If you’ve ever played a bad round of golf, you totally get this title. There is little more frustrating and demoralizing than a bad round of golf.

There’s a saying, “a bad day on the course is better than a good day at the office,” and although it’s generally true, it’s a much closer contest than many of us like to admit.

My dad used to be an avid golfer but about 15 years back he threw in the towel, saying “I’m done spending four hours, paying to get pissed off.”

How many times have you been partnered with that golfer who hits a bad shot and explodes with rage, tossing or slamming their clubs spewing profanities while raging at the world. Yeah.. that always ends up being a great round of golf..

Sound familiar?

I’m sure we’ve all witnessed or committed such acts and by the end of the round you and your playing partners are grumpy, exhausted and ready to depart from the immediate company.

I’d like to offer a suggestion, next time you feel your rage begin to bubble, being asking yourself a series of “Why” questions.

If you stop and think about it all, the first question that typically comes to mind is “Why am I getting so upset?” The obvious answer is because I’m playinig like crap.

If you take it a step further and ask yourself, “Why am I playing like crap?” There’s a multitude of answers that you could come up with.. I haven’t been to the range or
I haven’t played in two weeks, haven’t had a lesson to work on my driver, need new clubs, etc..

Dig deeper and ask yourself, “Why haven’t I done these?” The two most common answers will be I haven’t had the time or the money.

In my case, both these examples are true and these commodities have instead been spent on my family, either my wife or my three boys and I’m sure your situation is similar.

Next, ask yourself, “Why do I play golf?” Answer, will always be, because it is the greatest sport in the world and you love it. I know, if you could devote more time and
effort to the game, you would, and the result would be a more consistent game with a lower handicap.

The cold hard truth though, is that golf is our hobby, or in my case, obsession and as much as we’d like to devote more of ourselves to the game, the reality is we can’t because of a myriad of reasons. These are legitimate  and in many cases trump the weekend round of golf, after work range session, or new custom fit driver (as shocking as it is to say).

What is left to you is the occassional round of doing what you love, and with what little time you have to do it and with what little time you have to prepare for it, does it really make sense to go out there taint the experience by getting angry or frustrated with it?

Especially, when events, out of your control, prevent you from devoting more time to the mistress? As weekend hacks, most of us set our expectations too high and unrealistic when we’re heading out to play and the result is disappointment and frustration.

I think if we lower our expectations to what is in the ball park of reality, the net result will be a more enjoyable round of golf AND most likely better scores. Nothing kills your golf game more than when you get in your own head and can’t let go of the bad shots and focus on the good ones.

So like my dad says, don’t go out there any pay for something that’ll piss you off. Go out there when you can and appreciate the time you can spend on the course, focusing on the good and blocking the bad.

Life and a round of golf is WAY too short to spend it angry! 🙂

Have a custom club fitting question? Visit our Ask the Fitter page, post your question and you’ll be entered to win a free custom club fitting from the TaylorMade Performance Lab!