The secret to stress-free golf is revealed at the end!

Years ago, I could hit the snot out of a drive. It was like a superpower that impressed fellow golfers and made them think I was a great golfer. And while my drives and decent fairway shots would often lead to pars and bogeys, I was also a master of terrible chip shots and horrendous putting. Which meant The Tour wasn’t in the cards. Obvio.

Nevertheless, the tee box was my stage, and with my driver in hand, I’d confidently (and literally) get the ball rolling every hole. And while this sounds like an amazing gift,  it sometimes stressed me out.  

Why? Because I’m not sure if you noticed, but golf is a complex sport that messes with one’s head.

For me, empath to match all empaths, I tend to take on other people’s energy and worry about how my actions make them feel. For example, I’d feel bad if I outdrove someone. This went for dates and co-workers, and don’t even get me started if I golfed with a boss or a client. (And yes, I realize how weird this sounds, and as you guessed, I’m not the most competitive person.)

While I loved my bionic tee shot powers, the pressure to live up to my reputation messed with my mind a bit. I’m reporting, not bragging, when I say that my tee shots were almost always spot-on – which was pretty cool but also embarrassing because the rest of my game didn’t always follow suit.

Again, remember golf is a complex mental sport. 

Well, as luck would have it, the “Be careful what you wish for fairy” came to pay me a visit this May in the form of a shoulder injury that effectively robbed me of the ability to hit my driver. Perfect timing, too, because my bum shoulder flared up just as my golf league season was beginning.

As a result, I hit my tee shots as if it were my first time picking up the club. 

I’m not even kidding. They’d go maybe 20 yards. It was like an alien had erased the part of my brain that told me what to do with a golf club.

 I began to develop a complex on the tee. 

And since golf is a #majorheadgame, this did not bode well with my self-esteem or the rest of my game. For each terrible tee shot, I had to scramble to recover on the fairway and the green, trying to erase the embarrassment over the unraveling disaster.

Where was the girl with tee-shot superpowers? 

Gone. 

I was like a washed-up high school quarterback, with memories of the glory days swirling in my brain while my body reminded me, “Nope. You ain’t got it anymore.” 

So, I did something very radical. 

I started to practice. And focus. 

I even went to the driving range…by myself.  (This was revolutionary for me.)

With this attention to my game, I regained some of my groove. Yes, because of hard work and practice, but more because I had an epiphany.

The secret to keeping our cool on the tee box and everywhere in between isn’t 100% tied to how much we practice or what our bodies can do. Keeping our cool comes when we realize we’re all the same out there… staring at a little white ball, hoping to hit the snot out of it. 

We all want to do well and prove that we’ve still got it or just got it, period. 

But the truth is, sometimes we’ve got it, other times we don’t. The important thing isn’t how we hit the ball but that we’re hitting the ball. We’re out there, golfing. 

The amazing privilege of golf is that it’s accessible to us for a lifetime, during which we all change and evolve. So it’s best not to get upset with the ebbs and flows and, even better, not worry about how our play affects or impresses others. Because, in most cases, they really don’t care.

Our biggest critics are those we find in our own noggins. So why not tell them to zip it and just get out there and hit the ball? 

So please, get out of your head and onto the course and enjoy this fabulous game.