Performance Anxiety 😬

Golf courses have opened in the area, and a small sense of normalcy combined with the excitement of impending freedom is palpable for all golf lovers.

Heading to the golf course after dutifully following the stay-at-home mandates can provoke an irrational level of excitement. Golfers may find themselves totally agreeable with conditions that would have been unacceptable pre-COVID19.  The “fair weather only” golfer now accepts 47 degree with wind gusts blowing off Lake Michigan as reasonable course conditions. The rationalization being that you’ll warm up quickly because you’re restricted to walking the course.

At the start of any season one focuses on what skills need to be improved and fantasizes about finally being able to make that perfect 20-yard chip shot drop into the center of the cup. We imagine the perfect season with more sunny days than not and only 2 putts on the green.  The reality is that there is slightly more pressure to playing golf during a pandemic – the need to make every swing pure and every connection to the ball solid and to soak up as much time as possible before you have to go back into the house.  The pressure to have a perfect round can actually take you off your game.

So when performance anxiety creeps up because: you barely recognize your foursome because they all are wearing masks; and you can’t give your girl a pound because of social distancing, and you keep topping the ball or hitting it off the toe…..take a deep breath, relax, swing easy, hit through the ball, and just play one hole at a time. And tell yourself that the tears in your eyes are merely from the wind.