Is your golf swing affected by your goal?

I played golf this weekend for the first time in years. Why does an instructor not play? It's my back, the same reason I don't compete. I destroyed it in an accident 20 years ago and I've spent the last 4 years in dedicated rehab to be able to play golf once again. So I played on Saturday and Sunday.

On Saturday, I played on a spectacular course with no real expectations other than the goal to hit a few good shots and maybe get my focus to the point of scoring well or saving a few holes. My swing was smooth and I hit a lot of great shots. On the other hand, the score wasn't good because I was trying to knock off 4 years of rust.

On Sunday I played early. It was cold and we had no warm up. I struggled to find that smooth swing all day. Why? Partly because of the weather, but also because I expected to play better and score better. My swing was a little faster, but still correct except for one minor detail. I couldn't figure out that detail on the course, so I had moments of brilliance mixed in with moments of shear frustration.

A few hours after the round was over, I was running my golf swing through my head and realized that where my frustration came from was the inability to pinpoint the problem. I also realized that my analysis method was slightly flawed. You see, I was trying to figure out what was going wrong, but instead, I should have been looking for what was missing. Let me explain with an example:

During the golf swing, there are certain subconscious checkpoints our mind goes through to know everything is working. For example, when it comes to weight shift, we know that the weight should build up on the right foot (right handers) and then shift left. We can feel for it to know it is happening. But what about where the weight should NOT be? That's as important as where it should be to prevent a reverse pivot or a slide. Still, few golfers are aware of where the weight isn't.

Just like the weight and where it isn't, I should have been looking at what was NOT happening during my golf swing as much as I was focused on what was happening.

I played again on Wednesday using this new awareness and played much better. When something went wrong, if I couldn't feel what was wrong, I looked for what was missing. I hit some great shots, but more important, my misses were good so I never had any of those disaster holes. There was only one shot that I just could not recover from without costing an extra stroke and I finished the day having lost no balls.

The moral of the story is simple. My goals and expectations took away from proper focus that would help me play well. Things go bad, but not always due to something that was wrong, but many times due to something that wasn't there. Get in the habit of becoming aware of the good, the bad... and the missing when it comes to your golf game and golf swing.