Thinking carefully about how I want to execute full iron shots is going well. Yesterday, out of 18 par 3 tee shots, I only failed to think about my golf shot twice, which were the only two poor shots of the day.

I realized a few days ago that thinking about shot execution, envisioning how I want the ball to move before my shot, should work for pitches, chips, lag putts, and short putts. Sure enough, when my mind is blank before a pitch, I’m more likely to look up, stab at it, chunk it, or skull it across the green.

I’ve golfed for my whole life, so it’s actually a habit I’m going to have to work on to think carefully about every shot before I swing. I’ve probably been told this and read it hundreds of times over the years. It’s called “visualizing” the shot. Just like hearing “watch the ball” when learning baseball, I heard it, but didn’t internalize and actually try to do it in baseball. I also never applied it to my golf game until recently.

At 80BREAKR, we’re transitioning from one golf course database to another, so short-term I have to use a random par 3 golf course on my scorecard. We hope to have that fixed soon! The difference in my game thinking about how I want to execute the shot and how I want the ball to move before each shot is dramatic. Not many months ago, I would stand on the teebox without any idea how I wanted to execute the shot, and have absolutely no idea where the ball would go. It was like rolling dice.

Now, I have a clear vision of how I want to execute the swing, how I want it to feel, and what I want the ball to do after I execute. When I fail to think about it before the shot, or fail to execute, I instantly know what I did wrong and why the ball didn’t move as planned.

These “mistakes” in execution or failing to carefully think about how to do the swing and what I want the ball to do are getting fewer game after game. It takes energy. It’s far easier to walk up and whack away at the ball and see what happens, but it’s a lot more fun to see great shots and decent scores often!