The image you can see in this article is of a golf robot.  Now this machine is designed to swing a golf club exactly the same every single time, no excuses.  There are zero variables in the swinging of the club from this machine which is why all the top manufactures use them when testing their equipment.  They will test irons, drivers, different shafts and even the performance of golf balls and can program the machine to swing at different speeds.

My Golf Spy, a golf media outlet, carried out a test where the robot hit 6000 golf balls, which is a huge amount of golf balls for data collection purposes I’m sure you’ll agree.  Now of those 6000 balls hit by a machine, with a perfect golf swing, on a perfect plane at the same speed each time, hit at the same angle, in the same conditions etc. How many of these golf balls do you think landed in the same spot?

None.

I know, I was as shocked as you probably are.  This is a machine that repeats the golf swing not only far more accurately than a human, but it repeats every time.

Now think about your golf swing.  How many moving parts are there?  Hundreds I would say all needing to be timed correctly to hit a straight ball.  So, if a machine can’t land a ball in the same place twice with 6000 attempts what chance do we have.

None.

So why was this?  Well, this test leaves a couple of variables to be discussed but the obvious one is the golf ball.  Of course, the same single ball wasn’t hit 6000 times, it was a batch of golf balls just like you and I would get when we hit balls at the range.  No doubt these balls were all premium and brand new which keeps the data as accurate as possible but even with a brand-new golf ball that is made the same in the factory the results still vary.

So, the moral of this story, it’s never your fault – blame the ball!  I’m kidding... but on a serious note there will be golf balls that, believe it or not, aren’t as perfectly round as others, the weight might favor one side of the ball or the other, the dimples may be a slightly different size and depth and so on.

Do you remember Bryson DeChambeau floating his golf balls in a water-based formula to make sure he was always using a ball that was balanced?  Doesn’t seem so silly now does it?!

I suppose my point to this article is simply to ask you if you are being too hard on yourself when you play?  Are you trying to achieve something that isn’t achievable?  Are your expectations too high?  Are you worrying about things that are out of your control?

My one simple piece of advice would simply be to give your-self goal posts and not a single target.  Not just literally but metaphorically too.  Give yourself a wider margin, remember we play golf with a shotgun, not a rifle!