Strategy & Troubleshooting

Five Signs: A Golfer May Be Losing Confidence

Ted Odorico May 15, 2025

Relaxed Golfer Silhouette Against Bright Rising Sun

Strategy & Troubleshooting

Do you find yourself feeling somewhat deflated after a round, and ultimately staring into the sunset? Part of the reason may be you lost confidence in your game. Every golfer at some point in their golfing journey has experienced this at one time or another.

So what do you? I’ll answer that after we first examine: “Five Signs: A Golfer May Be Losing Confidence”

Worrying too much about making mistakes: Golfers who are losing confidence may be overly concerned with avoiding bogeys or hitting bad shots, causing them to feel anxious and unable to focus on the present moment.
Pre-round jitters that don’t go away: Anxiety and a tight feeling that persists beyond the first hole can indicate a loss of confidence and an inability to relax and trust the game.
Losing confidence after a single bad shot: If a single bad shot or score quickly erodes confidence and leads to frustration, it suggests a struggle with maintaining a positive mindset.
Focusing excessively on technique or how to make a perfect swing: Over-controlling the swing and focusing on the mechanics can indicate a lack of trust in the swing and a fear of failure.
Getting easily frustrated or playing cautiously: Frustration when not playing to expectations or a tendency to protect a score when things are going well can suggest a lack of confidence and a fear of losing.

If your one of those golfers who sees themself in this dilemma than you know what I’m talking about. There’s no worse than to hit the course feeling like nothing is going to work today. What typically happens in this situation is you simply go through the motions, and pray the round ends soon. You’ve read every golf book, watched every golf lesson on YouTube, but nothing seems to help. NOW WHAT?

Help is here!

I’ve been teaching this game to corporate clients for over 32 years. Every one of them at some point has felt the same as you have. Here’s what I tell them.

Let’s address each of the “Five Signs” mentioned above.

Point 1: If you focus solely on your mishits and not on good shots, then self doubt begins to creep in. Try this! After you hit a bad shot; let out that emotion and expell the negative energy. Getting it out of your system in a burst of raw energy will actually make you feel better, rather than keeping it pent up inside. Once you have done that visualize a really good shot you hit that day, and allow yourself to absorb the positive energy. You’ll begin to feel better because you’ve focused on something good that happened. Now re-group, and focus on the next shot.
Point 2: Everyone feels nervous stepping up to the first tee, even the pros. It’s normal! Some may feel that way until they have a few holes under their belt. The reason you are feeling nervous is you probably haven’t practiced much lately, or your warm-up routine lacks any real sense of readiness. Make sure that every time you hit the practice range, you do it with a sense of purpose. Don’t just rake and hit balls. Imagine you’re playing the first few holes of a course you’re going to play this weekend. What shots are needed to make a good score? Visualize each club you intend to play on every hole. See in your mind how you’d like the shot to be executed. Allow yourself to feed off the positive energy. Do the same in a warm-up right before your round. Don’t forget to stretch too! That really helps you to relax tense muscles.
Point 3: So you hit a bad shot! Who hasn’t? Does that mean the round is over? No! It just means you hit a bad shot. Stick that in the back of your mind and analyze it post-round. Trying to figure what went wrong during the round can be disastrous. Did I do this? Or do that? Who cares right now? There’s still plenty of golf left. Brush it off and see what you need to do on the next shot. Do I need to hit a recovery shot? Maybe! Focus on what needs to be done now and don’t worry about the past. That shot is gone. Learn from it and move on.
Point 4: Ahh! The perfect swing, good luck with that! There is no such thing. Every swing is different and unique to each golfer. Instead focus on becoming a better player. What can I do to improve my score? Having a perfect looking swing doesn’t necessarily mean lower scores. What does help lower them is to practice areas of your game that you fall short. We’ve all heard the saying: “Drive for Show! “Putt for Dough!” Well, there is a good reason for it. Bombing drives down the fairway looks great, but most amateurs lack the skill to do that with any consistency. However, working more on the short game like pitching, chipping and putting, can really drop your score. Spend the majority of your practice time working on these areas of the game. It will really help raise your confidence level.
Point 5: Emotions can often get the best of us. A common mistake golfers make after a bad shot, hole or even a round is to completely change the way they play. A player who typically goes for the pin suddenly gets squeamish and starts to play overly conservative. What happens then is they get out of their natural rhythm. They slow down and begin to second guess every shot. The opposite can happen for more conservative players who now feel they need to be aggressive to make up for lost strokes. Did you ever see Nicklaus change his game mid-round when things didn’t go his way? Not likely! So why should you? Stay the course and play the way you always have. Making a drastic change like that can turn a small thing into something worse. Play your game!

In conclusion: To regain confidence requires you to analyze things and put them into perspective. Building confidence takes time and a lot of hard work. Losing confidence can also take time to come back. How much time really depends on how you approach things. You can walk around feeling bad because you hit some poor shots, or played a few bad holes. Or, you can use them as a learning opportunity. It depends on you! Better players have conditioned themselves to do just that. They shrug off the less than perfect shots, focus on what they did well. All that leads to confidence building. Tiger Woods often said in his interviews: “I didn’t play my “A” game today, but I’m happy with the results”. If one of the best players to ever play can look at his game that way. Why shouldn’t you? You might find that it’s not your game that needs to change, rather your attitude.

If you would like to submit game improvement tips to help with your game. Send them to: editor@golftipsmag.com

Play Smarter Golf Now – Use Your Current Strengths and Thrive

Ted Odorico March 17, 2025

Strategy & Troubleshooting

No time to practice? No clubs allowed in your office? A lot of items on the “honey do” list? No worries! You can play better, or should I say “smarter golf,” with the skills you currently possess, and lower your scores.

Most golfers put very little “thought” into their games, for good reason. You do not want golf to be like work! I get it. But if you make simple decisions, almost automatic decisions each day with what amounts to mundane tasks, why not apply the same methodology to your golf game?

This will take some effort at first, but once ingrained, you’ll see more consistency in your game. And you’ll also realize when you are making that “stupid” mistake before attempting a stroke.

Be More Precise with Your Targeting

smarter golf precise target intermediate — All great players use intermediate targets or aiming points such as a divot a foot or two in front of the ball — something that is in your immediate peripheral vision at address.

Tour pros are often quoted as aiming to very precise, smaller targets. The adage of “aim small, miss small,” is a fantastic way of thinking of this concept, and applies to every shot.

Don’t just aim at a tree, aim at a specific part of the tree. If you’re going to aim to a bunker, what part of the bunker? Homing in on a small part of a larger objective stirs the chemicals in your brain and heightens your awareness of not only your target, but the situation you’re in.

As you make smaller targets a part of your pre-shot routine, be sure to incorporate a smaller target that lies within your peripheral vision as you address the ball. Most golfers know to aim to a smaller target in front of your ball that lies on your target line. But of-ten I see golfers aiming to smaller targets five or more feet away from your golf ball. This almost forces you to look up, a lot, and possibly maneuver your body to a position that is not in line with your target. Find a divot, discolored grass, broken tee, anything, that is two or three feet in front of your ball, and you’ll find it easier to keep yourself in line with the smaller target you picked.

smarter golf pin high — Photo 1: Playing “pin high” might not put you exactly even with the pin, but you’ll end up within easy two-putt distance in most cases, either just short or just long of the hole. Photo 2: Choose the club that will allow you two swing comfortably and within yourself, which usually means taking one extra stick. Avoid going for the “career” shot.

Play Pin High Approach Shots

There is a direct correlation between you hitting an approach shot that reaches the flag or past, versus ending up short, and your score. For the average golfer, if you end up short of the flag by more than 20 feet, your chances of making par or better drop to only five percent.

Whether you’re short, long, left or right of the green, hitting an approach shot that covers the total distance you need to carry the shot is essential to your success. The one common mistake most golfers make is trying to hit the “career” shot when it comes to yardage. This is the distance you hit perhaps once ever with any given club, versus the “average” length yardage you tend to hit a club. It’s amusing to witness on the course and very easy to correct, once you understand Career Shots only happen once.

Hitting “pin high” approach shots is easy to accomplish. Choose the right club, the club that hits an average carry distance. Don’t max out any club in your bag. Instead of making an overly aggressive swing with any club, opt for one more club and make a normal swing. You’ll probably find yourself pin high or just past the hole more often.

Play to the Middle of the Green

Most holes are designed with trouble to either side or in front of the green. When pins are tucked close to those obstacles and you “accidently” miss a shot in that obstacle, that is a stupid mistake that is easily correctable.

I had a young competitive Junior Golfer a few years back that always, no matter what the shot, would play to the pin. This left him short-sided for most of his misses off the green, with almost impossible short game shots to salvage par. I placed a soda can in the exact middle of nine greens one day and walked him around the edges of each green, asking him to pace off the distance from a potential place where a hole could be cut, to the soda can. Because most greens average about 33-37 paces from any end to the opposite end, he never had more than a 30-foot putt. This convinced him to always target the center of the green. The next tournament he played, he used that strategy to shoot three sub-par rounds in awful conditions and won the tournament by eight shots.

play smarter middle of green. — Avoid going for the “sucker” pin and simply play for the middle of the green, which, again, will leave you in two-putt range and keep you out of the trouble lurking right or left.

Moral to the story: If you want to shave some strokes off your game immediately, without any practice, change your strategy as you determine where to hit your approach shots. When in doubt, always aim for the middle of a green. The worst position this can create for you, with your ball lying on the green, is a lot better than the worst position you can be in if your ball is not on the green.

Take a look at hazards in the distance and figure out what is reachable. Here the right-side fairway bunker probably isn’t in play, but the others are. Aim accordingly. Another great aiming idea is to choose a target that’s well out of range, like the base of the tree circled here. Always figure distant slopes into your reckoning of where a ball with land, and how it will carom off those slopes.

Know the Course

Ever been tempted to hit a drive and cut a corner, only to find your ball in a hazard you could not see around the corner?

Or have you estimated yardage to a flag, only to realize you under or over-estimated, placing your shot in a condition you did not know about?

Understanding the course you’re playing as well as what is in play from certain angles your game may place you in, can create easier strategic decisions and in turn, lower scores. It’s your responsibility as a golfer to understand the course you’re playing and know what obstacles are in play versus what obstacles are designed into the course to use as targets. It’s also your responsibility to avoid being tempted into making shots you can’t execute (more about that later). Here are three simple items of thought you can use as you under-stand the course better and make better pre-shot decisions:

Understand what is in play versus what is not in play – Know your yardages to certain landmarks as well as understand that what you can’t see from the shot you’re attempting to execute may be in play
Aim for landmarks that you can’t reach – If a tree, bunker, or other landmark is in direct line with your intended target line, but is not reachable, you have a green light to take dead aim at that landmark
Understand slopes and use them to your advantage – Ever tried to have a shot hit a slope and carom back to your target? Of have you purposely aimed wider of your intended target to marginalize the slope your ball is on? Being able to creatively use slopes, and or avoiding slopes altogether, can shave a couple stokes off your game.

play smarter strengths — Often you have the option of hitting one of two clubs or more, expecially on par 5s. Go with the one you can rely on for accuracy and control. Aim to take into account your usuall ballflight — fade or draw, and set up to give your ball the widest possible margin of error. Here I’m definitely playing to a fade. Have creeping doubts that you can hit the ball far enough with one club? Then go with a shorter one and keep it in the short grass to avoid extra strokes.

Play to Your Strengths

One of the most common flaws all golfers make is attempting a shot that you are not capable of pulling off. Professionals included, this most often hap-pens when trying to rescue your round from a difficult position. Attempting the super hero shot from extremely difficult positions can quickly create a double-digit score for one hole of your round, making the rest of your round worthless.

Playing to your strengths can sometimes be humbling, in good ways. You’ll recognize what skills you need to practice. Or you’ll realize that practicing trouble shots a couple times before going out to play may pay dividends later. Most importantly, it’s humbling to play sideways versus forward. Doing that more often than not will definitely have you buy into these three suggestions to play to your strengths:

Choose clubs you know are accurate executing — be willing to give up a couple yards of distance to keep your shot in play
Shape your shot to the design of the hole vs. attempting to hit a shot you can’t — If you hit a fade, align yourself to an intended target line that allows that shot to happen, even if the hole is designed to favor a draw. Doing so may place you a few yards behind where you’d ideally like to be, but most times than not will keep your ball in play from a safe position
Play to yardages you are comfortable with — If in doubt that you can hit a shot that requires a longer distance without placing your ball in a compromising position, opt to lay up, especially the second shot of a par 5, to a distance you know you can stick 90 percent of the time or better. Sacrificing a shot in the fairway may allow you to eliminate an extra short game stroke or putt.

Conclusion

Playing smarter is all about making great decisions. It’s easy to do and requires no more effort than making decisions that allow you to play your game without compromise.

I’ve always told my son there is a difference between dumb and stupid. Stupid knows better. All five suggestions above are now in your brain, and you should know better the next time you’re playing golf not to make a “stupid” mistake. Playing smart golf now can lead to immediately reduced scores, only if you stay true to yourself and committed to making smarter decisions.

John Hughes is a PGA Master Professional, 2023 Northern Florida PGA Teacher & Coach of the Year, founder of John Hughes Golf in Orlando, Florida. Reach him at www.johnhughesgolf.com