Mental Game

Bouncing Back from a Bad Hole

Turn the page after a big number.

Why it matters

A big number on one hole costs you that hole. It costs you the round only if you carry it to the next tee. Players who score consistently are not the ones who avoid the bad hole, they are the ones for whom the hole after a 6 looks exactly like any other hole.

How to do it

Finish the hole, then draw a line under it on the walk to the next tee.
Use the walk deliberately: one short review of what went wrong, then genuinely done.
Run your normal routine on the next tee, unaltered. The temptation is to do something different, and something different is the mistake.
Play the next hole as it deserves, not as compensation. A par 3 does not become a birdie hole because you just took a 6.
Remember the arithmetic: one double is recoverable over eighteen holes; three is not, and the second and third come from chasing the first.

Common mistakes

Attacking the next hole to make the strokes back.The next hole has the same odds it always had. Chasing is how one bad hole becomes a bad round.

Changing your routine, your disc or your style after a bad hole.Change nothing. One hole is not evidence of anything about your game.

Mentally totalling the round from the bad hole onward.Arithmetic about the final score is not a shot. Go back to the line, the aim point and the next throw.

Key points

One hole does not decide the round.
Reset your routine on the next tee.
Stay in the process.

The drill

Drill · Line under it — 1 round, one 10-second review per bad hole and then done. After any hole you are unhappy with, give yourself exactly ten seconds of review on the walk, then deliberately switch to the next hole. Count at the end of the round how many times a bad hole was followed by another. That count is what this is for, and it drops quickly.

Watch: How to Recover From a Bad Shot in Disc Golf — Goeringer Disc Golf