Does Taking a Long Break From the Game Help?

[NJpatbee]

I have never been a good golfer but I can occasionally shoot a score in the mid-upper 80's.  About 10 years ago I was struggling to break 100 and played my last round of the season with a couple of strangers and it was as if I had never played the game before.  For the next several years I would play 5 or 6 rounds in the Summer but dedicated myself to fly fishing, which I am quite competent at.   After a few years I started playing golf early in the season and found that I had a renewed enthusiasm for the game and began to like practice again.  Thanks to improved technology I am hitting the ball as far as I did 10 years ago and having a ball.  I understand that playing and practicing once/week I cannot improve dramatically but plan to change that when I retire.

So the long layoff was not good for my game but I do believe that I needed a break from playing so poorly after being what most of you would call an average golfer.  What does help is when I have a horrible round I will skip a weekend and instead get a quick tune-up from my pro and spend a couple of hours at the range and practice green to get my confidence back.      

[Hacker James]

I  forgot to mention that although I had been away from the game for about one year, I had a prior hiatus in excess of ten!  Problem was, that my body aged a bit faster than my mind, not only in golf,but in just about everything I did. The mind says "go", the body says "no so fast there, slick".