hi,
basing on my own experience, I sugest the following:
1. just make sure you practise different shots on the range, approach shots around the green putting, try to make those shots as simple and repetitive as possible. When you're on the course just play the game and record your score on each hole (maybe the number of putts for reference later), biggest mistake is that you become too analytical on the course and only paying attention to keep track of different mis-shots you've made, by doing that you're giving yourself a lot of psychological pressure, therefore you can't play well and never improve. Since golf is a psychological game, so you have to learn to entertain yourself during play, swallow the mistakes and forget the shank that just happened but keep on focusing on your next shot. Pro players are also human being, they also make bad shots, what they're good at is that they're good at "selective memorizing", remember and visualise the perfect shots and forget the poor shots immediately.
2. forget about ego, it's ok to switch to some new gears (specially drivers) and show off to your buddies how long you can hit, however stats shows that the development of golf clubs hasn't really helped to improve the golf population's handicap in the past 100 years. On the contrary, tour players are enjoying their new equipments that enabled them to hit the balls mile long. Bottom line? because these guys hit it accurate and can take adavantage of the equipments. Your new driver might help you to gain a couple of yards further on the tee shot but for those who can not control their shots well it's an equipment that does the big damage on your score! I don't remember how many times I had read golf book and coach's advice to restrict the use of a driver and working on the iron shots. The moment you can play by choosing your equipment basing on the course layout, weather condition and your ability, your score will come down by itself.
hope this helps,
don't be too serious, enjoy the game!
