O.K., I guess I'm being a little melodramatic here. Some golfers tolerate failure better than others. And most even have-dare I say it-fun. But most amateur golfers will immediately recognize the torments I'm describing. I have been a practicing therapist for 30 years and have treated hundreds of people who punish themselves for all sorts of imaginary crimes and faults, but I rarely see the type of raw self-hatred and despair that can suddenly consume the average golfer whose crime may be no more grievous than missing a four-foot putt. I call this the Frustrated Golfer Syndrome.
If all non-human sound were to suddenly cease on a typical public course on a typical Saturday afternoon, and one's hearing were good enough, male voices shouting "F... me! "I suck....!" "Take off your panties and putt it!" would punctuate the silence. And if one's vision were equally good, one would see faces contorted in rage, shoulders sagging in dejection, clubs furiously shoved back into the bag, stomping, thin and tight smiles desperately covering imploding self-esteem, heads hung low-all part of the choreography of failure on the golf course. Thus, the Syndrome.

Golfers who hit a bad shot feel helpless. We had an intention but failed to execute it. The mental picture we had of our swing and its glorious outcome shatters at impact. We don't really know what happened. But because it's mysterious, we can't correct it and we can't be sure it won't happen again. The extreme example of this is the dreaded shank-a rogue hit off the hosel of the club that squirts away from the golfer dead right. It's embarrassing. The problem is that once you shank, you begin to imagine that another shank lies inside you, waiting to possess your body and make it do bizarre things. It's like being incontinent and not knowing when you might lose control in public.

But the feeling of helplessness isn't limited to extreme mis-hits like the shank-it's there whenever we don't realize our intentions, whenever our picture of what we want our bodies to do fails to materialize. We make up stories about it to gain an illusory sense of control: "I knew I was ‘off' at the top of the swing-I should have stepped away," or "I didn't feel right standing over that putt," or "I hurried up my swing....I have to slow down," or "I held on and didn't release the club like I should have." All of these "shoulds" and self-observations may be correct, but they're usually either irrelevant or wrong. The fact remains that we usually don't know why we hit a bad shot.

The stories we tell ourselves may sound technical, physical, or even psychological.  Invariably, though, these stories are superficial and are belied by an underlying view of who we are as people. These deeper conceptions are the stories we keep hidden, and yet they're the ones that account for our frustration and suffering. They include stories like "no matter how hard I work at this game, I can't master it-there's just something wrong with me that I'll never be able to correct," or "I hate myself when I can't do something right," or "I'm a failure," or "I'm not a man," or "I'm crap and unlovable," or "I'm doomed." You don't have to be a psychologist to know that these feelings and beliefs are common among golfers. Most of us intuitively know that we regularly mistake our golf shots with our selves. If our golf shots are poor, our self-esteem drops, even if for a moment, despite our conscious mantra "It's only a game." Our conscious minds know that this is how we should feel, but our unconscious minds don't buy it. It's hard to feel that it's "only a game" when we're in a bunker, trying to hit a high soft one onto the green, and instead skull the ball 50 yards into the woods. No, at that moment, the game has become a deadly one, one in which we've just revealed our shameful incompetence to an unforgiving world. The source of the anger so often seen (or heard) on the golf course is simple-rage is a normal human response to helplessness. It's a protest, a defiance, and an energizer. Since there's no one to direct it at, we direct it at ourselves. Since there's no one to hate, we hate ourselves.

What's the ultimate source of the helplessness, anger, depression, and self-hatred that appear in our minds on the golf course? One important source is our failure to live up to overly perfectionistic ideals. You can see an early prototype of this issue by watching a very young child struggle to master something, a physical challenge (catching and throwing a ball, perhaps), a developmental milestone (say, walking), or a social rule (like sharing). The child's intensity is palpable and the need to try it-and fail-on his or her own is powerful. And failure is inevitable. We've all seen children who cannot tolerate failing, who either retreat or throw tantrums. They encounter a physical and social world that they can't immediately control, that doesn't automatically bend to their wills and intentions, and they either tolerate that frustration long enough to learn and adapt or they fall apart in some way. Learning depends on the ability to tolerate failure.

Such an ability is importantly shaped by the response of the environment to the child's encounter with failure. If parents are too nervous and worried about the child's frustration, they may take over and convey a sense that they lack confidence in the child. If parents react with exaggerated displays of frustration, impatience, and anger, the child comes to feel that failure is unacceptable and so doesn't bother to even try. If the environment is generally supportive and encouraging, however, the child learns to tolerate failure and imperfection enough to learn and master the unfamiliar.

Some of us grow up so intolerant of failure, we won't try to learn anything new. Others will appear to take on challenges but do so in such a self-effacing, ambivalent, and timid way that they can excuse their failures by a lack of effort. Some are so ashamed of failure that they believe that they have to be perfect all the time to avoid even the scent of it. They maintain impossibly high expectations and view falling short as humiliating. And still others blame everybody and everything else for their failures in an attempt not to blame themselves. In the end, all these attempts to avoid facing our imperfection fail, and we end up blaming and hating ourselves.