EliteElectric said:
Our 12yo daughter is a 5 hcp (from her tees) and is the current STPGA summer points champion. She played in 17 summer tourneys and won 9 of those 17 starts. We get to the STPGA summer championship tourney and she shoots a +11 on day one and is 12th. Day 2 she totally unravels and shoots a +17 to drop all the way to 17th. She's embarrassed, devastated and really down on herself right now.
My advice to her is just flush it, go back to work and treat it like one big bad shot, on to the next tourney. Any advice on how to pull a little girl out of a self loathing spiral or just let it go and let her "grieve" on her own?
My daughter is about the same age, but is playing a mix of junior tour, DCP, and Junior League Allstars this summer instead of just focusin on tournaments. We've met a couple times in the last 9 months at various STPGA events. We talked at the garage sale.
I won't tell you what to do, but how we've had to change our thought process in how to play and when to play and remind ourselves why we're playing golf. After doing some reflection and having conversations with our daughter, we came to a new reality. It isn't about making championships or chasing points, it's about maximizing her development and getting better at golf. No one (high school, college, etc.) cares about little linksters or junior tour or any similar thing. College coaches have said so. It isn't going to factor in her future recruitment if she chooses to go that route. And burning her out before achieving goals is the worst possible thing.
Playing too often and focusing on points instead of maximizing development just exchanges short term success at the expense of long-term growth. So, we focus instead of setting fixed number of tournaments, at a fixed interval throughout a season that keeps her game steady and allows for practice and growth and just importantly the rest of being a kid. For us that's about 8 tournaments a season and only playing them every other week. If she doesn't qualify for the championship on 8-10 starts, she isn't going to compete to win anyway. For my daughter going to a championship and not having a chance to be in the mix to win does more harm with her confidence than good.
We're also focusing on good, efficient practice that translates to the course. Talking through how chipping practice specifically translates to the course (chipping target represents the spot on the green to land the ball for it to roll out to the flag, not just a game). Ensuring targets are similar distances and sizes of shots needed in tournaments. Same set up and pre shot routine ever shot. Putts are about tempo and finishing 18" past the hole, not just making them or not. We're not chasing distance off the tee or from our irons. We're working to be more consistent in hitting fairways and greens with small shot dispersion and what success looks like. 10 yards back, but middle of the fairway beats 10 yards further in the crap every time.
To be honest, we have lots of little conversations about course management and smart golf. Taking a couple seconds to mourn or celebrate the last shot and then refocus on the next. Good shots every time are better overall than hero shots and chasing scores and mistakes. The biggest change is talking about effort doesn't mean success. We don't want to hit 50 or 75 shots a practice in the simulator and get soar. We want to focus, go through the process, and hit 25 good quality shots 3-4 times a week and move on. We focus more on swing plane, solid contact, and ball flight than hitting it 5 yards further.
Ultimately, maturity plays in. At the end of the day, they are kids and this is supposed to be both rewarding and fun. And find ways to turn the negatives and mistakes into life lessons and growth over small conversations a couple days later. My daughter puts too much pressure on herself. Lots of little conversations relating to chasing perfect gets in the way of good / great and success. It's taken a year of this new outlook on golf, but her mindset is growing more and more every month. And her scores and handicap are dropping accordingly and her confidence is growing.
