The “Off” Days

Sometimes, no matter what we do, our game just doesn’t work. The mind is scattered. The energy isn’t there. Every swing feels unnatural. The negative voices can’t be quieted. By the third hole, we’ve lost control and wish we’d stayed home. If you’ve had a stretch of these days over weeks or months, you might know the feeling of wanting to give up the game altogether.

As someone whose passion is golf, I want everyone to have a positive experience. However, I’d be remiss in leaving out the fact that all of us, myself included, will have plenty of off days and dark thoughts about the game. I don’t have the answer for how to avoid these soul-crushing rounds, but I do have some advice on how to manage them.

Step one is you can’t dwell on it. Endless stewing only leads to destructive thinking about what might have been (the “shoulda-coulda-wouldas”). Set a time limit for yourself. After a bad shot, 15 seconds is all you get to be mad, then reset. After a bad round, taken a couple hours to be knocked down, then it’s time to figure out how to get back up.

Step two is objectify the misses. The struggles are so hard to ignore but they don’t define who you are on the course. Accept them, learn what you can, and then put them in a box, put that box in another box, and smash that box with a hammer.

Step three is re-evaluate your expectations. If every round is an “off” day, you’re either the unluckiest person in the world or you might have a warped sense of how well you should be playing on average. From a coaching perspective, expectations are set correctly when success is achieved 50-80% of the time and the obstacles faced are challenging but in a way that keeps you feeling engaged, not helpless. This is the “sweet spot”, beyond our comfort zone to encourage learning but short of the survival zone where all we feel is insurmountable confusion and despair.