Everyone is inconsistent, so stop worrying about it.
Golfers around the globe often complain about inconsistency in their performance. The following is an fine example of the type of comment you might have heard in the 19th hole:
‘I can hit a great shot but the very next shot can be terrible. Then I start to worry about what the next shot might be like. If only I could remove my poor shots, they make me so frustrated!’
When you get frustrated, your concentration on the task at hand will be affected, and as a consequence your ability to hit the next shot well. But it is fair for golfers to get frustrated when they are inconsistent, or do they have unrealistic expectations about how consistent they should be?
It’s difficult enough to hit the golf ball in the right direction, let alone while under pressure, and within a changing environment (e.g. varying wind, lie, distance, etc.). The expectation to be consistent in a game that is notoriously inconsistent, can lead to frustration, disappointment, reduced enjoyment, and ultimately poorer performance.
So how inconsistent are you? To help answer this question lets take a look at the consistency of golf professionals and amateurs.
Golf professionals have spent many hours honing their skills, so you would expect them to be fairly consistent in their performance, but is this actually the case?
The graph below shows Brooks Koepka’s scores (currently ranked in the world’s top 10 players), for all rounds he played on the USA PGA tour between January and October 2018. Interestingly, Brook’s won two major championships during this phase.
Brooks’ average score was 69.80, with scores ranging from 63 to 78. The graph displays many peaks and troughs illustrating that even the best golfers in the world vary in their consistency.
But how do the statistics of amateur golfers compare? To investigate, we analysed the round data (1000+ rounds) of golfers (40+) over the course of the ‘season’ (January to October 2018), across varying skill levels (2, 9, and 18 handicap golfers).
The table below shows the average, range, and standard deviation for each category.
The average refers to the average gross score for each category.
The range signifies the difference between the best and worst gross score during the season. A smaller range would indicate greater consistency.
The standard deviation is a statistic that denotes the amount of variance in a set of data. For example, the lower the standard deviation figure, the less fluctuation there was in the gross scores, indicating greater consistency.
2 of 3 rounds signifies the range of scores that a golfer will score, 2 out of every 3 rounds. A smaller range would indicate greater consistency.
The figures in the table do suggest that consistency increases as skill level rises. You might say ‘Ha. I told you so! I need to be more consistent to be better at this game.’
However, it could be argued that the differences, within a practical sense, are very small. For example, the table shows that two-thirds of the rounds of a 2 handicapper will be within a 6 shot range (72-78), 7 shots for a 9 handicapper (78-85), and 9 shots for an 18 handicap player (85-94).
We are only talking about a maximum of around 1 or 2 shots at either end of the scale. When you consider the scores are spanned over a 10 month long period, there appears to be very little difference in regards to consistency across skill levels.
Professional golfers, who play the game full time for a living, still had a range of 15 shots over the course of a season, and two thirds of their rounds were also spread out within 7 shots. This was the same spread as a 9 handicapper!
This illustrates that consistency in golf is a hard nut to crack. However, many golfers seem to struggle to cope mentally with their inconsistencies. Hopefully the information presented above has shown that it may be unrealistic to think you can eradicate inconsistency from your game, and become more accepting of the highs and lows of you performance.
Have a think about your inconsistency, and assess whether it is really that different from the norm, i.e. different from the examples provided in the table. It may not be the inconsistency that is holding you back in your performance but how you react to it.
You can't control the past, but you can control how you react to a shot and how you prepare for the next shot. Show more understanding and forgiveness in regards to your inconsistencies to help reduce your frustration, allowing you to enjoy the game more and ultimately play better. You may not be able to control your inconsistency but you can control how you respond to it, and give yourself the best chance of future success.
Everyone has good and bad shots, it is all relative to your skill level! What will make you a better player is to improve all of your shots, the good and the bad ones, so get out there and work hard on improving your game.
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