Keep things moving, light with bad golfers

I played in an outing last week and — without naming names — a friend of mine thought that “playing with bad golfers” would be a good topic to write about.

So why not?

My friend’s suggestion was along the lines of how to keep your patience when playing with someone who is struggling to make double bogeys.

I’ve thought about that for a while, and I actually think this is a good topic to address.

We all like playing with our buddies. And I’m a big believer that playing with people better than yourself makes you better in the long run.

But what happens when we end up playing with someone who just can’t find the club face?

How do we prevent a cart partner’s 113 from affecting our possible 72?

Well, it depends on how well you can compartmentalize within your own brain.

Golf is a mental challenge. With sometimes minutes between shots, we golfers have an infinite amount of negative thoughts to keep out of the main frame when it’s our turn to hit. Remembering the good shots while blocking the bad ones is a key to playing good golf. So watching someone in your own group hit three straight shanks certainly makes staying positive even harder.

My suggestions are:

One, help as much as possible before it starts to affect you. And two, try to keep it fun.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of giving tips on the course. I think giving a player another swing thought to consider only slows things down. But I do think it’s important to help move a struggling player along. Follow their shots. Help find a yardage. Fill in a divot. Maybe even rake a sandtrap. Anything you can do to help keep play moving — until it detracts from your own game. If you find you’re spending all your time caddying instead of playing, you’re being too nice.

The other thing I like to do is try to lighten the mood. No one likes to play bad golf. And we all know how one bad shot can lead to two more. Having been there myself, I know the extra pressure one can place on himself after hitting a number of bad shots in a row. Multiple that by a number of consecutive holes and it gets hard to pull the trigger.

That’s where a little mood reset can go a long way. Personally, I’m a joke fan. I always try to have one or two in my mind that I can use when needed. But it can be a funny story or a golf anecdote. Heck, maybe even a new press for a side bet. Anything to help get the struggling player to take a few breaths and reset their own mind.

The key is, do what you can to help bring the player back to where they were on the first tee — ready for some fun on a golf course.

Jonah Karzmer is a former golf professional who writes a Sunday golf column for The Vindicator. In his spare time he sells commercial insurance and loves getting feedback on his weekly columns via email at Jonah@thekarzmerinsurance.com.