Customer Reviews

Playing the Great Game of Golf: Making Every Minute Count

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ken Blanchard has taken his practical business management style and applied it to the emotional side of golf. His experience at the Golf University has given him insight as to how folks perform and how much the mental factor affects things.

Some of the best and most applicable advice I've ever had for golf. Recommended.

Good mental preparation for aspiring golfers who want to improve their enjoyment of the game.

While I have never played a round of golf, I have been around enough golfers to understand the lure that it has. Unlike other sports, the less strenuous nature of golf means that it can be played at a reasonably high level by people whose athletic ability is somewhat lacking. It is also a very stepwise game, in the sense that each hole is different and each shot on the same hole presents different challenges. Finally, it is a very sociable game, as long as you don't take the competition too seriously, much of the joy derived from playing it is from the time spent with your partners.
For these reasons, playing golf is an excellent analogy to the way things are in life, particularly in business. Improvements in your golf game are incremental, while theory is fine and is a good overview; even the greatest of understanding of the theory of the game is inadequate. It is the practice, action and the attitude with which you play that determines your level of success. One of the best statements made in the book is that if you want to improve your game from a 90 to an 80, you do so by first scoring an 89, then an 88, etc.
Business and life performance is similar; very few people are successful by rapidly dropping their score from the equivalent of a 90 to an 85. They recognize a problem or an opportunity, study it to learn what is going wrong, determine the options to tackle it and then go with the best option for them.
As Blanchard makes very clear, the greatness of the game of golf is not measured merely by your number of strokes, but by the overall enhancement of life that playing it can give you. For, as is the case with life as well as golf, most of the competition we face is with ourselves. Our ability to handle the mild adversities, be patient with our incremental improvement, put past mistakes behind us and being able to always keep your eye on the pin is what truly makes us successful. Even if you know nothing about golf, the lessons in this book will be understandable and can have a profound and significant positive effect on your life.