A book at bedtime

My current book of choice is Anneka Sorenstam's "Every shot must have a purpose". It's a good read, once you get past the "why can't you birdie every hole" nonsense.

Like most golf instruction books, there's a couple of key learnings that might help in my quest to make each shot add up to less.

One of my greatest weaknesses is the constant mental arithmetic that follows each shot. "Make par on the next three and I'll be back to level", you know the kind of thing. This book suggests an interesting fix to that, which is simply to con your brain into forgetting par and instead thinking of each shot as a separate challenge in itself. So on the tee, the only challenge is hitting the fairway. From there, it's all about getting on the dance floor in regulation. You get a "point" for each, as you do for a par. Two for a birdie. My best score for a round so far is twenty something. I'm working on it.

But the best thing about this system is the point you get for an up and down, irrespective of your final score. I've already noticed an improvement in my concentration when I've knuckled down to "knock this close and hole the putt for a point". I'm going to award myself a double bunger every time I knock it close enough to tap in. In fact, that's the thought I'll take to the course with me this weekend.

The rest of the book is a rehash of basic visualiation stuff, e.g. decide on the shot, picture it, commit and then go into the zone and hit it. We'll no doubt talk Galwey another day.