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Your How-To Guide for Getting Out of a Slump

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Getting Out of a Slump

For anyone who has found any type of success after picking up a golf club, it can be hard not to feel like you’ve found your new favorite sport. You go out and get yourself a nice setup. Maybe a couple training aids. Then, you pop open YouTube and take in every free golf tip you can find. Before you know it you’re addicted and you spend as much time as possible at the course.

On the flipside, it can be the most frustrating experience you have ever paid so much damn money for. If you happen to find yourself in an unfortunate losing streak, you may begin to question why you keep coming back. But all it takes is one. Just one shot or play that comes out of nowhere and sucks you back into total dedication.

Regardless of how much you practice or whether you own the latest in golf technology, you are bound to have bad days. You’ll top shots, lose balls, and feel betrayed by your equipment. Heck, even the pros aren’t hitting their shots clean 100% of the time. The only difference is that their bad days are sometimes broadcast live for the world to see. Be thankful the only people that see you blow it are the people in your group and they’re just as bad.

No matter how well you play this game, there will always be times when you lose it, when no matter what you do the ball simply won’t go where you want it to. Your natural shape is a draw, but all of a sudden every shot with the driver is a wild slice. You have never in your life hit a dreaded shank but, from nowhere, you become afflicted. You can’t get the ball out of a bunker to save your life. You miss two-foot putts. And the pitching and chipping touch you could always depend upon suddenly deserts you.

In short, the game you love seems to hate you.

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So, how do you get out of a slump?

The first thing to avoid is taking advice from anybody who has a higher handicap than you do. If they play off, say 28, they do so for a reason. They have no clue why you are slicing the ball.

Whatever you do, don’t try to sort it out on the golf course. The range is the place to go to iron out your kinks, but make sure you head there with a purpose.

Check the basics, the fundamentals – if they are out of sync you have no chance of playing well.

Take a look at your grip, your stance, your posture, your ball position and your tempo. The chances are that if you are playing poorly, it will be because one of those is not quite right.

Try hitting shots with the golf ball in different places in your stance – often, it can come down to fractions. It may well be that you have started hitting shots with the ball too far forward or too far back in your stance.

Slow your swing down. If you are struggling for timing, tempo and rhythm you are never going to rediscover it by swinging hard. And focus on shortening your backswing and on holding your follow through. If you are swinging too hard, the chances are that you will be losing your balance.

Sometimes we just need help. All the positive thinking, focus, and changes in the world can’t help you if there’s a physical issue you aren’t aware of. So if you’re stuck in a slump after trying these tips, consider meeting up with your local pro and ask him or her to take a look. And then head straight to the driving range and work on what you have been told.

Tension is the enemy of the golfer. Are you under stress at work or at home? Take deep breaths when you stand over the ball and release the tension. If you are stressed there is every possibility that you may be gripping the club too tightly. Focus on gripping it gently throughout the entirety of your swing.

When you are standing over the ball, try to visualize the shot you are trying to play. If it’s a putt, imagine the ball falling into the hole. Positive thinking can only help. If you stand over a drive and worry about hitting it over the out of bounds fence on the right, the chances are that you will do precisely that. Most top golfers “see” the shots they want to play. If it works for them, why not try it too?

As difficult as it might be, consider taking a break from the game. Put your clubs in the cupboard for a couple of weeks and forget all about the game. When you return, you will almost certainly do so with few expectations, and you may just surprise yourself. You might also want to think about playing a couple of rounds on your own, without a scorecard in your back pocket.

Read the original article on Golfshake.

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Meet The Canadian Open Qualifier Tied To ClickIt Golf!

“This week was incredible,” he said. “A dream come true.”

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Josh Goldenberg doesn’t plan to quit his day job. But he had a great time dabbling in his old career.

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He gave up on pro golf, then qualified for his first PGA Tour event.

Read the full story here
https://golf.com/news/josh-goldenberg-rbc-canadian-open/?amp=1

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Bets & Babes: Betting on Birdies

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In this latest episode of Bets and Babes join me and my special guest Robert from the World Series of Golf as we tee up a whole new way to think about betting on the green.

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We break down golf betting basics, share hilarious stories and talk about how to bet in a way that might resonate with us ladies.

Whether you’re a total newbie or just curious how to make golf Sundays more exciting, this episode delivers fun, flirty, and smart tips to get you in the game. 🎧⛳💸

Click below to listen to the entire episode and leave your comments and suggestions for future episodes.

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The Bogey Man’s Guide to Accidental Course Exploration: Or, How I Found My Ball (Eventually) in the Rough of Life

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Ah, golf. The gentle game of precision, patience, and occasionally, profound personal humiliation. You know, the kind that makes you question all your life choices, particularly the one where you decided to spend your Saturday morning chasing a tiny white ball around 18 acres of manicured torture.

Boo here, reporting live from the depths of a particularly thorny patch of “rough” that I’m fairly certain wasn’t on the course map. My mission? To recount a tale of a golf shot so spectacularly off-target, it became less about breaking par and more about breaking new ground. Literally.

It was a glorious Tuesday. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and my swing felt… well, it felt like something. I was on the par-4 7th, a hole notorious for its deceptive dogleg and a bunker that swallows balls faster than a hungry teenager devours pizza. My plan was simple: a nice, controlled fade, landing gently just short of the green. A textbook approach, really.

What actually happened was less “textbook” and more “abstract expressionism.” My driver, bless its misguided heart, decided that “fade” was merely a suggestion, and “controlled” was a concept best left to professional pilots. The ball, a brand-new, gleaming Titleist Pro V1 (because, you know, optimism), launched with the trajectory of a startled pheasant and veered sharply right. So sharply, in fact, it cleared the cart path, hopped over the maintenance shed, and disappeared into what I can only describe as a dense, untamed jungle previously known as “the woods bordering the 7th fairway.”

Now, a lesser golfer, a more sensible golfer, might have declared it lost, taken a drop, and moved on with their dignity mostly intact. But I, dear readers, am Mr. Bogey Man. And the Bogey Man doesn’t abandon his children, especially when they cost $5 a pop.

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So, armed with a 7-iron (optimism again, clearly), a profound sense of misplaced determination, and a faint hope that perhaps a deer had picked it up and was using it as a chew toy, I plunged into the abyss.

The first five minutes were a blur of tangled vines, unseen roots, and the distinct feeling that I was being watched by small, judgmental woodland creatures. My pristine golf shoes quickly became mud-caked relics. My carefully tucked-in shirt became a casualty of low-hanging branches. I swear, I heard a squirrel snicker.

Then, a glimmer! A flash of white amidst the green. “Aha!” I cried, startling a family of robins. I pushed through a particularly stubborn bush, only to find… a discarded plastic water bottle. My heart sank faster than my last putt from 3 feet.

I pressed on, muttering to myself about the unfairness of golf, the existential dread of lost balls, and whether it was too late to take up competitive napping. Just as I was about to give up and declare the ball a permanent resident of the arboreal underworld, I saw it. Nestled perfectly at the base of an ancient oak, gleaming defiantly, was my Pro V1.

The triumph! The sheer, unadulterated joy! It was like finding the Holy Grail, if the Holy Grail was spherical and prone to slicing. I carefully extracted it, brushed off a few leaves, and held it aloft.

Then I looked around. I had no idea where I was. The fairway was a distant, hazy memory. The cart path? A myth. I was utterly, gloriously lost.

It took another fifteen minutes of bushwhacking, a brief but intense wrestling match with a particularly aggressive thistle, and the accidental discovery of what I’m pretty sure was a very old, very moldy sandwich, but I eventually stumbled back onto the course. My playing partners, who had long since finished the hole and were contemplating sending out a search party (or at least ordering another round of drinks), looked at me with a mixture of pity and amusement.

My score on the 7th? Let’s just say it involved a number that would make a mathematician weep. But the story? The adventure? The sheer ridiculousness of it all? Priceless.

So, the next time your ball decides to take an unscheduled tour of the local flora and fauna, don’t despair. Embrace it. See it as an opportunity for accidental exploration. You might not break 80, but you’ll definitely have a story. And isn’t that what golf is really about? (Besides the frustration, the lost balls, and the occasional snickering squirrel, of course.)

Until next time, keep those swings (mostly) in bounds, and remember: even a bogey can be an adventure.

Boo

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