Know YOUR Tendencies to Deal With Tension

[pnomm]

Another point when dealing with pressure situations is to know what your tendencies may be. Either you have been in these situations before and already know what you typically do, or you haven't been and need to find out. One way is to play in a tournament, or some match where you will have to hit that pressure shot. You can also simulate this in practice by creating some goal such as trying to land ten shots in a row on the same target green, or trying to hit five straight drives in a row. All of these work well if you can do them enough to recognize your own patterns. From here it is a matter of recognizing them and then adjusting to them.


I will speak here about my own game, and what happens to me in a pressure situation. I know the first thing that I tend to do is grab the club a little tighter, maybe swing with a little more tension, and the result is that I pull my shots when under the gun. Knowing this, I have worked on a way to use this to my advantage, and it has paid off numerous times. What I now try to do when I have a shot that really matters is to purposely aim right and pull the ball, with having the feeling that I am holding on through impact and not releasing. I certainly do not try to hit this shot normally, but doing it in these situations actually makes things constant. This short, in normal situations, would usually come up short because I am not releasing the clubhead, but with a little adrenaline pumping, under the gun it goes about the right distance. So knowing that I have this tendency, I can turn it into an advantage, and it becomes quite an effective shot when I need it.

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