I've officially hit rock bottom please help

[Jordan c.]

This is the worst I've ever felt about this game. I've played the best golf of my life for the last 5 months but one round destroyed all confidence I ever had. I play 5 or 6 holes like a pro and then I hit one bad shot and my round goes to crap. I'm trying to drop my swing inside and I finally feel like I am but then I look at my swing and it looks like crap. Please let me know any suggestions you have or any mental tips. Thanks everyone!

 

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IM_xSc-GiU[/media]

[Jordan c.]

I don't know why it quoted . Sorry

[tgreen22]

your swing looks fine on tape, so my guess is this is a mental block. how often are you golfing? it could be fatigue, especially if you're playing well to start and then your round falls apart 1/3 of the way through. take a week off, come back not thinking about any swing faults or what has been going wrong and just let your natural swing come through. probably be back to normal after 2 rounds after a little lay off.
good luck!

[gentles]

I agree with above posters, I was expecting to see much worse!

If you can get your hands on it, I very strongly recommend you read Extraordinary Golf by Fred Shoemaker. There are some great drills and activities to get back in touch with your inner game...with a swing like that I have no doubt that you can hit the ball well, you just have to get out of your own way!

[Jordan c.]

Hey guys really appreciate it... Right now I play 4 times a week. I'm fortunate to be able to play a lot after school. I started playing about two years ago and started noticing that my head was probably my biggest issue. I'm gonna pick up a book and figure this thing out. Thanks a bunch everyone!

[bennypotter]

Your swing looks great! You can let one bad shot dictate your round! I wrote a lot to this post which was similar to yours so check out how i talk about how to handle your mental attitude there:
[url="http://www.golfwrx.com/forums/topic/825547-tell-me-why-i-suck/"]http://www.golfwrx.com/forums/topic/825547-tell-me-why-i-suck/[/url]

Dont get caught up in the mechanics too much or your results, your mental attitude is the issue here clearly. Rather than play 5 holes like a pro, play your round like a pro and deal with your bad shots. A pro will hit a bad shot, deal with it and grind out the best score possible, be that an 8 on a par 4 of a solid bogey. Everyone wants to shoot low, but you cant force it, you have to accept bad shots and bad scores are part of the game of golf and they come in long streaks, sometimes its your swing and you can fix it with hard work, but sometimes its just your luck.

I am a scratch golfer and last year i played in a tournament where i shot +18, but i worked my a** off for that +18, grinded away on every shot and i made a lot of great shots, which got unlucky bounces or crummy lies, and i am proud of the fact i worked hard and held it together, hell, i could have been +28 easily if i didnt grind it out. I think the point im trying to make here is if you just focus on the result, that round looks terrible and makes me look crap! But when i review the individual shots in my head i made some great up and downs for bogey and drove the ball off the tee like a dream most the time.

I will leave you with a quote a sport psychologist once told me as i feel it applies to you: "Your perception IS your reality"
This simply means if you believe you suck then you will suck. If you believe you are a golfing god, you will become one. "[color=#282828]I look at my swing and it looks like crap" your swing will be crap if you believe this. "[/color][color=#282828]I hit one bad shot and my round goes to crap" this will always happen if you believe it.[/color]

Anyway i intended to make this a small post, but failed, I hate to see golfers beat themselves up over this game. Keep your chin up and remember you chose to play this game, so you have to take the good with the bad. Please read the other post i linked here as i think some of it might help.

[CynderBloc]

I have been down the path you're on, and it doesn't lead anywhere good. A terrible tee shot on 17 cost me my first under par round when I was a kid and it destroyed me mentally, it took me a long time to appreciate that I'd made a good 8 on 17 and a regulation par down the last. Instead of focusing on that good point, every bad shot I hit in subsequent rounds was followed by a barrage of cursing and 5 minutes of thinking about how to improve my swing while walking to my ball. Trust me, it just leads to a worse next shot. Even if I was a couple over standing on the 18th green in regulation, I'd still be thinking about where I threw away shots in the round,

I know it's difficult, but you have to forget about bad shots as soon as you've hit them. It doesn't matter what kind of shot got your ball to where it is, all that matters is that's where it is and you have to hit another one.

As for your swing, I would say don't mess with it now, swing changes are for the winter months. That and it looks pretty solid to me, couple of things you could do but you always run the risk of creating bigger problems when you change a swing (Also through personal experience).

So, forget about your bad shots and don't worry about your swing during the round. You'll have bad days certainly, but you'll also have some where everything clicks and you'll realise that you were playing without even thinking about it.