself into a trance and forget about the obstacle. Put all your concentration into striking the ball as firmly and properly as possible. Even if your club hits the tree on the backswing, you are now prepared for this and your new-found concentration will help you to complete the shot.

Your putting yips may be easier to fix than you think. Take a look at these 3 common culprits and ask yourself whether or not they are getting in your way of a successful putt:

Over-analysis: You may get so caught up in the mechanics of your stroke that you paralyze your natural movement. You become so self-conscious of your body position, putting stroke, and movements, they can barely take the putter back in any simple, straight fashion, along the target line. You may find yourself watching the putterhead go back and come through the ball or looking up to see how the ball rolls.

Steering: Instead of letting the putterhead freely swing through the ball and propel it toward the hole, you may find yourself trying to steer the ball into the hole. Steering is typically a tension filled attempt to guide the ball into the hole due to a lack of confidence in the putting stroke. Tension can cause you to push the putterhead toward the hole and mistakenly get your wrists or legs into the act.

Insecurity: Getting nervous and insecure over a putt, especially a short one, is a sure way to miss it. Without confidence, you allow all manner of negative thoughts to enter your head and your play. What can you do to make the putt? Will it go in? Can you lose the hole or the match by missing it? Will you feel embarrassed in front of the other players by missing it?

What exactly causes the yips? Wouldn’t it be great if a pharmaceutical company developed a pill that would automatically make all of your personal yips disappear, especially when you are getting ready to putt?

Anxiety: Your yips may be caused by anxiety over making a putt. If you look up too quickly to see the ball falling into the hole, you may not complete the stroke properly, pulling or pushing with your hands. Your hands may even shake and wobble.

Wrist Breakdown: A breakdown in your right wrist (for right-handed golfers) can result in the yips. Often, a breakdown or flick of the wrist happens just before impact. This is a mechanical flaw that can send the putt off-line.

Alignment: If you line up improperly before you hit the putt, and you misalign on your putterhead, your body may subconsciously cause you to alter the swing path in mid stroke in an attempt to make a correction. Attempting to correct the path of your putter in mid stroke is immensely difficult and likely to result in a push or pull, or the putter head may cut across the ball and cause it to spin.

You have probably heard this advice before, but it is worth repeating:

Every shot you hit a golf should have a goal behind it.

Your scorecard can only be improved by increasing your skills and having an understanding of just how to properly prepare and push yourself on every shot you make. You should be asking yourself:

What do I expect from this shot? What is a reasonable result?

Reasonable Goals To Better Your Score

The key to becoming a better golf player and lowering your score is to totally avoid taking too many putt shots on the green.

Regardless of how well you can skyrocket the ball from your tee shot and landing it on the green within regulations, if you take an unacceptable amount of strokes to get the ball into the hole, the opportunity to better your score has been wasted.

There is no excuse for this.

The Initial Goal

Do not confuse goals with expectations. An expectation is an action that is reasonable and one that should happen every time you decide on the outcome. A goal, on the other hand, is something in which you are reaching high for, but may take a little time to reach. Once reached, the goal can then become an expectation through repetition.

The initial goal you should have in golf is to send the ball into the hole within 36 putts or fewer, on an 18 hole course.

This means that you must hit two putts or less on every green.

This goal obviously becomes easier to achieve the closer you can hit the ball to the green, but those times where it lands 30 to 50 feet away from the hole, you’ve got yourself a major feat to accomplish. It’s going to take extreme focus to make long putt
shots successful.

Make Every Putt Count

By accepting the challenge of this article to play every golf game with the goal of 36 or fewer putts, you’ve taken a big step towards improving yourself and your skill. However, do not let this challenge get in the way of your confidence.

When facing a long putt, you may have the tendency to get lazy and lose confidence in knowing that you could make the shot. This may cause you to swing at the ball in a halfhearted matter and quit your goal before even trying.

Too Much Confidence Can Hurt

Even if the shot appears to be too easy, the same negative outcome may happen as well. You may have been very successful in getting the ball close to the hole, but feel overly confident and attack the ball with too much aggressiveness. Instead of staying focused,
your overconfidence and lack of concentration may cause an easy 2′ foot putt to completely miss the hole.

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Hit ‘em straight

Ben

Golf can best be described as a journey that never ends.
Those of us who have enjoyed this sport for a long time
have come to the understanding that it is about the ride,
always improving and enjoying success, never a final destination.

Like any sport, your goal on the golf course is to get
better, plain and simple, while reaping the benefits
of the process.

Improving Your Short Game Is The Key To Advancement

There are over 36 million people in the United States
alone that play golf, as reported from the National Golf
Foundation. Almost half of these people are between the
ages of 20 and 40 years old. Over 20% of these players
are female golfers. Golf fans spend an enormous amount
of money every year on golf equipment and golf course
fees, over $25 billion in fact.

$25 billion dollars is an incredible sum of cash that
results from passionate golf players.  Ironically, of all
this money that is spent playing golf, the average scores
taken statistically have not improved that much over the years. 

The overall average score is approximately 100. Only 22%
of golfers score better than a 90 (for the 18 hole course).

And the par on just about every golf course is 72.

Don’t Be A Statistic

Not everyone who plays golf has a desire to constantly
increase their score, but it’s safe to say that most of us do.
Statistics from the National Golf Foundation also show a poll
that shows the average golfer is happy to shoot a score of
around 85. Not a bad score, but perhaps it’s time to kick
it up a notch and learned some of the secrets to improving
your short game.

What Is The Short Game?

When you think of professional golfers, the first thing
that comes to mind is the vision of Tiger Woods or Greg
Norman teeing off and sending the ball skyrocketing to
great distances. But these guys do not win because of their
wonderful long-distance tee shots. Their golf skills are
the result from making most of their golf shots from the
fairway to the green: called the short game.

The secret to improving your score is understanding and
learning techniques to master your short game. Regardless
of your score, more than half of your strokes will come
from playing the short game.

Did you know that 50% of your score stems from all shots
taken within approximately 75 yards from the green? This
percentage includes bunker shots, chips, pitches, and of
course, all putt shots.

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Hit ‘em straight

Ben

The fundamentals of golf are very different than many other sports.

Take baseball for example…

When you are up at bat to make your swing, your job is to hit the ball as it’s thrown to
you. In other words, the game is built around your reaction towards what someone else is doing.  You cannot make your move until the pitcher throws the ball to you.

In golf, however, you are the boss. You are in charge of making every move. The ball just sits there, waiting for you to make your shot.  And you are 100% responsible for every play that happens. You cannot blame a bad play on a pitch, another teammate, or any other excuse. 

This is what makes golf so difficult, and yet so challenging and fun to play. And on top of that, you have people watching you, all in complete silence.

And you though that golf was supposed to be stress-free? HA!

A Positive Mindset Goes A Long Way In Golf

Golf requires that you focus and think about every shot you take.  Of course in our
comparative analysis of the sport of baseball, those players have to think about the
mechanics of their game too, but they have little time to really focus and concentrate on what they are doing, as opposed to golf. They are conscious of the pitcher and the person at bat, but everything else is reaction.

Golf requires so much attention to what you are doing that any type of negative thoughts or worries can have a dramatic effect on the quality of your game.  Doubt can easily seep into your mind, especially if you are still a beginner.  Once this happens, your body tenses up, you may get nervous, jittery, and the next thing you know your ball has landed in the rough.

Consider it to be the equivalent of stage fright.  :-) 

Yes, golf can be this difficult.

How can you prevent negative thoughts and feelings from happening while playing on the course?

As usual, the answer is extremely simple, but difficult to learn. 

All you have to do is take action, and do so faster than your mind can start to consider any negative consequences of making a bad swing.

That’s the thing about golf – you can literally think your way into a slump.

Stick with the basics and focus on simple movements that are repetitive.

 Keep your body loose and as you are preparing for your shot, shift the weight of your body from foot to foot, back and forth. Wiggle your club a bit and just loosen up, have fun, and stop worrying about anything negative. Just learning how to play a stress-free game may be the hardest lesson you learn in golf.

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Hit ‘em straight

Ben

Thousands of men, women, and even children search online daily for information on how to play golf. As with any new hobby, getting involved in something you’re not familiar with can create anxiety and nervousness.

You want to get involved with golf, but are probably wondering: How does the game work? Is it the right sport for me? Will it be too hard to learn? What if I’m not good enough?

To give you a better idea of what to expect, here are a few facts:

1. Golf is probably the hardest sport to learn. Although it may seem that the only goal is to hit the ball into a small hole, there is so much more to the game. It may take you a few months just to learn how to make proper contact with the ball.

2. If patience is not one of your better characteristics, golf may not suit your fancy. Of course, patience and focus can be learned in time when playing golf, but far too many beginner players take their mistakes seriously and end up quitting out of frustration.

 3. Golf takes an investment of time, lots of it. If you are going to get started in this sport then you must realize that skill will not happen overnight.  Expect to make hundreds, even thousands of bad shots as you become a better and more experienced player along the way.

Golf may not be the easiest of sports to learn but there is something about the game that no other sport can offer: The ability to enjoy playing golf well into your golden years.

Think about other sports that you may have been involved in. Most of us stopped playing baseball, soccer, football, etc. after high school or college. The reasons can vary, but mostly it is those sports became too vigorous and strenuous.

Golf, on the other hand, is a physically passive game. It is the only sport I know where both a 12 year and an 83 year old Grandfather can play together.

 A Calmer Mindset 

Golf is a humbling sport, not a macho one. The fact of the matter is that you will never beat the course. It’s not meant to be “won”. Golf is a personal game, one that you simply strive to make fewer mistakes each time you play. 

Brute force and aggressiveness has no room on the golf course. Instead, you will learn that humility, grace, and your ability to concentrate are the number one components to the game of golf.

Before I started playing golf, I had no idea why so many of my friends, and especially my father, took so much interest in this seemingly boring sport. Of course that all changed once I took the plunge and started playing golf. Golf has now taken on a lifelong interest and it will do the same for you.

 What can you expect from Golf? 

You will enjoy your failures as much as your victories. When you make a great shot over a sand bunker or onto the green, you’ll boast with your friends about how wonderful the shot was.

You will be drawn to the course day after day, weekend after weekend, to experience the joy of playing just a little bit better than you did the last time. You will think about your mistakes made on the course and be eager to get back as soon as possible to master each and every move. 

Expect a lifelong enjoyment on any golf course, anywhere you travel, for as long as you are able to walk.

Hit ‘em straight

Ben