3 ways to make golf improvement fun

1. be kind to yourself

Einstein did not invent the lightbulb within one day. he worked and worked at it till he succeeded ! we are not robots. don't expect to see drastic improvements in one day. don't be so hard on yourself if you are unable to make changes immediately. feel happy that you are improving a little at a time. don't scold yourself, but instead give encouragement ! you are your best motivator !

2. play golf with a friend who is also committed to improving their golf and having fun at the same time

Majority of golfers complain about how lousy their golf is. they have a competition on who has the worst golf swing, who has the worst yips on the putting green. it is easy to sink into self pity when surrounded by people who only want to whine but do not want to do anything to improve their golf. try to play golf with someone who is encouraging to have fun together on the golf course ! it is more fun to work on improvement with someone going through the same things as you are.

3. eat and sleep well and keep hydrated

Dehydration, hunger and tired-ness are the big killers of patience. when you are thirsty, tired and hungry is when you are most likely to get angry and annoyed when you hit a bad shot or miss a short putt to win a hole. little do you know that the outburst of anger was due to the inability to control your emotions when you do not have enough fuel in your body to maintain the balance of emotions. eat 1-2 hours before your golf game, sip water every 3 holes or so and make sure you have enough rest at night to say good bye to crankiness !

have fun !!

how to make golf improvement fun

let me share 3 tips with you on how to make golf improvement fun !
when you introduce fun into your life, you feel better and you make it more enjoyable for the people around you. no one likes to spend time (even playing golf together) with a whiny golfer who complains about their golf game.

i understand truly how tough it is to work on a particular thing in your golf swing, or on pitching and see no results (or even see yourself deprove) it is very frustrating ! but when you get angry at yourself and the inability to make changes immediately, your body actually tenses up which makes it even harder for you to move your body differently. when your body is more flexible, it can rotate more easily and you are able to use the natural rhythm and grace of your body to swing well. when you are rigid and stiff, you are more susceptive to injury as well as aches and pains.

want to learn how to funfy your process of golf improvement ?
read on to my next post 3 ways to make your golf improvement fun

female golfer tips: trust

i find myself often very impatient !
i look up very fast after i hit the ball to try and see if it is going in the right direction. but this bad habit is actually the cause for the inconsistency in the direction of my ball.

i'm starting to learn to trust that my swing will bring my ball to where i want it to go. then more often than not, it is actually travelling towards the pin rather than 10 meteres right of it.

so tip of the day is to trust in your swing. looking up too early in anticipation of the ball flying towards the target will only cause you to open (or maybe close) your clubface, causing the ball to be inaccurate.
also remember to do this will accelerating through impact to achieve the best outcome !

female golfer tips: ACCELERATE !

if you are a female golfer and you are like me then you are probably guilty of decelerating as you hit the ball. this means you take a really long backswing and then slow down as you are about to contact the ball.

i especially do this when i'm pitching. i'm afraid that i'll hit the ball too far and fly it past the green so i tend to slow down before impact. this creates the opposite effect of leaving the ball too short and sometimes i even land short of the green. albeit safer because i won't get into trouble at the back of the green, especially when you cannot see the danger behind such as going out of bounds.

i tried concentrating on each shot to accelerate through the swing as i impact the ball so wait till my club shaft is about parallel with the ground, then really increase/ maintain speed during and after hitting the ball.

it is effective !

i had good pitch shots and didn't leave as many of them short of the hole. if i went too far it would only be by about 5metres which is a better outcome than having to chip again from off the green.

now, i have to find a way to make sure i keep the clubface square on impact. will update again with more female golf tips !

be strong !

female golfer tips: get over comparisons

how to stop comparing yourself to other golfers

golf really is quite a tough game. Pit your skills, stamina and mental strength against nature with a ball and golf club. Then throw in the inevitable comparing of yourself against better players.

Each hole you try to get the ball as close as possible, or closer than your opponents. Its hard enough matching yourself against good players in your mind, but often it is even harder when other people compare you. It could be your playing partner blaming you for the loss, or a coach comparing you to his star student. these negative comments are never pleasant to the ears.

So how do you stop comparing, or stop being bothered when others compare you??

1. Always remember that everyone's path in life is different. it is the same for your golf improvement.

2. Keep encouraging and believing in yourself. Other people can have their opinions but you have the choice not to listen to them.

3. Stay away from people who give you negative comments. it is your natural right to be in a loving nurturing environment.

I once had a coach who kept comparing me with another student. It was quite subtle thing but not something 14 year old me could not pick out. That and numerous other reasons led me to stop golf for awhile. if i had known then what i know now, i would better handle my emotions and encourage myself a lot more.

comparisons can be to various degrees. No matter if its just a small bit of comparing of scores in the middle of the round, don't do it. You are better off focusing on your own game.

Success is individual achievement. Not whether you did better than someone else.

mental strength test

I feel my mental strength tested on a daily basis. From the time my alarm rings till I go to bed, my mind is constantly challenged to be optimistic about the day ahead and how much my golf performance can improve.

Golf is just a game where you are never immediately rewarded for practice although it is certain that constant practice has a better payoff than spurts of enthusiasm.

If my daily attitude towards golf practice and game performance were measured like in an exam, I wonder how I would fare out of 100 ?

I think I currently just pass. I would score myself 50. It would be good to think of improving my mental strength like it were an exam I sit everyday. I aim to score 100 marks soon. That means to be able to stay optimistic about my game and practice and be able to identify unhelpful thoughts and weed them out by replacing them with hopeful positive thoughts

So there. Female Golfer Tip of the day: score your mental strength after each round of golf or after each practice session. on a scale of 1-100 how optimistic were you and how positively did you hit all your shots.

Thoughts like 'my golf really sucks and will never get better' or 'i don't see any point in practice because there's never any improvement' and 'nothing I do seems right, I really wanna give up' are no-nos and should severely lower your mental strength grade for the day.

Don't worry, you get a new mental strength grade each time you play golf or practice so there's always room for improvement and each golf practice session is a new one.

Its a simple way to measure your mental strength and track your improvement

female golfer tips: positive thinking

positive thinking in golf just means giving yourself positive instructions !

i am also sometimes guilty of having the kind of thoughts like "oh gosh, don't enter the bunker", "please don't let me shank the shot out of bounds" or "get across the pond, just - get - across - the - pond and i'll be happy"

some call it self fulfilling prophecy but scientifically it is just that the brain responds to whatever message you give it and it sees whatever you are thinking. it is unable to decipher what you don't want because it can only picture the current thought. so instead of thinking "don't enter the bunker", positively rephrase the thought by saying to yourself "land on that strip of fairway" and repeat the positive thought till you are comfortable, then make that swing and watch it land where you want it to.

tadah ! like magic !

a good mental attitude for playing golf is about banishing negative thoughts and bad pictures from the mind. only imagine all the good shots and remember what it feels like to hit that nice sweet shot

female golfer tips: never scold yourself on the golf course

it's so easy to beat yourself up over a bad shot, an unlucky shank, topping your pitch over the back of the green etc
how come its difficult to keep those berating thoughts out and welcome in those loving, nourishing thoughts ?
how come we often set up to a shot previewing all the bad shots we hit out of the same position or same type of lie ?

i have this theory that we're so used to scolding ourselves that we get used to the idea that we aren't that good at golf or we have no talent at the game and we eventually feel quite comfortable playing the usual round of golf. so much so that when a negative thought creeps into our mind, it becomes quite hard to remove it because we feel uncomfortable without it. it's like we've made ourselves believe that we will  never play a score during a round of golf that it is hard imagining ourselves playing a 79.

its the 51, 39. 39,50. or what i like to call the 90 curse.
you play 51 on the front nine and get so frustrated that you switch to this heck-care attitude which relaxes you and makes you hit 39 on the back nine. then you beat yourself up over why you didn't play better on the first 9 so you break 90.
or you hit 39 on the front nine and then try so hard to keep up with the pars and birdies that you go hit a 51 on the back nine because your mind went and made the game so complicated. then you berate yourself for screwing up the back nine holes.

i know it isn't easy and i'm still working on getting better at doing it. but if you keep trying you will get better. don't scold yourself on the golf course for doing something less than perfect or ideal. no one hits the ball perfectly into the right spot where you want it land 100%

be less harsh on yourself and don't give up !

female golfer tips: playing 'gimme'

'gimme' is a tricky novelty way of playing golf. in the SICC May Day Charity 2010, we played this way to try to speed up play. they draw a white ring around the hole and you pick up your ball and add a stroke to your score if you land within the hole. the main idea is that you're sure to sink the putt from that distance so they just give it to you.

we ended up aiming to get inside the circle, which has its pros and cons.

for players who don't putt as well as they would like to (like me currently), 'gimme' offers a guarantee on short putts. i sometimes miss those really short putts so this format really took the pressure off my game.  however, when you miss the circle by a little bit it gets so frustrating because you have to "work" hard to get the next putt into the hole.

the bad thing about gimme is that you often just try to get the ball inside the circle instead of getting into the HOLE. because each time you enter the circle, you are effectively adding a stroke to your score. if you aim to go INTO the HOLE, you might sink a few of them and shave off some of your score.

female golfer tips: notice wildlife on the golf course

i think i either have an affinity with animals or my eyes just spot animal movements well. could be something to do with my eyesight that is short sighted in one eye and long sighted in the other.

at the golf course that i play, there are monkeys, monitor lizards, various birds, turtles, fish and sometimes even snakes. there's so much wildlife mainly because its situated next to the reservoir. i always smile when i see animals and take the time to greet them and thank them for coming to say hello to me. sounds strange but it really lightens my mood on the golf course and takes my mind off trying to hit a good score. you could call it a pleasant distraction.

i noticed two birds with a green tummy and red-ish head sitting in the tree and chirping. then there was this kingfisher with a worm in its mouth just sitting next to my golf ball. and then the silent, still monitor lizard hiding under a tree in the shade.i feel so lucky to always see cool animals.

thank you animals for making my golf games so fun and interesting !

if you enjoyed my female golf tip, do share with me what wildlife you see at your golf course :)

female golfers' challenge : period

female golfer tips: always be proud that you're a woman and play stronger when you have menstruation

why ? because we go through what men will never ever experience. and we go through it on a monthly basis.
it is the source of our mood swings, grouchiness, and sense of over-whelming emotions. who can blame us for feeling this way when we feel bloated, uncomfortable, weak and even worse when suffering from stomach cramps.

it is no wonder that it is even harder to play golf during those days because you find it harder to swing, harder to concentrate and then harder to control your emotions which often makes you more frustrated when the ball doesn't go where you want it to.

its on those horrible frustrating days when you need sound fundamentals to get you through, revel in the fact that you endure more hardship than men and use that strength to play better golf. don't let menstruation get to you and pull your game down. channel all that extra energy during your period and let it be be the driving force to improve your golf game