- Know the golf courses you play inside and out. It is very difficult to lower your handicap if you are unfamiliar with the golf courses you are playing. You need to know in advance where the trouble is on every hole as well as difficult pin placements. You should know the course well enough that you can go through each hole in your mind beforehand and plan out a strategy for playing the course. I recently played a course for the second time and it had been well over a year since I played it the first time. I teed off with a driver on the tenth hole having forgotten that this would leave me long of the fairway, in the rough, and on a downhill lie for my approach. I took a triple on that hole. A hybrid off the tee would have left me a flat lie in the fairway with 150 to the green and a likely par or bogey. Not knowing the course well is a mental error that can easily be avoided.
- Evaluate every lie including tee shots. On the approach shot mentioned above, I had a downhill and sidehill lie with the ball above my feet and the ball sitting up in the rough. I caught the ball high on the club face and ended up leaving it short of the green because I didn’t account for the ball sitting up in the rough. This led to a very difficult pitch shot and a triple bogey on an extremely contoured green. During the same round, I had a couple tee shots that were teed slightly too high. Neither hurt me much but these are all mental errors that can be easily avoided with patience and deliberateness.
- When short-sided near the green, just play the next shot to get on the green. Getting cute will usually leave you with another chip or pitch shot. Just get it on the green and deal with the long putt that may result. Again, this is another mental error that can easily be avoided.
- When near the green, start your planning process with the low running bump and run first. Another way of saying this is start with the easiest shot first. If that won’t work, go to the next easiest shot. Many golfers get caught up in the thinking that they must hit the club for the yardage faced or default to the lob shot when around the green. For example, if it is 65 yards to the pin, a full lob wedge is required even if there is nothing to hit over. A better shot would be a bump and run 9 iron or pitching wedge. You may say that I haven’t practiced the 65 yard bump and run 9 iron. But it doesn’t take much practice which is the whole point. It’s an easy shot that is more reliable than a full lob wedge even if you haven’t practiced it. Avoid the mental error of improper club choice.
- If you get in trouble, go conservative on your shot out of trouble and forget about par. Are you recognizing a pattern here? These are all mental errors. The mental error here is trying to get it all back from trouble and leaving yourself in trouble on your next shot. Play for bogey and take double or worse out of play.
- Default mode for par 5s is to get to the green in three shots and not two.
- Driver is not the default club for every par 4 and 5 hole off the tee.
- Develop reliable tee shots with different clubs that get you in play for the second shot.
- Do not redline every shot. You will be more accurate with an 80% shot from the tee or on your approach.
- Before you hit an approach or chip/pitch shot, evaluate where you want to leave the ball for your next shot. Too many golfers just always hit at the flag on their approach and when near the green.
- After every round, evaluate each shot for mental mistakes that you made leading to higher scores.
- Know what your swing fault is and how to fix it mid round. My swing fault is getting too steep in the backswing and hitting a resulting weak fade. To fix it, I bring it back more to the inside. Rather than playing an entire round with a weak fade, I can now fix it immediately.
Mental mistakes avoided.