The putting greens on my golf course are closed right now. For the past few weeks they have been battling heat and fungus. Even the Wall Street Journal wrote about the issue (not my greens but many like them across the east coast) being caused by the extreme and ongoing heat.

In cases like this the course may resort to temporary greens. This amounts to a small circle of the fairway cut a bit shorter (but not as short as a green) a few yards in front of the real green. Put a flag stick in middle of the circle and voila! Temporary greens. Unfortunately, these are not like the real thing but it is better than nothing.

One thing it does make me do is concentrate harder on my approach shots to the flag stick. On an approach to a “normal” green, in the back of my mind I have the entire green as my target. Yes, I have a target picked but I know the green is big so I may not be as focused as I might be.

On an approach to a temp green you are looking at a circle maybe 20 feet in diameter. It is a smaller target. You know this in the back of your mind and your play it accordingly. I find my approach shots to the temp greens to be MUCH more accurate as I am concentrating more intently on the smaller target.

This applies to targets, or goals, in general. The more specific you can be the better chance you have. We all know about SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely). The temp green covers the first four. It is clearly defined. I can measure my accuracy. I am able to get it close and I have gotten it close before so it is achievable and realistic.

Go back and take a look at your goals list. You do have one? Don’t you? I mean the written down one. If you don’t have that then you are already shooting at a pretty big green and as we have noted, this induces a lack of precision.

OK…back to your goals. How tight is the target?

Make any adjustments you need to make and go for it.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 2:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.