Some Thoughts About Golf, Pressure and Why We Hardly Ever Play To Our Full Potential

Golf can certainly be infuriating at times.

You can stand on the range one minute flushing it.

Perfect strike.

Nice rhythm.

Not long later you’re standing on the fourth tee wondering where your swing has gone. Why does it now feel so awkward, tight and out of control?

Most golfers know this.

You walk off the range feeling good. Expectations are high.

Then the card comes out.

You begin to notice the out of bounds right.

That fairway bunker you drove into last week looks ominous.

People watching.

What will people think if I mess this shot up?

Which quickly becomes:

What will they think if I mess this round up again?

A score suddenly starts to matter.

And something magic happens.

Somehow the game changes.

That’s the part of golf I’ve become increasingly interested in over the years.

Not so much swing mechanics, although they obviously matter, but more why seemingly all of us golfers so often struggle to bring the game we already possess onto the course consistently once pressure, expectation and overthinking enter the frame.

Because I honestly think most golfers have already acquired far more skills than we are regularly able to access.

We see this all the time.

People standing on the range hitting one great shot after another.

Then they get on the course and start:

• Steering it.
• Guiding it.
• Trying not to miss.

And usually the harder we try to play well, the harder it becomes to swing freely.

It seems to me golf is the only game where it seems possible to try too hard.

That’s one of the strange paradoxes of golf.

The game demands concentration and commitment, yet too much trying often gets in the way.

You can actually see it happening before your very own eyes.

A golfer stands over a shot with so much concern about where the ball might go you can almost see the tension enter the body.

And of course the more important the shot appears psychologically, the tighter and less free the movement tends to become.

Particularly when score enters the picture.

Some golfers can be playing beautifully until they realise they’re having a good round.

Then suddenly the mind races ahead.

“Don’t mess this up.”
“What if I finally break 90, 80 or 70?”
“What if I have to make a speech?”

And before long they’re no longer just playing golf.

They’re trying to protect a score, protect an identity, protect an outcome.

Everything starts feeling heavy.

I remember years ago playing with someone who made eight birdies in the round and only scored level par.

On the 17th tee he announced:

“Over the last few holes my swing’s gone AWOL.”

Funny really.

Same golfer.
Same swing.
Same golf course.

Completely different state of mind.

That sort of thing happens constantly in golf.

Three or four good holes and we’re feeling confident.

Two bad shots and we’ve forgotten how to play.

But is it possible that our ability really has disappeared that quickly?

I think confidence is often misunderstood in golf.

Most golfers think confidence comes from perfect golf. But if that were true hardly anybody would ever feel confident for long because golf is simply too difficult a game.

There isn’t a player on the planet who has total control over the golf ball.

One of the best PGA Tour players went on record to say before each round he expected to hit at least six bad shots.

His bad shots are probably a lot better than some of my good ones, but the point is even the absolute best players in the world miss greens, hole fewer putts than it might seem, and are very capable of hitting poor shots, especially when they feel under intense pressure.

The big difference is they tend to be super resilient and recover mentally very quickly. They don’t turn one poor shot into three holes of frustration and internal commentary.

Whereas many ordinary golfers seemingly torture themselves mentally following mistakes.

One bad swing and the post-mortem begins.

• Technical analysis.
• Self-criticism.
• Frustration and grumpiness.
• Trying harder.

And the strange thing is, golfers would never speak to their playing partners the way they speak to themselves internally.

If somebody followed us around the course saying:

“FFS. Here we go again.”
“Why do you always do that?”
“You’re hopeless.”
“Such an idiot.”
“Why don’t you just give up?”

Do you think we might stop playing with them LOL.

Yet we’re often prepared to tolerate it from our own minds every round.

I know I certainly did for years.

In fact there was a period where golf stopped being fun for me altogether.

I was thinking hard, self-criticising hard, trying hard.

All too hard.

My handicap drifted the wrong way and I became increasingly frustrated because deep down I knew I was a better ball striker than the scores I was making.

That gap between ability and actual scoring can become very draining psychologically.

Especially for decent golfers.

Most players I’ve ever spoken with want to close the gap between what they believe they are capable of and their actual level of performance.

Once that becomes the objective, many begin to realise that the missing piece may not be another swing change.

It may be how they are using their mind.

Almost everybody has had days where the game suddenly feels simple. Where we stop getting in our own way mentally and golf becomes much more instinctive, creative and more fun.

The swing flows.
Putts roll freely.
Decisions become clearer.

You stop restricting yourself and instead start playing with freedom.

And interestingly, when golfers describe their very best rounds, they rarely talk much about mechanics.

They talk about:

• Learning and enjoyment.
• Clarity, being present with nothing much on their mind.
• Rhythm.
• Creating the shot.
• Feeling energised at the end of the round rather than physically and mentally exhausted.

That’s interesting to me.

Because it suggests many golfers are not suffering from an absence of ability.

They’re suffering more from interference.

• Too much internal noise.
• Too much past and too much future thinking.
• Too much trying to control what can’t fully be controlled.

Golf becomes mentally heavy.

Particularly under pressure.

Let’s take a fairly simple shot over water.

One golfer sees a clear target.

Another sees disaster.

Same hole. Same water. Completely different experience.

And the more emotionally loaded the situation becomes, the more difficult it often becomes to access the acquired skill the golfer already possesses.

Hitting ball after ball on the range has no consequences.

Results aren’t at stake.

But on the course, just one bad shot can feel as though it might seriously damage a score.

Attention changes.
Tempo changes.
Attitude changes.

The body tightens up.

The golfer starts trying not to fail instead of simply committing to a free-flowing swing.

Why not hit the shot first?

Worry afterwards, if you insist on worrying.

That’s a very different feeling.

And I suspect most golfers know exactly what I mean because they’ve experienced both versions of themselves many times.

The free-flowing golfer.

And the tight careful golfer; the one that tries to just poke it down the middle or tries not to hit a bad shot.

The strange thing is they’re the same person within the same round.

I’m certainly not against technical coaching by the way. Far from it.

Good golf coaches do incredibly valuable work and obviously golfers need sound fundamentals and practice.

But I sometimes wonder whether golfers overestimate how much technical perfection is required before they can start playing really well on the actual course.

Because many golfers seem trapped in this idea:

“Once I’ve finally perfected my swing… then I’ll start working on developing the mental skills to stop my mind from getting in my own way.”

Of course swing technique is important.

But many golfers are happy to spend years developing mechanics whilst devoting almost no time to understanding how pressure, thought and attention affect performance.

And interestingly, most golfers aren’t really sure what they could even practise mentally beyond trying to stay positive.

I’m not sure that’s really the answer.

There’s no final point where the game suddenly becomes mistake-free and emotionally secure.

Even tour players feel nerves. Even elite golfers lose confidence. Even great swings can break down under pressure.

Golf seems to expose whatever is happening psychologically underneath.

Which is partly why the game is so fascinating.

It’s not just a physical game.

It’s a human experience.

The golf course has an extraordinary way of revealing:

• fear,
• ego,
• expectation,
• patience,
• frustration,
• resilience.

Sometimes all within the same three holes.

And perhaps that’s why golf can feel so rewarding when we stop fighting ourselves mentally quite so much.

When we stop trying to force a score.

Stop trying to manufacture perfect thoughts.

Stop trying to control every outcome.

And instead begin to unleash the golfer that’s already inside us a little more.

Because I honestly think most golfers already possess far more natural and acquired ability than they consistently allow themselves to access.

It’s probably one of the reasons I became a Certified Mind Factor golf and performance coach in the first place because I genuinely believe golfers already possess far more ability than they consistently manage to take to the course.

Anyway… these are just some thoughts from somebody who’s spent a lifetime around golf and become increasingly interested in why we can play so well one moment and then get so hopelessly in our own way and ahead of ourselves the next.

I’m certainly not saying this is something I no longer experience. But I have become much better at noticing it and bouncing back from it.

It’s all part of the human experience.

Just as there is no golfer in the world who has absolute control over the golf ball, no human will ever have total control over the mind game.

But we can understand it better.

And perhaps that is where things begin to change.

If any of this resonates and you ever fancy a relaxed chat over a virtual or otherwise coffee, beer or Zoom call about your own experience of the game, I'm always very happy to talk.

No pressure.
No hard sell.

Just an interesting one-to-one friendly conversation between golfers.