Question...What do you do when....

I'm sure everyone has gone through this, but I have gone through 5 rounds (a little over a month now) where my game is absolutely awful.

I'm an 11 handicap that has been trending down the last several season and have not been able to break 90. I go through a stretch of holes where it all comes back and string a few pars or put a birdie up but the rest has been terrible.

Last year I battled my driver with a two way miss and no consistency. It was either perfect down the middle or wide right or left. This year, that is the only part of my game that I trust. I committed to playing a fade, setting up right, aiming left, and hitting close to 60% of my fairways so far (which is good for me). My only miss is trying to get a little extra out of my driver in which I tend to dip my shoulder and hit high on the club face. That's the easy fix for me.

My irons have been either great or awful. I have no one miss. It's thin, it's fat. This was the best part of my game and it's turned into my worst.

Last my wedge play is like my iron play right now.

I tried taking a week off. I tried banging balls at the range with a purpose and practicing. Unfortunately, I'm at the point I can't take my range game to the golf course. I do so well there and then the next round is awful.

What have some of you better golfers done when you hit a stretch like this. I have always been a golfer to come out of the gates in April and May strong...except this year.

Try choking down on the irons an inch or so, stop the backswing when you feel the clubhead is pointing to the sky, then start the  downswing with the pulling motion of the left arm, be aggressive (not fast/quick) with the follow through.

Once you start qlicking 'em, then lengthen up your grip & swing.

Works for me. Give it a shot.

Thank you...Right now I'm ready to take a page out of Major League when Cerano wants a live chicken. I need a good long range session. Only problem is I correct it on the range, start striping it, then can't take it to the course the last month an a half.

I had the same problem yesterday. I hit my shots on the range like a pro. Every shot was great with pure contact and hit with a purpose. I hit punch shots, draws, fades, short pitches and chips, and was mashing my driver. Than I took it to the course and I was awful. I think I know what was going wrong now, but I can't be certain. I'll find out today or tomorrow when I go to the local range.

Ditto!

Hell, sign me up too. Don't leave me out!

Me too, except my good games are the 92s!

Thank God golf is awesome or I'd totally quit!

Yep though I understand the OP's frustration. It seems the "better" I get the more I expect to play well with fewer mistakes. I expected to open the season with a bang, my winter scores were far better than my index and in what I considered tougher conditions, mostly the shaggy winter greens and cold temps. A good day still yields the same number but now I look back and see missed opportunity instead of feeling like I fought a good battle. I can see how my low 40's scores could have been high 30's instead of feeling like I averted something in the mid 40's by playing above my usual level. Honestly I think the expectation of trending down immediately put some pressure on me and it backfired. My differentials are creeping up despite hitting the ball better.

I think the toughest thing to get my head around is I am playing better but my scores aren't improving. Last season I played ugly golf but it was consistently ugly, if I put a 45 on the front it was usually pretty close to 9 bogeys. Now it's multiple pars, a birdie here and there and something that would have been unusually high last year. I'm seeing more and more triples recently. Almost always due to a penalty or bad lie that is the result of hitting it better than expected.

Some of it is in my head and the rest of it is just bad bounces. Example, I started par-par yesterday on a tough course. The first eight strokes were money. All downhill from there, 7 doubles followed. Three were the result of bad bounces after exceptional drives that put me in fairway bunkers that were the consistency of somewhat compact dried mud. It's not a lie I've faced often and experimenting with different methods didn't yield good results. Had I hit the same average drives I usually hit on those holes I would have had routine approach shots. By average I mean less than spectacular. At 12 golf is a game of playable mishits for me. Also my ball flight is changing, struggling with adjusting to the ball moving right to left after fighting a right miss the majority of 2012 is a mind game. Part of it is growing pains. I need to find the place between and start trusting the new parts of my game. I worked hard to get to this point but capitalizing on it is tricky.

At least I know there is someone out there like me. Same exact story. I'm hitting the ball much better, more solid, but scores are not reflective. I go through stretches in a round where I feel like I reverted back to a 28 handicap with the thin and fat shots. I had a similar round last week. Came out of the gate, par, par, par, double, par...after that it was terrible. I had 7 pars, one bogey, and the rest were double or greater for a final round 96. And I thought I struck the ball solid. There were two blow up holes one where I took 3 out of trap and 3 chips/pitches.

Last year my differential was high as well. I put up 5 rounds in the high 70s and several low 80s but there were a bunch of high 90s as well. There was no middle ground. It was low or high. Sometimes I just want a stretch of 83-87 to make me feel good. To me right now, I would like to put up 4 pars on the front, 4 on the back, and play bogey golf the rest of the way out. Hopefully I'd hit half my greens and 60% of my fairways to really make me feel good.

As far as ball flight for me, I went the opposite way. I was a right to left player, now I'm going left to right. No big deal since I gained a club since last year. My miss is one way finally. A pull left where last year it was all over. I never knew what my ball was doing. A thing that frustrates me more this year because I know where I'm missing and can compensate for that. Just not reflective in the score. I also keep telling myself that this year NY has been brutal with cold and wind even up to this weekend. Last year we were baking in the 80s by now. Anyway, I have a solo round on my beloved Bethpage Red course Thursday at 5:56A. It will be a beautiful walk and I can really concentrate. I'm taking anything in the 80s as a win.

Video on the range. Watching swings so that I know I am doing what I want helps me when I'm in that kind of funk. Just hitting balls until they start going straight does not do it for me because I'm "good enough" to figure how to hit it straight if I get a few chances at it. When it is compensation instead of good swings, I have a hard time bring that to the course (where I only get one chance each shot).

I have been through a couple slumps and what I have found both times is that I was trying to incorporate swing changes before they were "course ready". This is only my opinion but a swing change is only "course ready" when you don't have to think about it during a round. I play my best when I pick my target and swing away. If I am thinking about anything mechanical during play, I might as well of stayed home.

I know it sounds cheesy but I love that commercial where palmer says "swing your swing". Your swing is the one you don't have to think about. Good luck!!

I am a high handicapper however I can still relate to what you are going through. I started to take the game seriously last summer so have been working with a coach once a month since August of last year and I have seen a lot of improvement in my technique however my scores are still around the mid-nineties or above and are not coming down but much at all. This is mainly because I make poor judgement calls on the course, I choose the wrong shot, I get my yardage wrong, I perform many bad swings and I have not devoted enough practice time to my short game. There is of course the mental aspect of my game that is only as good as the last shot I played!

I play in a society that plays every week and in our group I am the highest handicap whereas the lowest we have is two players of 4 and 5 handicaps. From what I have learnt from both my experience with the teaching pro and my playing partners is that the range and practice time is for practice. When on the course you are there to play the game and enjoy it. They encourage me to practice my shots, my technique and my feel for the greens only during my practice time but when on the course I must just trust my body and just enjoy the game. If you have drilled the technique enough times then trust your muscles to remember what to do and they will. Being a high handicapper my consistency is a big factor so I need many, many hours of practice and experience before I will see my scores come down but they will only if I put in the time.

When playing golf I have also learnt that it is not all about just trusting your body because decisions like club and shot selection, landing spot and shot shaping etc. must occur. These choices are made and then when you start your pre-shot routine you accept your choice, clear your mind and let your body take over the execution. If you try to think too much about what you doing then the chances of something disrupting your natural rhythm of your swing could occur and the result could be a poor shot.

One final note is that Bob Rotella has written a few good books on the psychology of golf that I have on CD. His best piece of advice was to develop a solid pre-shot routine for every shot and then focus on that one shot only at that time but then trust your body to know what to do for the shot itself. Once it has happened forget it and move on the next shot only. Do not think about the shot you hit 10 minutes ago or the shot you will hit in 10 minutes time. Choose your shot, start your pre-shot routine you have practiced and then trust your body.

I just posted this in another thread this morning, thought it would do some good in this thread as well,

This year started out somewhat similar for me.  I shot an 88 in one of my rounds, and not even a week later I shot a 102.  I've been lingering in the 90's for a little while until I shot an 87 and 85 back to back on the same course last week (definitely didn't make all of the same mistakes, but def. made some of the same ones and some different ones as well).  For me, I feel like I have a solid mental game in that I know when to take my medicine and play the safe shot.  My mistakes on the 85 round was that I got too confident and started to pin-seek when I didn't need to (a miss on the left side of the green would short side me, and I'd have difficult chip shots.  That happened more than once, and I take that as a mental error).  But even during the 102 round, I found little things throughout the round that I was doing alright.  That would keep me from feeling completely irked, and I would remain positive about my round even though my scores didn't reflect any progress.

Personally, making on-course adjustments don't work as well as shortening my backswing does.  If I start hitting poorly with my driver, I switch to my 3 wood or hybrid, and just start focusing on hitting fairways with what I have going on (baby fade or banana ball, I don't like seeing draws).  I also just focus on hitting the shot that's in front of me (Drinkwater, I read Zen Golf and Rotella and came to a similar conclusion, I have a feeling that most golf psychologists use very similar methods in their books, all of which work pretty well), and just try to keep my ego in check (I rarely use a 3 wood or even a hybrid off the fairway, mainly only long irons.  I don't hit the woods consistently enough for me to try that unless I'm feeling particularly spry :) ).

In bad stretches, I try to come back to my fundamentals and try to jumpstart my imagination for my ball striking.  I focus on the smallest point on the back of the ball, and just try to deliver the clubhead to that point, however it takes and however ugly it looks or feels.  On the range, I just hit punch shots and keep my swing at 9-3.  I also try to keep a mind on my tempo. I know that if I get too fast, that i don't gather myself as well as I do when my ballstriking is on point.

And if all else fails, crack open a 6-pack and rip at it :)

I was in the worst slump of my golf career recently ... had 5 weeks of misery.     Finally turning it around & last round played yesterday was back to normal.    Alot of it for me was a result of the rough being so d@mn high this time of year at every course I've played in N/E PA - makes anything off the fairway a total crapshoot (having 200+ yards in with a ball you can barely see buried deep in the rough is no fun (assuming you can even find the ball) ... worst is greenside delicate chipping when you can barely see the top of the ball).        Had this crazy thing happen a couple rounds ago ... no matter what I tried, I was toe-blading my irons & wedges ... and when I tried to correct it, I would shank it off the hosel.     Never been so frustrated - nothing worked & the misses were consistent, every time no matter how much I mentally focused and set up properly for the shot.     Next round was fine - just a really odd anomaly I've never experienced before ...

Ah, the dreaded inconsistency of golf swing.

Usually, it is due to a flaw or change in YOUR fundamental swing.  What I mean is, everyone has a different swing; therefore, everyone has a "different" fundamentals.  If something (even if it's only a minor adjustment) goes awry, your whole swing can disappear.

For me, when my swing goes south, it is usually one of the following:

Set-up : for some reason my stance tends to open up during the season.  So what used to be a square stance becomes open stance.  Even though it still feels like a square stance, it is not.

Backswing/Take away: when I don't start my backswing with a full shoulder rotation, I will start fading/slicing my shots.

Downswing: if I don't lead with my lower body on the downswing, all kinds of inconsistency creep up.

When my swing goes south, I will go to the range and start working on these items one at a time with a very deliberate and conscious effort to slow down my swing until it comes back.  Because it has happened a lot in years past, now it usually takes one range session to get back to my normal swing.

Once you know why your swing disappears, it takes much shorter time to get it back.

But sometimes its not just the full swing that goes awry. Its your entire game that goes south. You start chunking chips, start 3 putting every green.

Its all about confiedence. Look at the pros, they struggle with the same thing, just at a higher level.

Towards the end of every season, I get burned out at some point, then I can't even make the ball go into the air!

But give me a few months off, and I'm swinging and playing better than ever. I could never play this game all year around.

Oh golf, don't you love this game.