How to Instantly Recover After a Bad Golf Shot
How many times have you been cruising along in a solid round of golf, to all of a sudden hit a bad shot that came out of nowhere?
This shot resembles none of those you hit earlier, but now it instantly strikes you with an almost paralyzing fear and as you stand over the next shot, you have no idea which way the ball is going to fly.
Take heart, EVERYONE has been there. In fact, most golfers LIVE there and never learn how to get over it – but in just a moment I’m going to tell you to instantly correct your swing so the next shot flies long and true.
For Valentine’s Day 2020, my wife and I took a climbing trip to Moab, UT (you think that’s bad, one year I bought her a Rally Driving course – she LOVED it!).
Now many of you know in my younger years I was a professional snowboard mountaineer for The North Face so I’ve spent many a day on the side of steep faces on big mountains.
But what you may not know about me is that I’m deathly afraid of heights – I don’t even like being on ladders.
Climbing is one of the ways I work through my fear of heights to control it instead of let it control me – but I still find myself scared shitless hanging off the side of a rock face hundreds of feet off the ground even after climbing for 30 years.
Now, this becomes a serious life or death problem in a hurry when this paralyzing fear hits you in the middle of a climb as my life and the life of my wife is literally in my hands.
The fear of falling and responsibility for another’s life is something that can give you sweaty palms just sitting here thinking about it.
So, what do I do when I’m looking at a potentially fatal fall while hanging on by my finger tips?
First, I assess the situation. Am I in REAL danger of falling or are my emotions just making me FEEL that way.
99% of the time the situation isn’t as bad as it seems, so I simply tell myself “you’re ok, just relax.”
Simple enough, but that doesn’t bring my heart rate back down from the stratosphere, it just reaffirms that I’m in control of the situation and not my emotions – I’m being proactive rather than reactive.
After my assessment, I do the most valuable thing I’ve ever learned to calm my nerves – I take deep breaths and slow my breathing consciously.
These two tools together help to keep me calm in the most stressful of situations and literally keep me alive.
Fortunately, standing over a tee shot over water with OB left and right isn’t quite so serious, but how many of you feel that it might as well be life or death?
The fear is just as real and manifests itself in much the same way – sweaty palms, a tingling sensation across your entire being, shortness of breath and a real fear of the consequences.
Now the two techniques I gave you above are helpful for calming yourself to prepare yourself to hit the next shot…
BUT THEY’RE NOT ENOUGH…
You see, if you have a crappy swing, all the positive thinking, mental techniques and more aren’t going to do a damn thing.
If you’re swinging in such a way that the clubface is open at impact and take a couple deep, calming breaths, the clubface is still going to be open at impact.
Golf is not just a mentally driven game, it’s a physics driven game and an open clubface is still sending the ball offline no matter how much you channel your inner Deepak Chopra.
So, if you’re fearing that you’re about to blast one wide right off the next tee because that’s what just happened on the last one, that fear is LEGITIMATE.
But, there is a cure and some of you on our Facebook Group are starting to experience the breakthrough that defines the essence of the DEAD Drill – self correction in the middle of a round.
Calhoun, it’s not a “New Use”, it is THE use for the DEAD Drill.
You see, I didn’t design the drill to be just a way to teach you how to swing better than the tour pros and make it a simpler, faster way to learn.
At some point, you’re going to have learned the entire drill – whether it’s in 21 days like Nolan during the BootCamp, or in your own time, you’ll have it down.
But, we’re human, we make mistakes, we lapse, we wake up feeling stiff and sore, we age.
One certainty of life is that it’s ALWAYS changing, dynamic and in a state of constant flux.
This can be unsettling, but it is a fact of reality that we cannot change.
Instead of trying to control things that are outside our control, we must instead have a way to “recenter” or “ground” ourselves in the things that we know to be a constant.
When I climb, I breathe, when I golf, I DEAD Drill.
They both have the same affect, they instantly get me back of control of the outcome.
After a bad swing I do the DEAD Drill and I instantly know what went wrong on the last shot and know what it will feel like to do it correctly on the next shot – that is it’s true power.
I’m teaching you how to teach yourself, how to be independent, how to self-correct, how to truly understand the golf swing.
Imagine, being able to face your most feared shots, your nemesis holes, in complete confidence knowing that you can execute the shot.
Makelt discovered something I talk about all the time – the psychology of the “Degenerating Round”.
After hitting a hundred balls on the range, you may have grooved your movements enough that you step up to the first tee beaming with confidence.
But after a couple squirrelly shots, you begin hunting for a swing thought to get you through the next shot, and the next hole and so on.
I call this “chopping WOOD”, or searching for swing thoughts that Work Only One Day.
This is pretty exhausting having to go back through your mental catalog of tips and band-aid fixes you’ve read for the past 20+ years and trying to decide which one might work to fix your slice before the next dog leg left hole.
It’s a futile strategy but one most golfers attempt day in and day out, most for their entire lives.
The answer to your swing and your game doesn’t lie in a magic tip, it lies in a fundamental fix to your problem, one that addresses every single swing mistake and teaches you how to instantly correct it – right there in real time.
That’s what the DEAD Drill is – the literal solution to all your swing problems, both mechanical and mental.
According to Hank, it’s like having your swing coach in your back pocket:
Want the security of knowing how to correct every bad shot, even in the middle of the most pressure filled situations?
Then master the DEAD Drill – stop wasting your time and energy chasing tips and band-aid fixes.
The DEAD Drill is like breathing; it provides the “oxygen” you need to play your absolute best golf, learn a body-safe, consistent and powerful swing and allows you to “recenter” yourself so you can hit the shot you need to at the time the pressure is at its highest.
And I can’t think of a better use of a single golf swing drill than this.
Want to master the DEAD Drill? Click here to join RotarySwing.com today!
