Is quitting golf for a period a strategy?

[Hawkeye77]

1 hour ago, Barfolomew said:

 

You must live where houses are free... 🦆

LOL, off from golf!! 

 

 

[SwingBlues]

I don't get it....

 

When I had a rear ender by a drunken driver, I was forced away from golf for 6 months due to treatment and overcoming a severe back whiplash. I missed golf - but it made me RETHINK my golf swing

 

Then COVID closedown (lets call it that), made me re-think my golf swing.

 

So...OP, if you are going to shut it down, make sure you do something useful like rethink your golf swing. Just reading your post, it's all about results. I didn't see any mention of the process. Perhaps you should have a hard look at your process, your golf swing. Figure out whether you can cure it or need help of a professional and if the latter, how do you find the pro help.

 

You are lucky, this is 2021, Internet, YouTube. V1 apps...no longer are you tied to a local pro and a VHS tape rewinds. If you up to it, you can now own your own swing and rebuild it with the technology available to you.

 

Anyway, hope you find the time to have a really good think, at least you are going there on your own accord and not forced there by circumstances. Good luck

Edited November 16, 2021 by SwingBlues

[milesgiles]

6 hours ago, SwingBlues said:

I don't get it....

 

When I had a rear ender by a drunken driver, I was forced away from golf for 6 months due to treatment and overcoming a severe back whiplash. I missed golf - but it made me RETHINK my golf swing

 

Then COVID closedown (lets call it that), made me re-think my golf swing.

 

So...OP, if you are going to shut it down, make sure you do something useful like rethink your golf swing. Just reading your post, it's all about results. I didn't see any mention of the process. Perhaps you should have a hard look at your process, your golf swing. Figure out whether you can cure it or need help of a professional and if the latter, how do you find the pro help.

 

You are lucky, this is 2021, Internet, YouTube. V1 apps...no longer are you tied to a local pro and a VHS tape rewinds. If you up to it, you can now own your own swing and rebuild it with the technology available to you.

 

Anyway, hope you find the time to have a really good think, at least you are going there on your own accord and not forced there by circumstances. Good luck

 

all of this

 

I had a big rethink during covid, started posting, reading, learning on this sub forum a lot. Ive improved, yes.. but its the process that Ive enjoyed and continue to do so. Been able to give a little help to other strugglers as well (not going over the top and being a know all, just simple things that Ive learnt here..)

 

you have to find an approach to improvement that you Enjoy. Same as anything.

[mc2]

Play a few rounds with 5-6 clubs, in a carry bag, couple of beers, no scorecard, on a sunny afternoon, 9 holes, preferably solo, just walk around and hit shots. Try shots you’d never try, try a few different clubs, throw a chipper in the bag, new putter, whatever. Just a few things to refresh your mental state.

[jc2]

I feel for you if the bad golf is coming from trying to implement a swing change.  I went to a guy a few years ago who did an impressive amount of damage to my swing and psyche in a short period of time and similarly I dreaded going to the course until I abandoned the stuff he told me.  That's a story for a different thread though.  Eventually I went to another teacher who was really trying to do many of the same things as the first guy but did a much better job of getting me to understand them, and how to get me to implement them.  He also did a great job of getting me to separate the swing from the result.  Put a solid swing on it and it went left or right?  Count that as a win.  That was easy on the range but harder when I was out with the Sunday foursome.  But I knew I could fix an aiming issue easier than a topped 6i that goes 40 yards.  

 

One thing I did a lot of was change the tees I played to suit what I was currently capable of.  The first club that kinda worked for me was a hybrid so I teed off exclusively with it, which meant moving up at least one tee box which I enjoyed since it was the same as the old farts I play with.  I just tried to make sure I wasn't asking myself to hit shots I knew I couldn't do, no 170 tee shots over water that would only make me upset.  

 

The other thing I did was change up what my goals were for any round or even range session.  I wasn't going to be shooting mid 70s, so I set goals for GIR and fairways, or even no balls in the water on one of my courses.  I'm someone who knows my score without ever writing it down so I can't just "not keep score" but I could focus on meeting a goal without dwelling on slapping it all over the last hole and getting a quad. 

 

I was also doing a lot of videos of my swing, so even if my scores weren't getting better (or actively getting worse) I could see that there were improvements.  I did skip some normal rounds when I felt like I was getting burnt out because I didn't want to hate the game, I had some playing partners just grind themselves down trying to play out of it.  I'd rather lose a golf buddy a few times a month for a while than to never play with them again

 

 

[golfarb1]

There are two reasons to play golf 

Either you do it for the money or you do it for fun and satisfaction .

if you do not it for the money  and it is no longer fun , then quitting is the appropriate decision .

[LeftDaddy]

On 11/15/2021 at 10:57 AM, jc4birdie said:

Your reply resonates with me, much like one I quoted earlier (but for a  different reason).  One, when you go off the rails, it reads like me....can't get an iron airborne.  When that happens, near-panic (well, inasmuch as golf can cause near-panic) sets in, b/c I know the round is doomed. 

 

Second you mentioned losing distance as you relearned your swing, presumably as you were going thru a series of lessons.  Is that something you find to be the norm (and anyone else can chime in on this one if you'd like) when you take lessons?  The thing w/ my instructor is, and I said this in the other thread dedicated to changing instructors, is this....I KNOW THAT THE PROBLEM IS ME, not him.  He is an incredibly knowledgeable and professionally noted golf instructor; I also LIKE him tremendously; he's passionate about golf, like me.  But something is not clicking.  He changes something and/or decides something else is the real issue everytime I see him (which is often, as I practice at the club where he teaches), and I'm completely lost at this point as to what he's trying to get me to do.  And when that is the case, the teacher/student relationship is not working; in fact, it's counterproductive.  So, since I'm always tweaking, I never get a chance to get comfortable enough w/ the last new move to get it ingrained powerfully in my swing.  I'm just losing distance constantly.  He's a one plane advocate w/ an RIT release (very Malaska-ish, throwing the right wrist,, no forearm rolling).  Makes sense to me "academically", but putting it into practice has been disastrous for me.

To answer your question, no I didn’t lose distance at all. In fact, I’d estimate I’m now almost 30 yards longer than I was with the driver. My point was that, while I was going through a major overhaul and nothing seemed to be clicking, I had to have something that allowed me to keep trusting the process. So I’d try to appreciate as many small gains as possible. 
 

The “good thing” for me is that I had gotten so bad that I really had no other options. Either quit, or find an instructor I liked and stick with the process. I found the George Gankas program and I haven’t looked back. I’m still up and down as I continue to fix all of my faults. And it has taken me almost 2 years to get here. But I stuck with it and my golf game is in so much better shape than it was a few years ago.