Letter from a Student of The Inner Game of Golf

by | Inner Game of Golf, The Inner Game, Tim Gallwey

Tim,

I wrote you a week or two ago about Inner Game “certified” pros, and you were gracious enough to write me back.

You probably get notes like this all the time, but I thought I’d write, anyway.

As I look over my scores as posted on GHIN.com over the past dozen or so rounds, they are 85,88,87,93,89,90,86,87,84,86,85,87 – the scores of a slightly better than bogey golfer.

This summer I had an intention to improve my golf game and see if I could get into the 70s. I’m a 51 year old executive at an emerging small cap public company, so I don’t have a lot of time. But I decided to play 3x per week vs the 3 times a month of years past. Now it’s only 9 holes each time and one of three sessions is at the range and putting green, but I figured that swinging a club regularly could help. I also upgraded my original Big Bertha set of woods to something more contemporary, and took one lesson at a video based instruction shop (lifting my left heel, breaking my left elbow at the top of my swing). Also, I’ve been reading golf books – a few of Mark Frost’s golf history books (The Match is a really fun read), Michael Murphy’s Golf in the Kingdom, Ben Hogan’s Five Fundamentals, Bob Rotella’s Golf is not a Game of Perfect, and most recently the Inner Game of Golf.

Up until I read the Inner Game, I was still in the 43-46 range for 9. During that time I was also trying to incorporate a couple of the swing changes and get accustomed to the new clubs.

Since reading the Inner Game, I’ve been out 4 times, I’ve shot a 30 on an executive par 3, and a 41, 37 and 39 on regulation courses – an average of +3 per 9. And on this morning’s 39, I was 2 under through 5. On the 6th hole Self 1 was reveling in the possibility of shooting a 34 and I had a concentration lapse and made 2 doubles in a row.

The most fun part of all this, is when I posted the 37 on GHIN.com, there was an error message…

“This score isn’t in your normal range. Press POST SCORE again if you want to post this number.”

So, thank you for helping me create a new normal!

– Phil

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