Golfers….Feed your Focus!

Last week I wrote about 2 great “F” words in golf – Fundamentals and Feelings.  This week I’ve found a few more. 

During my too many years working in the technology industry, I have heard the terms Form, Fit and Function (sometimes called F3) more times than I can count.

Form is mostly the physical aspects of a product; fit is how it the product interfaces with other components and function is basically about how the product works. 

On Friday while playing my first 18 holes in over 5 months it occurred to me that golf could also be described as Form, Fit and Function.

Form describes your posture and setup over the ball.  Fit relates to how you interact with your clubs and the ball (assuming your clubs are fitted, which they should be).  And Function is how it all works together (or should work together) – ie. your swing.

That all made sense to me, until I realized about half way through my round, that human beings aren’t robots and that Form, Fit and Function isn’t as straightforward as it is in manufacturing.  One more F-word is absolutely necessary for the product we call a “golfer” to be complete – Focus.

Without focus, you can have the body of Camilo Villegas, perfectly fitted Pings and Adam Scott’s swing, but you’d still be dysfunctional.  

Mr. “All Day Gay” demonstrated that beautifully on Friday when he completely lost focus and shot a 9 on the par 4 6th hole at The Heritage.  Ouch!

But Brian wasn’t the only one on Friday that lost focus.  Here’s my most embarrassing moment of the week.

When my golfguy and I got to our club on Good Friday, I went into the snack bar to grab a couple of tuna sandwiches to take with us on the course.  Much to my surprise, there were no sandwiches to be found – lots of salads with fish on them, but not a slice of bread anywhere.

The lady at the cash explained patiently to me that during Passover no bread is served at the club.  Ooops!  Imagine my chagrin being so ignorant about an item as important as that at a Jewish club.  I’m not Jewish, but still, I was embarrassed.  I skulked away to grab a granola bar from my locker. 

By the 5th hole my play had started to become a bit erratic – too many chillie-dips and skulls.  I was hungry and my “little grey cells” were screaming for some brain food.  I ignored them.  On the 6th hole, I hit a decent drive off the tee and sauntered up the fairway.

My ball was on a bit of an awkward lie above my feet, but I thought I could still hit a decent 3-wood and get it to the hole.  So I grabbed my club and set up at the ball.  It felt a bit weird, but I just gripped down on the club and went for it.  THUNK!  The ball went about 10 yards.  Only then did I realize that I had my driver in my hands.

Now before you go off thinking, “What an idiot!”, I have to explain that I had borrowed a demo driver from the pro shop before heading out and it looked an awful lot like my 3-wood, except that it had a melon-sized head that was bright white! LOL!  Okay, now you can say it, “What an idiot!”

My golfguy had noticed me grab my driver for the shot and assumed I knew what I was doing.  I have now given him complete freedom to question my club selections in the future.

As I hacked and wacked my way to the next tee I couldn’t get over what I had done.  It boggled my mind that I could stand over my ball, realize something wasn’t quite right, but couldn’t see what it was, even though it was staring me right in the face.  Talk about lack of focus.  Waiting for my turn to tee off (I was last as you probably guessed), it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t eaten in 5 hours.

So, I whoofed down my granola bar and after a few holes, my brain and body seemed to sync up a bit better.  At the turn I grabbed a banana and some nuts and made it through the rest of the day without any more embarrassing moments.

Saturday we made sandwiches and wrapped up the portions separately.  Every 3 holes I either ate 1/4 of the sandwich or some raw almonds or a banana.  I stretched out eating over the 18 holes, keeping my blood sugar level and my game steady.

After the round I felt great, unlike the day before when I could hardly get out of the car when we finally made it home.

Form, Fit Function, Fundamentals and Focus are all critical F’s in golf.  But we need 1 more “F” in our golf bag to give ourselves a fighting chance on course – FOOD!

Yes, we may not be robots, but we can be well oiled golfing machines if we feed the little grey cells that form the missing link between a great golf day and “I’m an such an idiot!”.

Golfgal

Image by: © Kirsty Pargeter | Dreamstime.com