Blog Post: Practice Vs. Performance

Same Player, Same Course, MUCH Different Result

Frustration takes many forms in our sport. Baskets that seem to spit out putts like a toddler eating broccoli. Gusts of wind that redirect the perfect drive into the imperfect tree. That tiny branch that turns a good scramble into a bad score. But the one that gets me the most steamy between the ears is the inability to translate the good practice round into the good tournament round.

Case in point: I travel to the Lake Marshall courses one day early to practice the courses. My practice round on the "Lair" course ended with a 3-under 62, with 4 birdies against 1 bogey. The very next day, I came away from the first tournament round, on the exact same course, with a 8-over 73, with 1 birdie against 9 bogies.

Same course. Same discs. Same weather. Same arm. An eleven stroke difference.

Reasons? I missed at least a half dozen circle 1 putts, all too low into the front of the cage. 3 or 4 poor initial drives. A number of poorly executed recovery shots that cost extra strokes. Bad decisions. Bad disc choices.

And, eventually, a bad score.

Looking back at the round, there wasn't one single hole or throw or putt that set things in a downward spiral; it seemed like everything was off. Nothing was comfortable. Nothing felt quite right.

So now that the dust has settled, and the embarrassment of such a low level of performance had started to sting a little bit less, I wanted to wander through what I remember about that tournament -- and especially that first round -- to see if I could learn anything from the experience.

In particular: How can I play a course so well in practice, then turn right around and perform at such a low level when the tournament is in full swing?

Let's eliminate the things that are NOT the issue. It doesn't seem to be a physical issue. I didn't feel tired (or not any more than normal) until the last few holes on the last day of the tournament. The same minor physical discomforts that I felt during the tournament were present during the practice round. It also doesn't seem to be an emotional issue. With the exception of one small slip (after missing a 20' putt on hole 10), I kept my emotions under control during that first round.

So that leaves a mental issue. Something about how I am thinking about what I am doing is changing between my practice rounds and my tournament rounds.

I could go through my investigative thought process, but "inside my head" is not a place that anyone should visit (!!), so I'll cut to the chase.

The main mental difference between my practice rounds and my tournament rounds -- and the one that seems to make the most difference -- is the fact that I give myself permission to make mistakes during a practice round, but expect myself to throw perfect shots during a tournament. This serves to push me to play "tighter" during a tournament -- and "tight" means "not loose", "not relaxed", and "not enjoying the process." "Tight" will take away power from both drives AND putts, leading to shorter drives that then demand longer approaches and weak putts into the front of the cage. "Tight" leads to falling back into old, bad habits and poor mechanics, pushing drives too high and too "nose-up", and putts that float and fall away left instead of "lasering" straight into the basket.

When I throw a practice round, I am not thinking about getting shots perfect, I'm thinking about seeing what a shot will do. If I don't like what I see, I can put that information into my memory and use it to inform my next shot. I can even re-throw a shot if I don't like the outcome -- or throw multiple different shots to see which one works best. I have my own silly rules for practice rounds -- like 2 putt attempts per basket, or 2 "mulligans" at anytime during the first 6 holes. Often I'm recording the rounds, either for analysis later as practice rounds, or for production to post as "course playthroughs" for the website. This distraction also seems to help keep me from focusing too much on "perfection" while I'm focusing being informative and (hopefully) entertaining for the video.

For most of my adult life, I played racquetball at a (reasonably) high level. I would practice 4 and 5 days per week, for several hours per day. I enjoyed the mental challenges found both in the repetitive nature of practice as well as in the competitive nature of the match. Eventually, I got to a point where my expectations of my play during a match were the same as my expectations of my "play" during a practice session. Granted, racquetball was a "mano-a-mano" sport, and losing a match was very often a matter of being out-played by an opponent. But there is no direct opponent in disc golf -- it's just you and the course; and getting "out-played" by the inanimate objects on a tract of land isn't a "thing." However, the idea of the mentality and mechanics of the practice round being the same as those of the tournament round still rings true.

I once had a ball golf instructor tell me that I should "practice like a lawyer and play like a hippie." Apparently, lately I've been practicing like the "hippie" and playing like the "lawyer", and that's just not working.

I have a tournament coming up, a 2-round event on a fairly difficult course -- one that I have played multiple times. My goal for that tournament is not to win or beat a rating number, but to play with the mentality of a practice round. Drives will serve to let me work on shaping full distance shots. Approaches and scrambles will give me the opportunity to practice accuracy, distance and angle control, and even shot selection. And putting will let me practice... well... putting. The score will be the score -- and, honestly, after my last tournament where my 3-round average rating was 888, I can't imagine that I could do much worse by "playing like a hippie."

So its time for me to…

GO SMASH SOME CHAINS! (like a hippie!)