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How high is your golf IQ? (Updated)
My 'wrongs' can turn into your 'rights'
4 Minute Read
'Then', 15 years ago when I was in my 30's, and for 18 months or so, I spent a good deal of time practicing. During that time I went through a period where I scored around 80 strokes each round.
I figured if I hit it better and better, I would score better and that would be it. It was part of my DNA. I never considered that there could be more to it than that.
As a golfer I was all about hitting the longest drives. I never dialled it back a bit to hit more fairways. My golf IQ was so poor that I was jumping out of my shoes on every tee shot.
With this approach, I would miss-hit so much more often. The penny just never dropped for me. The quality of contact just wasn't a consideration. The attitude I had to my iron shots was similar to my drives. I liked to hit towering approaches to the green, and I was like this on EVERY iron shot, whatever the weather.
If the wind was blowing at 25 mph I didn't care, I just blasted that sucker up in the air and at the green, and still wondered why the best I could do was shoot around 80.
I was clueless. I just could not get better than I was. I stopped improving. Golf IQ. Zero.
'If the wind was blowing at 25 mph I didn't care, I just blasted that sucker up in the air and at the green, and still wondered why the best I could do was shoot around 80'.
Wrong assumptions
Looking back I assume I was 'hardwired' to be like that as a golfer, and that wiring dictated what I could and couldn't do. I never considered important things whilst playing, such as what side of a green or fairway was the best 'miss'. My golfing brain did not function this way. For me it was hit it hard and hope for the best. I was unaware that the angle of attack on the ball was, is and always will be the most important part of being a good ball striker. My golf IQ was so bad, that I didn't bother to find out what was actually important. As much as I burned inside wanting to improve, the way I approached the job of being a better player was defective. Back then, I was oblivious to the path the club took when coming into the ball, and also the angle of attack. Without this type of awareness during the swing, the results are random in terms of direction and contact. Also the direction my club face needed to be facing at impact wasn't something that occurred to me either.... it wasn't obvious to me that the ball takes off in the direction the face is hitting it at.
'My golf IQ was so bad, that I didn't bother to find out what was actually important'.
Misunderstanding
I remember back then I was occupied with some sort of backswing thought, or I was grumbling about my score, whilst trying to hit the skin off it 'this time'. I seemed to treat golf as some sort of competency test, and not as a game where the idea is to bring in the lowest score for your capabilities on that day. God knows how I would ever expect more than a purely random result with each shot, using this type of approach to the game. I never knew that the concerns I had with swing plane, follow through, shoulder turn, hip rotation, stack and tilt, square to square, or any other swing method or key I read about or watched that week, would just distract me away from the importance of contact. All the body movement thoughts just interfered with my motor skills. How could I make proper contact with the ball, when I was thinking about everything other than the 'contact with the ball'.
Kidding myself
My golfing influences at the time included Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Nick Faldo, David Leadbetter, Harvey Penick, Greg Norman, and even my favourite Fred Couples and I read all their books. Without knowing, I was digesting the information from the books in a recreational way, the same sort of way I would if I was reading a novel (I thought I was studying). All the info I was reading about, gave me tons of new ideas to try out...…I was spending my time in the golfers sweet shop, not knowing that by indulging this much, my game would just stay sick. Books written by top teachers and players have so much content. They are written this way to represent value to the book buyer. I genuinely got lost in all the information. Top golfers describe their technique, and average golfers want to read about it. Golf commentators, during coverage, would scrutinize some aspect of the golfers swing, to make a point about why the player is so good..... and I sucked it all in, figuring if the experts suggested 'such and such' as important, it should be something I needed to look at for my game as well. So I went along in the same way. Not taking the important information in. I continued to read every book I thought was important. I guzzled down golf tips in magazines and watched most tournaments on TV. I don't know if the term 'Golf IQ' existed at the time, because if it did no one told me.... now when I look back, was it any wonder I could not improve further...….?
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