There’s a kind of golf you could be playing right now that is much better than the kind you are playing. It doesn’t require any improvement in your physical technique. Just by improving your mental approach to each shot, you will get the most out of the skills you have and shoot lower scores.

When you stand behind the ball and look at where you want to hit it, you can think in one of two ways. You can be afraid of all the bad things that can happen–the mis-hits, the bunkers, the water, and all that. Or, you can think about the spot where you really want to hit the ball, and see it on its way and coming to rest right there, without those other things even entering your mind.

I don’t have to tell you that the second thought is what you want your mind to be on. But how do you get your mind on that and only that? You have to practice. You practice your short irons over and over, for example, to get them target-ready on the golf course, so when you pull one out you know you have the skill to put the ball on the green.

In the same way, you have to practice focusing your mind on the shot to come so that when you look at the shot you’re preparing to hit, you have the mental strength not to become distracted or disturbed by the places where the ball shouldn’t go.

When you’re at the driving range with a bucket of 100 balls, warm up, and then take out one ball. Step behind it and look downrange. Pick a target. Do more than say, “I’ll aim for there.” Keep looking until you know, really know, that’s where the ball will go. Accept that believing the ball will go there and hitting the ball there are the same thing. To do the first is to do the second. Then hit the ball with that belief in mind.

Prepare your mind that way before every ball you hit. Every ball. Not just when you remember to. You’re building up a mental habit, one that requires tremendous discipline. That will only happen if you promise yourself that you will practice this as much as you practice swing techniques.

At first it might seem difficult, tiring, boring, maybe even pointless, because it doesn’t always work. You still hit a few clinkers. That’s OK. You’re creating a mind-body link that takes time to get established. Keep at it. With steady practice you will be both amazed and pleased at how well your shots start mirroring the mental belief that guided your swing.

You will be similarly amazed  at the deep concentration you can summon in an instant on the golf course. In the thirty seconds you have to prepare your shot and hit it, you will be drawing on tremendous mental strength. Your physical skills will come to the fore, and you will play the best golf you can play.

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Everyone wants to shoot good golf scores, the scores that truly represent what our skills are capable of providing. Whatever score that is, if we come away from the 18th green knowing that we got the most out of every shot, we feel good about the day because we did our best.

Sure, there will be a few clinkers in there. We’re human and we’re going to miss a few shots. But what really galls us is when we look over the round and see a hole where we blew a good score, or where we blew up for no reason to make a bad one. “What was I thinking?” is the thing we don’t want to think.

So here’s how to not think it.

1. Learn to love your skills and have complete confidence in them, no doubts. Believe without question that they will take you into the scoring range of your choice anytime.

2. When you get to your ball, think through how this shot fits into the easiest sequence of shots that will get the ball in the hole from here as quickly as possible.

3. Before you hit ANY shot, look at it and convince yourself that its only outcome is the best possible shot. This is not an intellectual thing. Feel in in your gut.

If you looked at your scorecard, most of you will find that how you score on your best 15 holes represents pretty well how you play. If you had played that way for the entire round, you’d have a pretty good score. Yet, you didn’t carry it through.

We must train our mind to play 18 holes of golf, not 15 or 16. Everybody, regardless of the level of their physical skills, can learn to do that. Then, as your physical skills improve, the mental skills will already be in place for you to take advantage of your improvement.

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Keeping score while you play can make you do things you shouldn’t do because you are thinking about the result rather than the process.

After about four holes I am no longer keeping track of my score. It’s in there, when the round is over I’ll be able to fill out the scorecard, but while I’m playing is not the time.

If you really have to keep score, and you’re not a single-digit golfer, keep score relative to 5s. Write down on the scorecard the difference between your score and 5.

You bogey a par-4 hole, that’s 0 on your card. You par a par 3, that’s a -2.

See if that isn’t a more encouraging way to fill out your scorecard.

Quick tip.

When I take a golf lesson, I always hit the ball well. That’s because I don’t want to waste the time I have (and am paying for) with the pro, so I make sure my best swing comes out – at least as often as possible.

I figured, why not do this when I play, as well? I imagine him standing about five or six feet away from me, where he normally stands, watching. Now I don’t want to waste a shot and make no progress, so I get into my best swing mode.

Et voila! One good shot after another. Not one great shot after another, but every one is playable and there are no clinkers.

The reason I think this works is that it takes my mind off all the details and onto the one thing that needs to be done – hit the ball cleanly. And that’s what happens.

Imagine someone is watching with a critical eye. Works for me.

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Golf is a complicated game. Almost every shot is different from any other you have hit before. At best, you take your knowledge and experience and bring them all together as they bear on the shot you are about to hit. Or do you?

Earlier this summer, I hit a drive, just a beautiful one, split the fairway at the greatest distance I can expect to get out of a driver. 110 yards to the pin. Pitching wedge. Except after I had taken my practice swing and stood up to the ball, I noticed for the first time that the lie was slightly sidehill, with the ball below my feet.

Not to worry. But I should have. I had to take an easier swing at the ball in order not to lose my balance. Easier swing, less distance, and the ball fell into a bunker in front of the green.

I know that when on a sidehill lie you have to take more club because you will be swinging more easily, but I didn’t do it. Mistake. A great drive ruined. And the shot with the pitching wedge was a great one, too. Just that it should have been hit with a 9-iron rather than the PW.

So yesterday I drove through the fairway on a sharp dogleg and was hitting uphill into the green from atop a mound, with the ball below my feet. Uphill, plus one club. Ball below my feet, plus one club. From about 130 yards I had my 150-yard iron in my hands. The ball ended up ten feet short of the hole and I canned the putt. Lesson learned.

There are lessons to be learned within the same round, too. Did you play for a particular amount of break on the first hole and were wildly off? Adjust your read on the next few greens at least because the greens are behaving differently than they look. Adjust the next time you putt — don’t believe your lying eyes.

Or maybe you didn’t hit the first two irons the same distance that you usually do. Adjust. Take one more club until it starts hurting you (odds are it won’t).

Remembering is a big part of learning from your mistakes. Hypothetical. You hit your ball to a spot about 20 yards from the green where three weeks ago you tried to hit on with a sand wedge and the ball didn’t release when it hit the green. You might try bumping the ball on with an 8-iron, if you remembered that earlier shot. Do you remember these things?

Back when I had lots of spare time, I read those funny Zen books. One of them mentioned a guy who was famous not for never making a mistake, but for never making the same mistake twice. I have to admit it usually takes me two times through. 1. “Well, I’m not going to do that again.” 2. “You dope! You knew that was the wrong thing to do from there.” 3. “OK, not that way, this way.”

I’m a big believer that every recreational golfer could lower his or her score by 5 percent if they would only (1) think, and (2) remember and learn from the past. This post has been a word to the wise about the second one.

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Here’s a Jack Nicklaus story about having a positive mind.

Apparently Nicklaus was speaking to a group and mentioned that he never missed a putt on the final green that made him lose a tournament. An audience member raised his hand and said, “Yes, you did. It was at [this] tournament.” Nicklaus replied that he hadn’t missed that putt, and the questioner said, “Yes you did. I even have it on tape.” Nicklaus replied again, “No, I didn’t miss that putt.”

Well, Nicklaus had missed the putt, but he had also erased the miss from his mind. He refused to make that putt part of his history. That his memory no longer agreed with established facts was of no concern to him. He wanted to know that when he has to make a putt, he will, because his mind contains no evidence to the contrary.

When you come home from the course, remember your good shots clearly. The ones that didn’t work out so well, erase them. They never happened.

Put plus in your mind, don’t let minus in, and you’ll become the golfer you want to be.

I know. You’ve heard this so many times before it sounds like a mantra. What does it really mean, though? It means that every shot you hit adds one stroke to your score, so you need to get the greatest value for that one additional stroke that you can.

That is expressed by your hitting the best shot you possibly can from wherever you are. Not the shot you would like to hit, or not the best shot that could be hit (by someone who’s better than you), or not the shot think you have to hit, but the best shot you can hit.

Isolate each shot from its scoring value and give each shot the same amount of your attention. A six-foot birdie putt and a six-foot par putt both count one. The attention you give to them does not change because of the sequence of events that led up to them.

Once you can give your attention to shots instead of score, that’s when your scores will start to fall without you having improved your golf skills one bit.

I addressed this point a few months ago, but it’s so important, I want to touch on it again now that a new golf season has begun.

There is a tendency to quit after a bad shot. After all, the hole is ruined, and you’re shooting for bogey at best, and maybe a double. But the thing is, that’s not true. Keep playing. Don’t add up your score until the ball is in the hole.

Remember the 2009 Masters, when Angel Cabrera, contending, hit his tee shot on the 72nd hole into the trees? Usually the pros find a little gap and hit a rifle shot straight through it onto the green. Not him. He truly had no opening.

He did all he could do, which was chip out into the fairway. His third shot was an 8-iron that ended up 12 feet from the pin. He sank the par putt, got into the playoff, and won the tournament on the first playoff hole.

As long as you can keep hitting the ball, there’s a chance. I’ve made par from a tee shot into the weeds. Not the rough, the weeds. I’ve made par from a tee shot into the water.

So when you hit a bad shot, don’t kick yourself. There will be plenty of time for that after the round is over. Instead, start thinking how you can make your next shot count – how you can make a bad shot part of a good score, and not the cause of a bad one.

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Let me tell you what golf really is all about.

You hit the ball, you go find it, you hit it again. You keep doing that until it falls into the hole. Then you take your ball out of the hole, write down your score, and start the whole thing over.

Keep it no more complicated than that and golf will be lots of fun.