Why I Hate Golf – But Love It Too

Watching The Open, the oldest and most prestigious tournament in golf, always makes me think about the level of my own play.

It would at best be described as ‘poor’. I’d hate to think how it would be described at worst, but let’s just say there are only 2 friends who are prepared to play with me, I am that bad!

It can be so frustrating, and yet of course it’s highly addictive – when you hit a good shot, you want to hit another one, to repeat the good feeling… Then when you hit a bad shot, you want to hit another one to erase the bad feeling…

You can see the idea – there’s always one next shot to do it right- it can be a life-long addiction!
Watching the Major Tournaments is a chance to see goal achievement theory at work in quite a pure form.

Let’s face it, golf is a simple game to understand, but difficult to master. Difficult, but not impossible! All the top players, the ones that stay there for year after year, they simply took instruction on how to play, learned the technique, and then worked. Worked hard. Worked hard for years.

In fact they never stop working at it. They all have coaches, even Tiger Woods, and you can see them churn inside with frustration when they get it wrong. Notice though, that after they’ve had a strop at getting it wrong, they buckle down to getting it right!

A successful golf game is based almost entirely on constant hard work to implement techniques which have been taught.

Yes of course you get people who have natural talent, but the huge majority of players on the golf circuit just use this simple goal achievement lesson.

If you apply it to most things in general life, you’ll see the same kind of results.

So, do you you hate (but love) golf like I do?