Excerpt from Easy Bogey: How to Break 90
I had turned pro and started my teaching career. One morning, I was stopped by one of our Members in the cafe. He said, “Bob. You gotta help me. My swing is all messed up.” I asked what was up. He told me he had been 1 over par with four holes to play and finished with three doubles and a bogey. He ended up with an 80.
“I don’t know what happened. My swing just fell apart there at the end.”
Hmmm. I thought.
His name was Pete. “Pete, what time did you go to bed?”
“1:30” he said and told me he had been out drinking and dancing.
“And you played at dawn?”
“Yes”
“Carried your clubs?”
“Yes”
“What did you have for breakfast?”
“Coffee”
“Did you eat during the round?”
“No”
“Drink any water?”
“No”
By then he figured out where I was going with the coaching questions.
“Do you think I just ran out of gas?”
“Let’s see. You got four hours of sleep. You didn’t have breakfast. You carried a twenty-pound pack on your back for like five miles. You didn’t hydrate and you didn’t eat anything along the way.”
“Your swing isn’t broken. You were one over after fourteen holes.”
Here is the moral of the story and a bit of perspective. Amateurs do things amateurishly. A big part of my wonderful job is to gently demand that they do things more professionally. This includes being well rested, properly fueled and hydrated. Please do.
