Golf is the Devil

Why, oh, why must golf be such a hard game? How is it that we can be "in the slot" for weeks on end and then all of a sudden we lose it? I have been playing much better for most of this season, and all of a sudden the last two weeks have been a nightmare. There are several possibilities that I have come up with:

• I know I have been playing well, but by trying to "lock it in" I have taken away the one thing that was making me play so well: I am now trying to hit the ball rather than just make a confident swing.
• I have shaved about five strokes off my game this season, and now I want more. So now I am trying to shoot a score rather than just playing each shot as it comes and accepting whatever score results.
• I am now focusing more on swing than on target.

The problem is that I'm not a range rat. I usually can't just go to the range and work out my problems. As a matter of fact, it generally hurts my game to go to the range. As I understand it, the range is more for focusing on technique and I tend to swing better if I just play. This brings me to another problem though, and that is if I go play alone for the purpose of practice, I play too fast because I'm alone and get out of my routine. This causes me to play badly, lose confidence and it spills over to the next time I am in real competition.

One thing good has come out of all this and that is that I have been trying really hard to learn to play the percentages more, missing on the correct side of the green and all that, and that mentality has allowed me to save par a lot more now that I'm not striking the ball as well. It's all a learning experience I suppose and a game in which very few of us obtain a Masters Degree.