By Elena King and Denise McGuire

You’re out on the course playing with friends or maybe playing a practice round. You’re relaxed, hitting good shots, sinking putts and scoring well. The very next day you’re playing in a tournament and everything seems different. Your swing feels off, you can’t seem to find the fairway, you are thinking more over short putts and missing putts you were making just yesterday.

Does that sound familiar? What changes from one day to the next? What interferes with your ability to perform under pressure? Are you curious as to how you can change this?

Most people believe performance is all about skill level, hard work and possibly even luck. Even though we tend to believe that, there are other elements that can produce good performance and help us reach our potential.

Learning and enjoyment can be the foundation for better performance.

As in the scenario above, your mind tells you that tournaments have more significance than your practice rounds. You start to think more about results and what you are doing instead of allowing your body to make the natural, free-flowing swing that you are capable of.

You often play best when absorbed in what you are doing and enjoying yourself. Without enjoyment golf can begin to feel like work. When you are playing and really in the moment, you are not as likely to be distracted by score, rankings, college coaches, parents’ reactions or making mistakes. Golf provides many opportunities for learning. Even when we make “mistakes” we can learn from them.

Do you enjoy playing golf? What makes it fun for you?

Here are some tips for making golf more fun:

• Ask your coach for tips to make practice fun and challenging. Practice with your buddies. Learn from each other.

• Manage your expectations.

• Give yourself credit for the things that you do well. Do this every day.

• Be fearless! Swing without fear of the outcome

• Use time in between shots to give your mind and body a break. Talk to your playing partners, laugh.

• Play golf for you!

• Learning the game involves more than just the technical aspects. The more you know about your tendencies the better equipped you are to coach yourself.

• What are you learning about yourself as you play golf?

• What distracts you from playing your best?

• Who are you trying to impress?

• How would you play if you approached every round of golf as an opportunity to learn more about yourself, your game and to get better? Do you think you’d feel less pressure?

Here are some ways to emphasize learning through golf:

• Commit to being a lifetime learner or student of golf and life.

• Become aware of your tendencies. You can’t change what you don’t know.

• Be willing to let go of what you think you know in order to allow something new to take its place.

• View learning as an experience. You can learn something new about yourself every time you practice and play.

• Keep a performance journal.

• Focus on the process of becoming an excellent golfer and not as much on outcomes (scores, rankings, etc). Results will naturally occur.