Being able to score well when the driver is wayward is a hallmark of an advanced golfer, often separating elite players from amateurs. While driving is a crucial skill, recovery and scoring without a reliable driver demonstrate immense mental discipline, strategic thinking, and proficiency in the short game.
Being able to say you went low and the driver is off that round reveals mental discipline, mental toughness and imagination and creativity and heap on a huge dose of Get It Done on top.
Hogan on his deathbed said to his wife who relayed it to others “ I spent way too much time trying to perfect the golf swing when the golf swing can’t be perfected. I look back and wish I would have enjoyed life and other things more .”
I share that because I see golfers on the range day after day after day hitting bag after bag after bag of balls and I look at the best players in the world and they all have lives outside of golf. As amateurs are we missing what is right in front of us ? Rory and others prove every week that you don’t have to chase perfect to shoot low scores. Your next low score could be just waiting to reveal itself if you can just get out of your own way and accept that there are 3 shots in golf
Good
Good enough
Poor
Most golfers tend to focus on 1 & 3 and totally ignore number 2 which is what keeps big numbers off the scorecards
What Say You ?
The only shot is the one occupying my mind’s eye at the moment- the other categories are simply outcome labels. I used to label outcomes, but it seemed a waste of time since it’s a game of applied strokes for acquiring real estate in rather precise ways.
I have 72 strokes at hand that must be carefully used and the result of one stroke, however that may be labeled, may or may not reflect upon the next stroke. It’s like checkers from the tee forward marshalled by chess strategy.
I would agree the shot at the moment is the only shot that matters but after that shot it will go into one of the 3 categories
Good
Good enough
Bad
Then after the round you will know exactly what to work on and the training sessions will finally have structure versus just pulling out bag after bag of balls trying to hit the perfect 7 iron to the same target for hours which has a very low contextual interference rate.
Before ABS i used to hit it all over the map off tee and score sometimes. Not fun days. I always knew on tight course one possibly two moon balls for double or worse. Ill take fairways now. Rory had the dreaded two way miss going which is horrible for players and caddies.
He got it done today with some big bombs. Players were complaining about mud balls because augusta trying to protect course from 325 yard carries with 50-60 yards of roll.
