Pia Nillson and Lynn Marriott on Playing in the Wind

Since In-Kyung Kim is doing so well at the TOTO Japan Classic (she's leading as I write this), I thought it might be helpful to see what she works on. This Golf Digest article with Pia and Lynn talks about one of her keys from 2017 -- playing in the wind.

Lynn Marriott said that, after an injury derailed part of her season, I.K. began focusing on what Lynn calls "the 'human skills' necessary to play satisfying golf."

In the object Pia says:

"It's very essential and useful to be OK with 'right enough' shots -- even if they're a little brief, proper or left."

And Lynn added that:

...Mind-set -- constantly an critical issue in putting -- will become even larger whilst dealing with windy situations.

So often we talk about the mental side of golf as if it were some kind of magical hypnosis, where we convince ourselves that we can do something that we aren't really confident about. But what the founders of Vision54 are talking about is something much simpler -- that is, just allowing ourselves to be human and not expecting perfection.

In golf, 'exact enough' is usually a superb shot certainly!

I'm afraid we've been brainwashed by the unrealistic standards the pros often set for themselves. We see them hitting shots that most of us would pay for, then throwing clubs and berating themselves because the ball landed three feet farther from the hole that they wanted. A judgmental attitude like that isn't conducive to good golf; it causes players to wreck their bodies with too much practice, which won't solve the problem anyway simply because they're human.

And whilst the professionals may also delude themselves into believing perfection is possible, the common golfer can't placed inside the ridiculous quantity of practice necessary to make this kind of foolish aim appear workable. That's in particular true inside the wind, in which success can play as an awful lot -- perhaps extra -- a component as skill does. Your evaluation of your shot have to greater frequently observe Pia's tenet:

Did you get a usable result from your efforts?

If you can answer 'yes,' then perhaps you should appreciate what you've done. If you do, you'll probably play better in the wind while also taking more enjoyment from your game.