Being resilient is one of the most important skills any golfer can have. Here are five reasons you should never give up on your round of golf, no matter how difficult things get out there.

It becomes a habit

If you start giving up early in your round, a very bad habit could develop, and you will rob yourself of one of the greatest tools necessary to improve as a golfer…

Resilience

18 holes is a long time, and at some point you’re going to go through a bad stretch of holes (some days it can be most of them!). The last thing you want to do is get into the habit of giving up before things have a chance to turn around.

Your Future Self Will Thank You

Almost every golfer who plays wishes they had a time machine. When you finish a round you want to go back to your past self on the earlier holes, tap them on the shoulder, and tell them not to give up.

When things start to go wrong during your round your thoughts tend to speed up, and you lose perspective. When you’ve had time to sit down and think about what happened after the round you can’t believe the mistakes you made because you mentally checked out after a couple of bad shots. This kind of regret stings very badly.

You’ll feel much better about yourself after your day is over, knowing that you didn’t give up and kept fighting until the last putt dropped.

You’ll Never Learn Anything

Being in a live round of golf is the best way to learn about your game, and develop the experience necessary to take things to the next level. You can’t become a better golfer until you are comfortable being on a golf course.

When you pack it in for the day, and go through the rest of your round in “golf zombie mode,” that learning cannot happen. There is always something you can take away from each round. Even if you didn’t shoot what you consider to be a great score, there is a tremendous value to looking back on your day and evaluating what went wrong with your bad shots, and reinforcing the positive memories of your good ones.

No one ever got better at golf without dealing with their failures, analyzing what went wrong, and trying to work on a solution.

It’s Not Fun

You’ve paid your greens fees, and committed a large chunk of your day to being out on the course. Giving up and going through the motions for the rest of your round isn’t much fun.

Here’s a different thought. If you’ve really hit rock bottom, and you have become so upset about your score for the day…tear up the scorecard. It’s OK, the golfing authorities are not going to hunt you down for your misdeed.

I’ve written before that golf should be fun first and foremost. If that element is missing then I believe you should do everything necessary to correct it. Just try and salvage the rest of your round; see if you can hit a few good shots. Enjoy the walk.

You Never Know What Can Happen

Golf is a funny game. Things can go wrong really quickly, and then go right even faster. I can’t tell you how many rounds I have played, or witnessed when things started off disastrously, only to see a remarkable turnaround 4-5 holes later.

There’s nothing more rewarding than going through the depths of golfing hell, and then emerging victorious at the end of your round. It gives you a tremendous boost of confidence that you can bring forward to your future rounds because you dealt with the adversity, and didn’t let it destroy your whole day.

When you give up, there’s absolutely no way this can happen. As hard as it is, you have to remain patient and remain hopeful that the good stretch of holes is coming.