The fear of a good round

Can scoring a good score really be scary?

• By:

• Trevor Booth

An interesting thought crossed my mind as a hit balls at the driving range, I watched my third 7 iron in a row land in the same place and I thought to myself, why can I never do this out on the Golf Course?

Its a sobering thought, I've been playing Golf for over 30 years and I, like most of us have been chasing that elusive perfect round, the thought that if I just hit every shot like that last one, I can at least par every hole on the course.

Years ago when I used to play regular competition Golf I played a round in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, I started out the game like I always do, firmly believing that today would be the day I would break par, a lofty goal sure for someone who had never done it, but it couldn't happen if I didn't believe it right?

After a few holes I was a couple over and a the same old story started to play over and over again in my head, "what were you thinking?", "You know you're not good enough", "This always happens", "This is just not my day", but then something different happened, I rolled a long putt in for birdie, kind of a fluke but I'll take it, and then a couple of holes later I got another birdie to be back at 1 over.

Suddenly I was starting to feel really good about myself, I walked off the ninth hole with my head held high, I was playing off 10 at the time and being 1 over after nine I started thinking to myself, this is it, its all finally come together.

After a quick bite to eat (junk food as always) we started the back nine with a par 3, I hit the ball to within a meter of the hole and rolled in another birdie to get back to even, and then it started to happen, something I had only experienced once before in my Golfing life, I started to become afraid.

The only other time I had felt this way was when I birdied the first three holes at the Port Fairy Golf course, its a debilitating feeling, its also so stupid, how could I be afraid of a good score? why would anyone be afraid of hitting a good score? but sure enough I wasn't enjoying the round anymore, I was just nervously waiting for it all to fall apart.

As the back nine wore on the birdies dried up, I scored a double bogey on a par 5 which just reinforced the belief that it would all fall apart and I ended up scoring a four over 74.

To this day that's the best round of golf i've ever played, I've changed a lot since then, I try not to let the game get in my head so much, it still does at times because in the back of my mind I still believe that I can be a good player, and I guess its this belief that keeps us coming back.

I will never give up trying to be the best that I can be, its just taken me a very long time to understand that my best might not be 6 under par, and that's okay.

Thanks for reading, what do you think? how do you go handling the mental side of the game?