For everything in life I think it’s important to set goals.  Doing so helps our motivation when we want to improve or achieve something in life.  Sometimes we tend to set un-realistic goals and when we don’t achieve them, we get disappointed and lose our focus.

During my first few years as a Instructor I never asked my students what their goals were.  This was a bad move on my part because I never really got in touch with what they wanted to improve on.  This didn’t help me or themselves track their progress towards becoming a better player.

Now I make it a point before the first lesson with a new student to go over some of their goals.  Often times some of the goals I hear are a bit ambitious which are great for the long term but it’s better to break up that long term goal into pieces.  I find when my students set out short term goals they tend to achieve them quicker and get really excited and confident when they do so.

Here’s an example I am talking about.  A student comes to me wanting to break 100 for the first time this year.  Without seeing this person hit any shots I start to think about specific goals to help this golfer break 100.  So I spend 30 minutes working on their swing and 30 minutes working on their short game.  At the end of the lesson I sit down and break up their long term goal into smaller short term goals.

The first goal I state for the golfer is to have fun and to not put any pressure on themselves during every round.  I truly think that if you have fun on the course and not get flustered with how your playing, your golf will improve.

The second goal would be to set a personal par for the specific course they’re playing.  This really teaches a golfer to play within themselves and their abilities.  Ideally the personal par would be 97 or 98, just a few strokes below 100.

The third goal deals with eliminating three putting.  If this golfer can three putt only four times around the maximum amount of putts they will have is 40 which is pretty good for someone looking to break 100.

The last goal would be to eliminate penalty strokes.  A golfer who is struggling to break 100 probably incurs 5 penalty strokes around.  So if they can only have 2 penalty strokes around they have just shaved three strokes off their round.

By now you should see how making one big goal and breaking it down into smaller pieces can help us achieve and improve in so many areas of the game.  So instead setting vague goals like the one I have stated, set smaller goals that will help you improve in many different areas of the game.

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