Confidence

I got a link from my golf mentor.  It was about confidence.  The idea per the author was that confidence is a learnable skill.  With some effort you can get better at it and that should lead to more even play -- less mental dips, less fear of failure.

Here were some of my thoughts in a reply to Sonny:

Thanks for the link in re confidence.

I would like to believe in this.  I don't really have a reason to doubt it, but I think it may be a bit more complex then saying to yourself "I can do this!"  

Humans have a couple of problems.  One being that we are too adaptive.  We are not good at doing something the same way time and time again.  We are always looking for a new/better way.

Of course this is good when we have a strange golf takeaway.  We somehow manage to get get club on ball.  But if we couldn't get the club back to the ball, we would have to change the goofy swing.  More of that and it might lead to better swings more quickly.

VJ Singh said that confidence comes from doing something 20,000 times.  Dave Pelz might agree with that.  Though Pelz was saying that until you do something 20k times, you have to consciously be aware of how you are doing it.

I would suggest that you do not have to do everything 20,000 times.  I think when you come up to a different lie or some other golf puzzle, if you stand back a moment and figure out what the problem is and decide how to alter stance or loft or swing to overcome it, then you draw on all the years of experience, indeed the 20k swings in your past to overcome this new problem.  So in some sense the new problem is just a minor variation on older ones.  Ones that you have solved before.

As long as there is a bit of analysis and then resolution/decision, then I think you should be confident about what will happen.

Of course you have to be sane about what is possible.  Hitting a buried bunker shot 150 yards is probably not doable by anyone and thus the resolution may be where to hit the shot that is going to go 20 yards.  Basically take your lumps and don't turn one back shot into two or three.  

Thanks for the link.  I'll see if I can apply it to my game too.