by Julieta Stack, LPGA Member

A few years ago my game was in a funk.  No matter what I seemed to do, my scores kept getting higher and my shots getting worse.  The harder I tried to fix my swing and the harder I tried on the course, the more confounded I became.   This wasn’t the first time I had gone through a “trying” phase, and it probably won’t be the last.  One thing I know through experience is that in golf, the harder you try, the the worse it seems you do. So why is that?

In almost every other sport and walk of life, trying and effort translate into improvement.  In golf, pressing too hard has the exact opposite effect.  

It is almost as if your club has a sensor in it and the moment it senses you are in the “trying hard” phase, you snap hook a ball or hit a fat shot at the exact wrong moment.  This is mainly caused by tension.  In golf, when we try too hard we usually grip too tightly, swing a little too fast and generally get out of our rhythm.   There is no worse enemy on the golf course than tension.  It is the great destroyer of swings and games.  It is such that I can practically guarantee you that if you play golf with too much tension in your hands, your body or your mind, you will not play near to your potential.