One of my closest Pinehurst golf buddies’ son is a PGA Head Pro at a Pinehurst course. I won’t tell you which Pinehurst course to protect his privacy. My buddy, whom I’ll refer to as Mr. J, plays like I do. On a bad round we’ll climb past 100, a good round puts us in the mid 90’s and occasionally we slip into the low 90’s or high 80’s and consider that an excellent round. Like average golfers, we often experience that shank shot into the woods, the duffed fairway shot, chili dipped chip shot and terrible read on a putt. Sometimes we can become frustrated or angry with ourselves on such shots. Mr. J’s son will remind us that WE ARE NOT PGA PROS! The importance of this is to keep our game in the proper perspective. Because we play golf for fun and not to make a living, we have to expect those errant shots and miscalculations in our round of golf. Instead of getting angry, we try to laugh at those mistakes and understand that we are having fun and enjoying the course and it’s beauty. So, the next time you shank that shot into the woods, just say ” hey, I’m not a PGA Pro” and move on. In the long run, that attitude will make your game much better and you will improve because your emotions won’t take over your game. Happy Golfing!

My Pinehurst golfing buddies have me keeping track of many things besides my hole-by-hole score. As I have mentioned in the past, tracking the number of putts is important, but there are other things just as important to analyze your round. Off the tee I now record if I hit the fairway, rough, sand and on par threes, green. I simply put down F for fairway, R for rough etc on each hole. At the end of the round, I guarantee that your score will be better if you have more F’s than R’s recorded on the card. It will also surprise you to go back and look on a bad day, just how many fairways you missed! The more you do this, the more attention you will pay to your tee shot as you strive to get those F’s recorded.