Have You Ever Experienced a Long Performance Drought?
A long-term decline that caused you to question whether you wanted to continue competing in golf.
From our Golf Mental Game Survey, a golfer reached out to us who was in the midst of an extended performance drought.”
“I played really well but have slipped back over the past few years. I hadn’t even come close to my scores a year ago. How can I regain my drive and concentration when I lose heart and stop trying?”
A slump is hard enough and can cause a lot of frustration. However, a long-term decline in performance can lead to resignation.
In other words, you feel you have played so badly for so long that you lose interest in the sport. Tournaments are no longer exciting. Every time you step onto the golf course, you ask yourself, “Why do I bother playing?”
When you lose interest in competing, you lose interest in practicing, training, and preparing.
Seeing improvement will help you regain your enthusiasm and move forward. When you are experiencing a long-term drought, it is important to temper your expectations.
Expecting to shoot your lowest score out of the blue rarely happens. Rather, improvement shows up in bits and pieces and requires you to look for those small successes and recognize little personal victories.
Small successes can include: driving the ball straighter, feeling comfortable on long putts, increasing your number of pars during a round, or playing 4-5 consecutive holes consistently well.
Seeing some improvement provides light at the end of the tunnel. A “Find the Success” mindset helps you make small steps that motivate you to continue grinding.
PGA Tour golfer Jason Day broke a five-year drought by winning the 2023 AT&T Byron Nelson tournament by one shot.
The last time Day won a PGA Tour event was at the 2018 Wells Fargo Championship. Between 2015 and 2018, Day won ten PGA Tour tournaments and was consistently on top of his game.
DAY: “It’s been a struggling few years — five years since my last win — so to be able to get the win the way I played today was really special. I’m very pleased and happy with how things have progressed over the last couple of years for me.”
Day’s mindset is to keep grinding, to stack one small success upon another. As a result of his positive mindset, Day has been consistently on top of his game throughout the 2022-23 season with seven Top-10 finishes.
In addition, Day has climbed from a ranking as low as No. 164 in the world last year to No. 5 since earning his most recent victory.
DAY: “Nonstop grinding and nonstop wanting to improve and get better. Then trying to get through those two years of just trying to get through a tournament was difficult. To be on the other side of it, to be healthy, feeling good about my game, finally winning again, no better feeling, really.”
Striving for improvement and the drive to bounce back will provide you the confidence to keep climbing and grinding.
Seeing success will keep you playing golf and grinding each round. The first step in seeing success is defining what success means to you.
For example, in putting, is success making putts and making all putts inside 5 feet? Or can you define success differently? Can success be hitting your line with good pace instead?
This approach can be applied to your entire game of course.
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- How to Play With a Functional Mindset in Golf
- How to Manage Fear on the Golf Course
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