If you genuinely believe that you are focusing on your target and
you align yourself correctly, and yet you push the ball, or pull the
ball away from the line of target. What do you do? Berate yourself for
slicing or hooking? Bad move! Welcome the opportunity to learn what it
was that you did, because there is going to come a shot where you want
to hook it, or slice it around a tree? Excellent!
Learn from it – take joy in learning something. If it’s a consistent
problem for you… then you can choose, go get some instruction from a
good pro to improve your technique, learn how to re-align yourself to
compensate (not so good but Gary Player had a peculiar swing to
compensate for his clubs), or – very rarely – get your clubs fixed. If
per chance you go to a pro who immediately tells you that you need a
new set of clubs, then go elsewhere – it may be true (you can always go
back later) but an expensive driver does not a golfer make. Think back
to our car driving analogy – you’ve seen someone driving a Ferrari
badly and someone else driving a Toyota very well? Of course it’s
always worth checking your clubs for dints and dents, even Toyota’s
break down (yeah but less often than Ferraris!) Of course anyone from
that esteemed motor company that would like to prove the reliability of
their vehicles on a personal level – I’m very happy to accept the
challenge