Mind Over Matter... ?

[Fairway_CY]

So yesterday was a real nice day... a bit warm in northern New Jersey, but still nice. Later in the day, my wife said she was going to go to one of her workout classes... so I told her to drop my son and I off at the local county course and pick us up afterwards. The course has a flat rate fee of $13 after 5:00 and I figured that since I hadn't touched a club in 10 days, it'd be nice to get out and practice. Well, things didn't go very well for me and I began to wonder if it was my mind playing tricks on me, or if there were things that were having an effect on my game. What I came up with:

I typically ride because I've got two really bad knees. I haven't been able to properly read a putt in about five years. If I attempt to kneel to read a putt, it's likely I'm staying there until someone helps me up. Yesterday, I walked. It's a flat course... so it wasn't too bad, but having not walked in almost a year while carrying my bag in 90 degree, 95% humidity weather seemed to take a lot out of me. My swing felt very lazy by the 6th hole.

I was also carrying my sons bag. It's not a big bag... and it's only got 4 clubs and a handful of balls in it, but it was still some additional weight. Often, by the time we got to my ball, I was exhausted. This resulted in some VERY non-normal type shots for me. For example, I put the ball in the middle of the fairway on the 5th hole and left myself 126 to the middle of the green. My 9 iron was disgusting. I hit the top of the ball with the bottom of the club, driving it down into the fairway and having it pop up and roll about 7 yards. My next shot was good and I ended up making bogey, but... I can't remember the last time I did that... and I feel like it was because my swing was more AT the ball than THROUGH the ball because I was physically tired. The last hole, same deal... I smoked a drive 260 over the little creek and it left me only about 50 yards to the middle of the green. I pulled my sand wedge long and left and then missed a 6 footer for par and had to settle for bogey.

The last thing was concentrating on my son's game. It was only the 4th time he'd been on a course with me and he's improved greatly. Counting EVERY stroke, he shot 73 playing from about 1700 yards for the 9 holes. I was pretty happy with that, but I spent a lot of time worrying about what he was doing and trying to get him to understand some of the basics... and I didn't think about MY game at all.

At the end of the day, I shot a 52 for the 9 holes we played. I had 3 triples, 2 doubles, 3 bogey's and a single par. Even holes where I was set up perfectly, I floundered around and posted bogey or worse.