Temper

How many of you have temper tantrums on the GC? As soon as i make a mistake i can feel myself heating up and wanting to beat the crap out of something. Those with big Tempers, how did you learn to control it?

This is something that I've recently started working on, the mental approach. I'm reading Zen Golf by Dr. Joseph Parent and so far it's been a big help. I haven't done, nor will I do, all the exercises that Dr. Parent writes about, such as deep breathing and meditation, but the book has helped me to understand what was causing my temper tantrums in the first place. Obviously, really bad golf shots were the cause of my temper issues, but the cause of those really bad golf shots had a lot to do with poor focus on my shot and what I was trying to accomplish. He's also given me tools so that when bad shots happen (believe me, they still happen) I can shake it off and move on. Just yesterday, I played my best round of the year (90, so as you can see I'm a high handicapper), but I probably played my best mental game in about 3-4 years. It's still a work in progress, but as of now I feel very good about this part of my game going forward.

I love his books!  Zen Putting is another really good book of his.

As for the OP's question, why are you getting so mad over a bad shot?  Why is it really that big of a deal?  Pros hit bad shots all of the time, so why would you expect a amateur golfer to be perfect?  Those are all questions that you need to ask yourself when you get in that situation because its really not worth getting all upset and losing your temper over.  Golf is not an easy game and you are going to hit millions of bad shots over the course of your life.  Instead of getting mad, you need to analyze what went wrong and what you need to do in order to fix it.

Another thing to consider is that you can hit a shot perfectly and it may still not do what you expected.  A gust of wind can ruin your shot and sometimes you simply misread a shot.  Especially in putting, you can stroke a putt perfect and still not have it go in simply because of a misread.  When that happens, should you really get all that mad about it?