Poll Results: Have You Ever Thrown a Club?

We’ve all been there: You just striped your drive and are in perfect position - center of the fairway. A simple shot awaits. You stand over the ball, start your backswing (confidently), downswing is next, and you ... snap hook the ball ... or chunk it ... or blade it over the green.

How you handle the moments that follow says a lot about you. Do you laugh it off and start thinking about your next shot? Or do you toss the offending club in the general direction of the most-recent mistake?

According to my weekend poll on Google+, about half of us have done the latter.

I asked, “Have you ever thrown a club?” Fifty-two percent answered “Yes,” while 48% replied with “No.”

We’re not here to judge. What we do in a single moment of anger shouldn’t brand us. After all, the question wasn’t “Do you ALWAYS throw your club after a bad shot?”

Admittedly, I’m in the majority on this one. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve thrown clubs. Happy to say I no longer throw clubs, but when I was a kid ... Oh boy.

Looking deeper into my past, I never threw clubs when I played alone - only when playing with others. Was it more out of embarrassment? Did I think people would believe I was a better player than I just showed because I was angry at a bad shot? Flawed thinking, for sure.

+Vipul Gidda took a Zen approach to analyzing his past: “When I was learning the game and young I did throw a few. It took me some time to realize that my golf game is not a reflection of me as a person.”

I wholeheartedly agree.

+Darrell Williams took to psychology and answered my question with a question: “I wonder how many are A personalities or B personalities? I am an A and get angered fairly quick, where as I have a buddy thats a pretty mellow B and never gets his nerves rattled and has never thrown a club.”

I wish I was a B.

+Elyasse Boukhliki admitted to the deed: “I did but nobody was watching.”

If a tree falls in the woods, but nobody is there ...

+Kevin Keilen has seen much worse than a toss or two: “Watched a guy snap his whole bag over his knee and throw it in a lake. He was DQ'd.”

Yikes! I guess, for some, a meltdown is hard to stop once it heats up.

Based upon his comment, I’m guessing it wasn’t +Brent Thomas that Keilen watched: “No. I'm a good golfer.”

More flawed thinking if you consider we’ve seen Tiger, Rory, John Daly and many other Tour pros toss clubs. Unless “good” described Brent’s behavior, rather than his ability.