Your Ego is Your Biggest Handicap

I know it’s mine for sure, and it’s probably yours too. If you don’t admit it’s your biggest problem then it really is a bigger problem than you care to acknowledge. 

You start out, well when I say ‘you’ I mean ‘we’, start out believing that we’re about to play the round of our life, you just know

He really came back!

when you’re stood on that first Tee that you are  about to shoot the first scratch round of your life – then you spoon one of the tee and your brand new ProV-1x wails out of sight never to be seen again, and you’re instantly thinking I’ve got to birdie the next three holes to be even!

We’re a common breed us L’Oreal golfers, not because we’re worth it but because we know we’re good enough and we deserve it! Well it’s about time you (..we..) woke up to the reality that you ain’t worth it and starting out with utopian expectations is just gonna make a bad round really bad.

I’ve got what I would call an average level of testosterone, male esteem, moderate levels of chauvinist piggism about me – and if you fit this bill then like me you’ve got issues before you even pull on your glove. Now I won’t admit that I actually think I can shoot a par round, these days my utopian target is much lower than that but it’s still a target too far.

Where does it come from? well I think peers and people you aspire to play as well as can build your ego up in the background because you really do think you can match them. The truth is you can’t, not unless you put the effort in to practice and practice and practice and practice. Then you’ll have much more realistically unachievable utopian goals and an even bigger ego to deflate, because if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in 20+ years of golf (and I suppose in life in general) is that egotistically driven utopian targets are self perpetuating and always out of reach.

Now one thing I’m not saying is “don’t have targets” – of course you need targets, everyone does, but they need to be achievable. The only time you will get a genuine ego boost is by achieving a real and sensible target, surely this goes for all of life and not just golf.

When you self inflate your ego based on false beliefs that you are better than you think you are then you will find it very hard to improve, not least because you will find yourself constantly at a low ebb and frustrated. You’ll find yourself slashing at a nice lye just to get it out of your system and in one shot add 2 or 3 unnecessary shots to your card.

Your ego, like me, is your biggest handicap. Drop your ego and drop your handicap with no additional practice and start to reap rewards from your practice rounds rather than utter frustration.

This is my resolution for 2010.