I Was A Low-Handicap Golfer Who Lost Her Game... Here Is How I Rebuilt It

There's a particular kind of experience in golf that I don't think gets talked about enough.It's not the experience of being a beginner, who has fallen in love with a game that feels so hard. That’s expected. You're learning and everything is overwhelming at first.

It’s the experience – and pain – of the golfer who knows what good feels like, they’ve played it, they’ve seen it come to life on the course. But now they can't seem to find it.

The golfer who is carding scores above their handicap. Who’s watching shots go sideways that used to be automatic. Who’s walking off the 18th not only feeling disappointed but dejected again – and they don’t know why.

So you commit to trying harder, to getting out of “this” rut. And that’s where the spiral sets in and comes with a particular cruelty because the harder you try to stop it, the tighter it tends to grip.

I know what that feels like. As a low single-figure golfer, there isn't much margin. Every dropped shot feels like a shove backwards. Every bad round lands hard.

And the pressure that builds – not from anyone else, just from yourself, from the gap between where you are and where you think you should be – can create a nervousness before you've even reached the first tee.

When you’re in that spiral, the key is breaking the pattern, so you can find your way back to the golfer you know you are.

Having been there and learned what works and what doesn’t, here’s where I would start.

Spot The difference

Before you rush to the range to try and find your swing, dig into what's actually happening on the course.

Not to dwell in a what-went-wrong way. More like a curious detective. Think about your last round and compare the holes where you played well to the holes where it fell apart. Look for the difference between your good and the not-so-good.

This isn’t just about your scores – it’s your process, your thoughts, how you were feeling. Where was your mind on the tee? How quickly did you recover from a bad shot? Were you playing the shot in front of you or replaying the one you messed up three holes ago?

There's often a pattern to be pulled out. You're looking for what worked – not just what didn't. Because somewhere in those rounds, even the difficult ones, you hit shots that reminded you what your game is capable of.

Can/Can't Control List

This is something I’ve come to realise: you can’t get rid of nerves. I don’t think we can even control whether we feel them or not. Experience, preparation or positive thinking won’t make them disappear – and trying to not feel them is a losing battle. But the truth is, nerves aren't the problem. It's what we do with them.

Before your next round, draw a line down the middle of a page. On one side: list everything you can't control. The weather. The pace of play. Whether your opponent is having a cracker or a nightmare of a round. Whether your handicap goes up or down.On the other side: list everything you can. Your breath. Your routine. Your shot selection. Where your focus goes. How you react after a bad shot or hole.

That second list might be shorter but it's the only list that matters. Most of the anxiety spiral lives in the first list. We spend an enormous amount of energy worrying about outcomes we have no control over. And that energy gets taken away from what we can.

When the nerves arrive before a competition, they're not a warning sign. They're just a signal you care. What matters is what you do with your breath, your focus, your strategy.

Play The Hole, Not Your Expectations

This has been a big shift for me and I’ll be honest, it’s a recent one. It’s about playing the course, not yourself or the high standards you set.

When you're in a confidence spiral, there's a version of every hole playing out in your head – the hole you should be able to play. The shot you should be hitting. The par you should be making. And the moment reality diverges from that version, that expectation, it throws us.

What if you played the hole in front of you instead, with the game you have in that moment?

Not the hole your handicap suggests you “should” play. Not the way you played the hole when you birdied it. This hole, today, with the lie you've got, conditions at play and options available to you.

Bad shots happen. They happen to scratch golfers, to tour pros, to every golfer who has ever played. The question isn't whether you'll hit a bad shot – it's what you do next. And what you do next requires your mind to be on creative ideas, not beating yourself up for what just happened.

Let Go Of The Shoulds

“I should be playing better than this. I should be cutting my handicap. I shouldn't be hitting shots like that,”

Shoulds are confidence killers. They take the present moment – where your game actually is – and measure it against an imagined standard. One that you might never reach. Not because you’re not capable but because when you get close, you move the goalposts anyway.

A rough patch isn’t permanent but it is real. And it’s challenging enough to wade through without the weight of your own expectations adding to the effort.

Dropping the shoulds doesn't mean lowering your standards or your goals. It means playing with what you have that day rather than resisting it.

Start With One Thing

When your game feels like it's unravelling, the temptation is to fix everything, so you arrive at the range with a list of things to work on. But the issue isn’t your range game, it’s what shows up on the course.

You know you can swing it well but there’s something stopping it from coming out when it counts. So pick one thing – one small, specific mental game strategy you can stick to in your next round.

Maybe it's committing to your pre-shot routine on every shot. Maybe it’s easing your grip pressure or swinging with a smooth tempo. Maybe it's playing one shot at a time without thinking about your scorecard.

Small, specific, achievable. And when you do it – when you get to the 18th and realise you actually held to that one thing – you've given yourself something. A small piece of evidence that you can control something.

That's how confidence gets rebuilt. Not in one breakthrough round but stacking the small things.

And remember, your game isn't gone. It's still in there, which means you can find it again. The work right now isn't technical. It's about creating the conditions where your game can come back to you, instead of gripping so hard for it that you squeeze it further away.

Follow Jess’ golf journey on Instagram.