Figueroa 1

Mauricio Figueroa

English 1302

Mrs. Walker

September 24, 2021

Taking a day off can help become a better golf player

As Walker said in his podcast with Dr. Lee, “practice makes perfect, but make sure to

practice with a balance and not practice until a point that practice reduces the chances of

becoming better.” Golf is a sport in which demands a lot of mental concertation. The body needs

to rest and the mind needs to recover from all the stress put in the athlete’s performance during

practices and tournaments. Taking a day off is necessary to perform well both physically and

mentally. Golf consist of making the less strokes possible into a little hole about 400 yards away

from the starting point. The game of golf requires a high level of concertation. This means that

the more mature and calm a person is, the better chances they have at performing well. An

average round of golf per tournament is around five hours. If a golfer wants to succeed, he needs

to practice an enormous amount of time. Practice includes working out to be in good shape,

practice all parts of the sport, and prepare mentally for the tournaments and all the challenges. If

an athlete has to train this much, why is it good both mentally and physically to take a day off

and not just practice all day every day. I will conduct an experiment in which I will measure how

I feel before taking a day off and how I feel after the day off. This way I will be able to show if

there is any change.

 Before the experiment, an interview was conducted with a professional golf player. he

tells his point of view on taking a day off. Manuel Bermudez, former European Tour member

and current director of the biggest golf academy in Mexico said “in my experience as a pro

golfer, you have to take care of your body both mentally and physically. The best way to

improve is concentrating and doing perfectly the things you control which are, sleeping enough,

eating what you are supposed to, doing enough exercise without damaging your body, and

training your mind. There were times in which I travel from a country to another on Monday,

play a practice round on Tuesday and a ProAm on Wednesday, then proceed to play the whole

golf tournament from Thursday to Sunday and traveling again on Monday to another country. I

figured that the best way for me to recover was to take a full day off to rest, stretch and prepare

for the next step.” It is important to understand how and what does a high performance golfer

do. Based on Manuel’s example, it is important to noticed how tired the body can get and how

important is to rest.

Taking a day off is not just about eating crap food and watching TV all day. It means

giving your body the mental and physical time to recover from what it has gone through the

week. Inside taking a day off can be checking what you are eating, stretching, recovering from

any physical pain, etc. Taking a day off is part of the process of becoming a better player. You

cannot perform 100 percent if you don’t have the necessary recovery. Taking a day off is very

underrated in the world of sports. As (Loch 2019) explains “On training and competition days,

short rest periods implemented as a vital part, can be used for mental recovery and can help in

assisting athletes to return to baseline levels of mental abilities (e.g., concentration, attention).

Sport-specific investigations of potential mental recovery strategies and their effects on an

athlete’s mental perception are lacking”. Taking a day of goes beyond lying in bed. It gives the

body and mind the rest it needs in order to perform better.

I have been playing competitive golf since I was 8 years old and my only goal was to

become better one step at a time. With the help of my family, I created a team which is formed

by a swing coach, a psychologist, and a nutritionist. It was so hard for me to understand that

every now and then I needed to take a day off. Because of this I decided to look into the effects

of taking a day off. For my experiment, I decided use a scale from 1-10 ( 1 being negative and 10

being positive) to measure my mood, back pain, stomach problems, and temper. The results

before taking the day off were: Back pain 5, mood 4, stomach problems 4, temper 3. I started my

day off by waking up after sleeping 8 hours. I proceeded to get breakfast, which consisted of

fruit, eggs, cereal, and two pancakes. Then I went back to my dorm and chilled for an hour. After

that hour, I went to the gym and stretch for thirty minutes. I went back to my dorm and took a

long shower to loosen up. I talked to my psychologist for one hour and we planned my schedule

for the next month. After that, I watched movies the rest of the day. I prepared oat milk to eat as

a snack. To end the day, I had a steak for dinner and took another shower. I went to bed early to

start the week again. I revaluated myself using the scale. The results were the following: back

pain 8, mood 9, stomach problems 7, temper 9.

Everything improve after taking the day off. I was of the idea that taking a day off would

reduce my chances of becoming better at golf. I could not understand how that would help me

become the best golfer I possibly can. I went from not taking days off to taking one day off per

week. It depended, if I did not have any tournaments. Obviously, it is not only because the day

off, but this was a game changer for me. If I don’t take a day off, I become more irritable, my
body starts having pain problems, and I don’t perform as well as compared to when I take a day

off. This was a great change for me since it helped me a lot and I can see the difference every

day. Taking a day off has affected me in a good way, nowadays I have to do it. It was a difficult

change because I felt lazy, but after understanding how important it was, I was able to accept the

change and move forward to follow my dream.

Taking a day off is so important in every aspect of life, it can be working in a sport, even

with relationships. In this case, because golf is a sport which requires a lot of mental

concentration, taking a day off can be a huge impact in the performance. Taking a day off will

increase the probabilities of becoming a better golfer than not taking a day off because of the

effects it has on the body and mind. As shown before, I felt much better after taking the day off.

It helped me by clearing my mind and reducing pain. Concluding that taking a day off is

beneficial in order to become a better athlete.

 Works Cited

Bermudez, Manuel. Email-interview. September 22, 2021

Loch, Fabian, et al. “Resting the Mind – a Novel Topic with Scarce Insights. Considering

Potential Mental Recovery Strategies for Short Rest Periods in Sports.” Performance

Enhancement & Health, vol. 6, no. 3-4, 2019, pp. 148–155.,

doi:10.1016/j.peh.2019.04.002.

Walker, Cordie. “The Myth of ‘Perfect Practice Makes Perfect.’” Golf Science Lab, 16
Aug. 2017, golfsciencelab.com/perfect-practice-makes-perfect/.