Who hasn't had a terrible day on the course? I'll tell you who, it's somebody who has never played the game. Whilst Jordan Speith's nightmare round is probably good enough to beat the majority of club golfers, he of course is judging his play by his own high standards, and falling short. It doesn't matter whether you are good, average, or a less-talented golfer, we all judge ourselves by what we believe we ought to be doing, often this is far removed from our average, and hence statistically most likely scoring patterns.
Justin Rose was interviewed after a bad round, for him. He has been working with mental coach Dr. Gio Valente, amongst other things, keeping his life in balance, on and off the course, using breathing exercises to relax, and creating a kind of mental tunnel, tunnel vision if you like in which he held 3 or 4 key thoughts. When he found his mind wandering, Justin would tell himself to get back in his tunnel.
But this interview was after a bad round. From his demeanour, you would not have been able to say whether Justin had had a bad round. In fact he appeared quite cheerful. He acknowledged that he had played badly, particularly on the greens, but said a couple of times, that he knew that he was a good golfer and he refused to dwell on the mistakes made. This did not sound like somebody trying to convince himself, he said it without arrogance, but with conviction.
This belief, would help him in his next outing. He followed up his bad round with a round of 5 under par and climbed back up the leaderboard.
When you have a bad round, the most important thing to take away from it is the right attitude. You may wish to have your pro look at the technical aspects of your swing, but do not on any account feed your hungry sub-conscious with a whole slew of negative thoughts. So drop the bad round, in the mental rubbish bin and let your thoughts dwell instead on your last great round.
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