Where's Heimlich When You Need Him?

Sooner or later your junior golfer will succomb to the pressure of the moment in a tourney and... dare we utter the word... choke. It may come early, it may come after a few years of play, it may not happen until they compete at a higher level, but sooner or later it will happen. It might not even be a choke, but in the course of events, he or she will define it as a choke. And then it may take on a life of its own. All signs will point to the next choke. It will be anticipated and worried about. Course management, even mechanics, may be adjusted to deal with it's inevitable reappearance. As in life, so in golf, there are pressures that are too much to allow us to perform at the highest level. So what to do?

Many parents don't dare utter the word "choke", or whisper it as if it's some embarrassing family secret. They may change the subject when it's brought up, call it something else, essentially go into full blown denial. I know other parents that go the other route. Their kid is choking, they laugh. Hard. At first I thought it was a bit cruel, but ultimately I've seen it helps their kid get over the self-importance of it all. After all, it's just a game. It's a small slice of life. Get over it. No big deal. The sooner they get that the better. The better for all of us.

Hills and Valleys

As it is in life, so it is in golf: hills, valleys, times of success, times of failure, being in the zone, being in a slump. But when junior golfers, like junior people (ie. normal kids), hit slumps, not having a long life experience to draw upon, they may assume their slump means "it's over", they "can't play anymore", they've "lost it", and "it" will never return. Golf, like life, is a marathon, not a sprint, but how to convince them. You can't, you can only help them weather the storm, until they "get it back". Until they can draw on their past experiences, they won't believe what the future can hold. They can only live in the present, revel in their success which in their mind will never end, or despair in their failure which also in their mind will never end. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending where you are, we know it's not true. How to make them understand this is the challenge which can be met but never totally solved, as we await the passage of time.