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The train of negative thoughts and unwanted emotions can arrive into the station of our mind and body at any time, but we don’t need to climb aboard. If you don’t master your emotions for golf, there’ll be an interplay of these thoughts and emotions making them bigger, leading to an inability to think clearly and create tension in your body. This can then mean that you fail to reproduce the great shots you saw just hours or days earlier. In other words, you will be prevented from being your best performing self.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve studied mental and emotional management and its effect on an athlete’s performance. What I’ve concluded is that everyone is different in what can help adjust their inner state – it’s a matter of self exploration and experimentation to see what works best. To help you with this, here are my top 5 ways to conquer negative thinking and unwanted emotions.

Self Talk and Affirmations to Master your emotions for golf

The mind can tell us things that aren’t true or it can focus on what we don’t want to happen i.e., the things we fear or the doubts we have about our ability. To counter this, we can use our inner voice – which can serve as a positive distraction from these thoughts and a powerful emotional regulator. There are countless studies in Sports Psychology journals which show that Self Talk for golf (which can be “Motivational” and “Instructional”) improves performance. But it’s not that simple. An athlete or golfer needs to carefully curate and test their own self talk scripts and affirmations.

You can displace negative thoughts and master your emotions for golf by repeating “Affirmations” in your head, or out loud. Affirmations are carefully chosen “trigger” words – words that you have an emotional connection with i.e. hearing them makes you feel something. Saying these words can help you move away from what’s negative in your mind and instead, focus on words that make you feel “Strong”, “Powerful”, “Grateful”, “Composed”, “Dominant”, etc, or whatever you would like to be feeling in those moments.

Acceptance and “Non-Attachment” to Master Your Emotions for Golf

Developing the skill of Acceptance is a key part of high performance golf but many players struggle with it. To begin with, let’s clarify a common misconception – that acceptance is the same as approval or complacency. Because you accept something, it doesn’t mean that you don’t care or that you approve of what just happened. Simply put, it’s the best thing to do to be able to move on from setbacks in a round and improve your position.

Many times, mental coaches for golf, such as myself, recommend “focusing on the process.” But what does this statement actually mean and why do it?

Before and during your rounds, shifting your focus from outcomes—such as your score and the consequences of how you will play—to your process, is key. Your process is a combination of all the actions and routines that you follow to improve outcomes. Examples of this are consistent pre-shot routines or regular putting practice. These activities are all 100% within your control, so placing your focus on them not only means that you are doing the tasks that will improve performance, but it also helps create a more neutral performance state (because what you are focusing on is emotionally neutral).

Why make process your priority?

You want to shoot a good score, I get it. Every competitive player wants to play well and see their name at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the tournament. But the question to ask yourself is: does trying to succeed (or avoid failure) and attain those outcomes and having those thoughts of them before and during play increase the likelihood of you achieving them? My experience from coaching hundreds of players on the mental game would conclude otherwise.

Thinking about the end result and what that will mean for your life (good or bad) only triggers emotions and physiological changes that are not conducive to bringing out your best, mentally and physically, during a shot. The reason, is that you are focusing on something that is uncertain which causes the mind and body to begin preparing for the worst.

“Enjoy the process” – all of modern media

It seems like everyone in the media is talking about the “process” or the “journey” but few take time to explain what they truly mean by these terms.

So, let’s break it down.

Process in Golf vs Outcome in Golf

Let’s first start by understanding what the difference between process in golf and outcome is. The outcome is the end goal, what you dream of achieving. It is the results that you see. For example, your scoring average, or finish at a tournament.

The process in golf is the systems you have in place and the actions you take daily to get to your end goal. For example, developing a consistent pre-shot routine, or practicing putting 5 times a week.

In episode 3 of Season 2 of the “Full Swing” on Netflix, Wyndham Clark talked about some of his strategies for managing emotions during the 2023 US Open (that he won).

He spoke of creating an internal state which is “the opposite of anger”, which clearly helped him deal with the moments in the round where he would have felt that emotion (there is a lot at the US Open). In this week’s lesson, we’ll explore some ways that you can do it too.

The unpredictable tapestry of emotions that we get to experience in a round of golf is one of the reasons the game has such appeal. We simply don’t know what we’re going to get and how we will feel.

We can experience the thrill and excitement of hitting a great drive, or seeing a 20-footer go in.We can experience the satisfaction of a good score or a sense of pride and achievement from winning.We can experience the sinking disappointment of seeing a short putt lip out.We can experience the frustration and anger of hitting a ball out of bounds and adding 2 shots to our score when we are in a good position.

Tennis legend, Novak Djokovic says:

“The biggest battle is always within. You can’t be positive all the time. You are a human being [you will feel negative emotion and doubts]. The biggest difference between champions and the ones who struggle to get to the highest level, is the ability to not stay in those emotions for too long.”

Just like everyday life, when we play a round of golf, there is a lot of unpredictability. There are endless possibilities for what could happen, that we don’t have control over. But what we can control (and our success depends on it) is how well we can manage our response to what happens, so we get the best out of ourselves in every round. 

This is why expectations don’t serve any purpose in golf. You can’t expect anything to happen. If you do, it will only lead to frustration. What you can expect is variability, so you may as well prepare for it and embrace it. 

The variability we get in golf is a good thing. In fact, it’s part of what keeps us coming back. If every round was 100% predictable, the game would be nowhere near as fun.

Top players have learned how to be adaptable and become Masters of Variability. For this reason, they feel fully prepared for anything that could happen and they are more confident as a result. 

That said, you don’t want to spend time worrying about what could happen. It’s better to allocate time to thinking about the possible variables and how you will manage them (and practice them), so you can be fully present during each phase of the round. Predicting variability and developing your plan to manage it should be an ongoing part of your “process”. 

“Golf’s so crazy, when you have it, you feel like you’re never going to lose it. And when you don’t have it, you feel like you’re never going to get it.” — Brooks Koepka 

The dreaded golf rut occurs at all levels of golf, whether you are a professional, an amateur or a beginner. Perhaps, you are in a streak of missing cuts. Or you’re a college golfer struggling to qualify for your team… Or even a recreational player who cannot seem to close a round. 

A golf slump may occur at any time, and without the necessary tools it can be extremely difficult for athletes to bounce back from one. 

Performance Slump 

A performance slump is an inevitable aspect of sports (Goldberg,1998). It is defined as a prolonged period of decrease in athletic outcome. 

Research has indicated that performance slumps can occur for a multitude of reasons, one being psychological (Steed, Poolton & Alder, 2022) such as lack of confidence, negative self-talk and unrealistic expectations of performance.

If you’re going to become your best this season, putting in the “Inner Work” will be just as important as putting in the physical work.

Among the tools we have for mental training, one of the best is visualization or “mental imagery in golf” which can be used in a number of ways. Studies show that imagery is helpful for improving the following:

Mastery of Self e.g., being a strong competitor, more confident, in control and mentally toughMotivation e.g., seeing yourself winning a championshipCognitive skills e.g., planning your strategy and routinesMastery of Technical Skills e.g., imagining something you want to change such as keeping your head still while putting or improving your swingImproving Arousal Control e.g., being more calm over a putt to win

In this week’s lesson, I’m going to show you how you can use mental imagery as a daily practice, to help you:

Be Great This Year (Motivational)Overcome Fear (Desensitization)

Using Mental Imagery in Golf to Be Great This Year

The mind is like a heat seeking missile in the sense that, if you give it a target to aim at, it will find ways to move you towards it. In other words, if you have big, compelling goals, and you remind yourself of them regularly, you’ll increase focus, effort and motivation to take you closer to them each day. We get more of what we allow our minds to focus on!

Decide on Your Goals

The process starts with a blank sheet of paper. Write down what would be exciting for you to achieve this year. I mean really exciting.

In this article I’m going to show you how to use the Labeling Theory in psychology to create a positive golf identity and elevate your performance. 

The Labeling Theory, introduced by social psychologist Howard Becker (1963) suggests people tend to conform to labels (roles) assigned to them by other people or themselves. Becker’s theory was based on deviant behaviors, suggesting that people labeled as “deviant” by society are increasingly likely to partake in delinquent behaviors compared to those who haven’t. 

Although this theory was applied to criminology, the biggest take away here is that labels can create a self-identity that shapes our behaviors.  

So…How can we apply the theory of labels to help us with our golf games? 

Negative Labels 

Now that the days are shorter and colder (for most of us anyway), you’ll probably be spending more time working on your game inside. But just because you aren’t able to get out to play and practice as much outdoors, it doesn’t mean that you can’t continue to improve.

In this week’s lesson, I’m going to cover 10 Winter Training for Golf activities to keep improving your skills ahead of the season starting again in the spring. 

1. REFLECT ON THE PAST YEAR

Ongoing reflection is an important part of the game improvement process, and your year-round review is probably your most important one. 

Did you set goals for 2023? If so, how many of them did you achieve? Take yourself back to some of your best rounds and celebrate your successes and improvements in your game. Why do you think you were able to make progress? Reinforce what’s working for you. 

For those goals that you didn’t achieve, why do you think you weren’t able to do so? Was it that those goals were too ambitious? That you weren’t motivated enough to put in the work? Or did you not work on the right things or in the right way?

Whether it’s at the end of each day or at the end of a round, a Post Round Review or “reflection” is important for the following reasons:

We get to celebrate our successes and foster a more positive association with our game, or areas of our gameWe get to understand what in our process or the work we’ve been doing is leading to those successes. Success leaves clues…We get to understand the setbacks and failures we had, so we can learn from them and move on from them

In this mental game of golf lesson, I’m going to show you the daily journaling template that I use every day, whether I’ve played golf or not. If you follow this template, you’ll have a golf mental coach to speak to each evening for the cost of a notepad and pencil.

A Golf Mental Coach to Speak to Each Day

In your journal or notebook, start a new page each day and write beneath these headers:

1. Celebrate Success and Joy

What were the best moments of your round or day? Write down as many moments of joy that you experienced. This could be a great shot, a pattern of play or something about your mental approach e.g. my wedge play was very good, my attitude was positive, etc.

It could even be something about the experience unrelated to your game but that you can also be grateful for e.g., the color of the sky, the sun setting or the beauty of the course.

In Viktor Hovland’s interview after winning the FedEx Cup on Sunday, he mentioned 3 things that have helped transform his game over the past year and make him one of the World’s best players, and one of them is better COURSE MANAGEMENT.
After a review of his stats with Eduardo Molinari, Tour player and part-time data analyst, they concluded that Hovland was being too aggressive with his approach shots and short-siding himself too often. Viktor also said in his interview that he wanted to play more like Tiger in his heyday, who would comfortably shoot -3 or -4 in each round of a major, with a superior course strategy to most of the field. Tiger said he would make sure he birdied most of the par 5s, throw in a couple more birdies and then avoid mistakes with conservative strategy.
I’ve worked with plenty of Tour players over the years, who on the face of it don’t look all that impressive, until you see a 66 on their scorecard at the end. They’ve successfully plotted their way around the course to limit mistakes, and give themselves enough scoring opportunities to make 4-5 birdies.
In this week’s lesson I’m going to give you some insights into the Course Management of A Tour Pro, that can help you lower your score in your next round.

1. KNOW YOUR SHOT PATTERNS FOR BETTER COURSE MANAGEMENT

A big factor in lowering your scores with a better course management is knowing your shot patterns. I.e., If you were to hit 30 balls with a 5-iron, what would the grouping of the balls look like around the intended target? Even better, what is the grouping of the last 30 5-irons you hit on the golf course?
By finding out how wide your shot dispersion is (which you can do with a launch monitor or stat tracking apps), you will know what is reasonable to expect when you hit your next 5 iron on the course. If you pick a target that is the center of your shot pattern and hence will allow for 70% of the balls within your normal shot pattern (which excludes outliers), you can expect that you will not be in positions that will lead to big numbers. Afterall, the goal of a better course management is to reduce bogeys or worse, rather than to increase birdies.
This won’t only affect the outcome after you’ve hit the shot, but before it too. If you’re standing over a shot and you know your strategy allows for almost all the possible outcomes with that club, you’re going to swing a lot more freely.

2. LOOK AT THE AERIAL VIEWS

Good golf courses are designed to challenge you mentally as well as physically, and one of the ways they do that is to make you think there is less room than there actually is. With aerial views, you can see the size of the area you actually have, not what the designer wants to trick you into seeing from ground level. Knowing that you have plenty of room to fit your shot pattern into will help you swing more freely, rather than let the golf course designer succeed and get into your head.
The players I work with make good use of yardage books and Google Earth imagery as part of their Pre Round Routine for golf to get to know the course from above before they play it.

3. KNOW THE GOOD AND BAD MISS

For every shot you play, there is a good miss and a bad miss. Clearly, you’re going to save strokes each round by avoiding the bad misses, such as being short-sided, or worse being out of bounds. Scott Fawcett’s DECADE system helps players assign a negative value for each “miss” so the player can move their target for each shot to reduce the negative value as much as possible for each shot.
As part of your preparation for a round, you should know where you can safely miss and where missing the target will likely result in high numbers. Use this analysis to mark where you want to aim in your yardage book, to avoid these penalties.

4. AIM AT THE CENTER OF THE GREEN

For your approach shots, the center of the green is always the best target for better course management. Even the best players in the world say that they do this for every club longer than a 9-iron.

If you are going to become a good competitive player and achieve your goals, you are going to feel nerves in golf at various stages of a round.
Fact is, it’s perfectly normal.
What’s important is that you have a strategy to be able to manage nerves in golf so you can use this energy to enhance your performance. Here are 5 ways to do it:

1. Embrace Nerves in Golf

Nerves in golf are part of your journey to better. When they appear, they’re telling you that you are exactly where you need to be – making big strides on that journey. If you CHOOSE to enjoy the feeling you are experiencing, it will soften them. If you resist them, and tell yourself that it’s wrong to be feeling nervous, you’ll make them stronger. By thinking of nerves as a positive, rather than fear or anxiety, you’ll get more of the positive effects – increased focus and sensory awareness and less of the negatives – the shakes, tension, poor thinking, etc.

2. Be Aware of your Thinking

Nerves can be brought on subconsciously (without you being aware of why), but your awareness of the feeling of them can trigger negative thoughts, such as: “What if I don’t succeed? What if I hit a bad shot here and blow my chance? What will others think of me?”
These are all thoughts that can appear when a player is experiencing “Performance Anxiety” before or during a round, which can affect the mood and performance of the player. The key skill, which you will have read several times in my lessons, is Mindfulness and having the ability to control your attention, so you can move it away from negative thoughts and back to the present moment.
What self talk in golf do you have when you are under pressure? If you have the lead, do you say: “You better not screw this up”, or do you say: “You have what it takes to get the job done!”. Make sure you do the latter…

3. Know your Tendencies

What (do you know) happens mentally and physically to YOU when you feel nervous?

Do you have a specific miss that tends to show up?
Does your swing get quick?
Do you leave the club face open?
Do you start guiding the ball instead of swinging aggressively?

Whether it’s after a bad shot or a bad round, sometimes (in the words of Ted Lasso), it’s best to “be a Goldfish” and have a 10 second memory. But this is easier said than done and requires the use of some mental game techniques, which I’m going to share with you in this week’s lesson.

Good shots are easy to move on from (in fact you want to stay with them), but less desirable outcomes can leave us feeling frustrated, angry, and fearful of things getting worse. Letting those thoughts and emotions take hold of you can affect how well you play the next shot and the rest of the round.

Unfortunately, there’s no magic pill that you can take to “turn off” feelings (hitting a ball in the water will aways make you feel some sort of discomfort), but here are 5 things you can do to “be a Goldfish” and have those feelings dissipate quickly instead of them triggering negative thinking and doubt ahead of the next shot. This is what the Post Shot Routine for Golf is all about.

1. Expect to Hit Some Bad Shots

In your next round, you’re going to hit some bad shots. I always ask my players how many they expect to hit in a round. E.g. If it’s 8, allow yourself to hit that many. When you hit your first one or two, they’ll be easier to bounceback from in your post shot routine for golf.

2. Take a Positive from EVERY Shot during the Post Shot Routine for Golf

The human brain has a “negativity bias” that makes it hard not to ruminate on bad shots, bad rounds or think about what could go wrong. In fact, whenever I ask a player about a round, they’ll often start with the negatives.

What goals do you have for your next round or tournament? Your goals for golf will have a big impact on your performance and development as a player.

When I ask this question to a new student, I’ll typically get a response like: “To win. To shoot 75 or better. To have a top 10. To avoid 3 putts.”
Although these all would represent desirable outcomes, having goals like this before and during a round can cause:

• Performance anxiety
• Frustration and disappointment
• Loss of confidence

For this reason, I encourage my students to make sure any goals they have for rounds or throughout the season, serve the purpose of higher performance.

Why Set Goals For Golf?

1. Goals give you something to focus on that is productive
2. Goals raise effort because the prospect of achieving them is exciting
3. Achieving goals you a boost of energy and confidence that makes you want more

Controlling Emotions in Golf with Self Awareness or “Mindfulness” 

“Being your best means creating a space between stimulus and response, and in that space you have the freedom and power to choose a response that is in alignment with your values and goals.” – George Mumford

Part of doing the “Inner Work” for golf is reflecting on your rounds and identifying the events that can trigger the thoughts, feelings and emotions which hold you back. Once you’ve done this, you will know what to look out for on the course. Noticing your thoughts, feelings and emotions will help in your controlling emotions in golf, rather than them controlling you.

The key word in the previous sentence is “noticing” and this is what Self Awareness or “Mindfulness” is all about.

To illustrate this, let’s take look at the behaviour cycle:

As you can see above, emotions, thoughts and behaviors are all connected in a loop. Without noticing, the loop just continues, i.e., emotions create feelings, which trigger thoughts, which increases the potency of emotions which changes our mood and “performance state”. Remember that one of the main goals of improving your mental game of golf is being able to upwardly maneuver between performance states. The first step in this process is mindfulness. This is an especially valuable skill in golf. In most other sports, the game happens faster so there’s less time to be influenced by your emotions and thinking (engagement in the game keeps your mind focused on the present). But in golf, for most of the time you’re “playing”, you’re in between shots with plenty of time to let your emotions and thoughts around them interfere and affect how you play.

“I just tell myself positive affirmations on certain tee shots or when I’m feeling nervous and it calms me down.” – PGA Tour winner Max Homa

Most players think that confidence comes solely from past success, but they’re wrong. A huge part of your confidence comes from what you say to yourself about yourself in relation to the challenge in front of you. I.e., your “self talk”.

If you were to get an audio play-back of all your self talk during a round you would probably be shocked at how negative it is. Negative self talk will never help us. In fact it lowers confidence and puts a negative experience to memory.

So how do we change self talk for golf to build confidence and guide us towards the thinking, feelings and behaviors that are performance enhancing?

First we have to agree with the following assumptions:

Better focus in golf is all about having a clear process to follow and then learning how to control your attention.

We can’t simply can’t fully apply ourselves to continued improvement without being able to do this, and here’s how to do it:

Better Focus in Golf: Having a Clear Intention

Focus in golf is when your intention for your focus is currently aligned with what you are actually directing your attention to.

This is why the mental scorecard for golf is so important, as it reminds you want you want to focus on. So the first step is deciding on what you actually want to focus on i.e. what is in your Pre Shot Routine, what you will focus on after a bad shot, in between shots, etc.

Better Focus in Golf: Being Present

Being present is when your focus is 100% on what you are doing now, not what just happened, or what might happen in the future. The intention for your focus in golf is aligned with what you are actually directing your attention to. When you are doing this, your mind is quieter, you have a deeper connection with what you are doing, and it’s more likely that your physical movement will be fluid and uninhibited.

The journey to your goal is going to be full of challenges and failures along the way. In a game as difficult as golf, there will always be more failures than successes. 

Your approach to these challenges and failures is also known as your mindset for golf, and it’s a huge factor in your overall success. The good news is that your mindset for golf isn’t fixed, and we can continually work on it and develop the growth mindset of a champion. 

How do you view failure?

Do you see it as an indication that you are not good enough or that it’s a way to learn how to be better?  

Do you play with fear of making mistakes because of what failure would say about you to others? 

The studies of Professor Carol Dweck at Stanford University prove how mindset affects learning and skill development. She concludes that people who exhibit more of what she calls a “growth mindset” to learning, viewing failure as a way to learn most effectively, and seeing challenges as a positive, are more successful in the long-term. The opposite of a growth mindset is called a fixed mindset which describes a person who sees their ability as fixed and hence they are less concerned about the learning and more concerned about the result as it speaks to how good they are. In the context of golf, I call these two different mindsets and types of golfers, Mastery and Ego Golfers. 

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” – Greek philosopher Epictetus 

Golf mirrors life in so many ways, which is why the game is so great and there’s so much to it. One of those ways is having to deal with the frustrations and setbacks when things don’t go our way. In a game with such a fine line between success and failure, this is an inevitable part of our journey. How we respond to challenges and failure – in golf and in life – is a big factor in our long-term success and overall happiness. 

Immediately after hitting a poor shot is one of those times. If we are not able to choose the best response, those initial feelings of disappointment can quickly turn into a loss of confidence and affect the mental state we bring to the next moment. 

Picture the scene, you’re about to tee off on the first hole of a tournament. You’re feeling nervous and uncomfortable because this tournament means a lot to you, and you want to get off to a good start. The gathering of people around the tee box doesn’t help either. You take a deep breath and go through your pre shot routine but you make a tentative swing and the ball spins away and goes out of bounds. You’re a little frazzled by what just happened and despite your best efforts to calm yourself down, your re-load isn’t much better and finds the trees. There is a sinking feeling when you quickly realize you are staring a triple bogey or worse in the face. Not the start you wanted. I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar, we all have. How you deal with this feeling and reset yourself, can make or break your round. 

Why is a Post Shot Routine important?

On the golf course and in tournaments:

Every shot counts and has a consequenceEvery shot is a unique challengeThere are several minutes between shots for possible “thinking” timeYour heart rate is higher

Although most golfers know this to be true, they spend very little time practicing in a way that will help them to adapt to the changing (external and internal) conditions between practice and play. Instead, they over-practice the technical and don’t train their “performance skills” such as focus, dealing with consequences and internal state management.

Although the golf course is the best place to practice (after all, that’s where we play the game), most of us have more frequent access to driving ranges and practice facilities. For this reason, it’s important to find ways to simulate what we experience on the golf course and in tournament play, so we can improve our performance skills and become better at executing our best technical skills on the course.

I should clarify that I’m not implying that a golfer shouldn’t practice technique for golf – of course we need to work on technical skill development. But if you are to become a player who performs well under pressure, you’ll need to allocate time in every practice session to develop your mental game of golf by doing Pressure Practice For Golf.

Pressure Practice For Golf, trains you to:

Get yourself into the competitive mindsetAdapt quickly to challenges (instead of repetitions of the same shot)Think clearly in difficult situationsBe more comfortable being uncomfortableStick to your “Process”Deal with nerves in golf and higher arousal levels

I have plenty of pressure practice for golf drills and ways to create a competitive environment in the Golf State of Mind Practice book. In addition to the challenges in the book, your imagination is a very helpful tool in simulating the pressure of the real thing.

Before you go to your session, think about different situations which would change your internal state to be ready to use them in practice. Create vivid representations of them in your mind i.e. who you are playing with, the tournament, the golf course, the colors, the weather, etc.