Q:Be.Do.

My golf handicap has been hovering at well over 30 for a year now. I’ve broken 100 just twice in the three years I’ve been playing, and both of them were rounds played at Lincoln – a course with only one par 5 and a total par of 68. This has been frustrating for me, to say the least. I am used to achieving a higher level of mastery than this in a shorter period of time when picking up most any other sport or recreation.

For example: I began playing disc golf in earnest in 1997, competed in my first tournament that year, and by 2001 I was California Amateur State champion. I took up playing volleyball my freshman year of college, and made it to the final round of cuts for the J.V. team the following year.

So I keep feeling like I’m about to turn the corner with my golf game, that consistently shooting in the 90′s is just around the corner. I know how to make good shots, and I just need to learn how to make them consistently. That all I need is to get a few more rounds under my belt, and I’ll be there.

The last round I shot in Calabasas was telling. 53 on the front, and right when I was on the verge of getting my act together on the back, I blow up two holes in a row to take myself completely out of any chance of breaking 100. This very same round I hit my longest drive in a round, had some of my best approach shots, and put my second shot five yards shy of the green on a par 5. In other words, I keep hitting shots that give me hope, but then dashing my own hopes.

I made the decision after that round that I am going to stop shooting in the 100′s. That I am going to take control of my game, and get my act together. That I am no longer going to let a single shot derail a hole, or a single hole derail a round. That I am going to start working on my mental game as well as my physical.

To help me down this path, I picked up a copy of Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Golf, considered by many to be the first and finest golf psychology book ever written. I’m committing to reading his book and attempting to put his advice into practice.

Short-term goal: break 100 consistently. Long-term goal: lower handicap to 15 by end of 2009. That gives me too much time to make it happen, but I need the cushion these days.