The Part No One Taught You

  • Ever stand over a putt, thinking through every detail of your stroke, only to pull it badly? There’s a cognitive reason for that—and the research backing it up is fascinating. Psychologists and neuroscientists have been studying golfers’ brains for decades in an attempt to better understand why we can make…

  • Most golfers believe course management means avoiding trouble. Don’t three-putt. Don’t make double bogeys. Stay out of the water. This thinking isn’t wrong—it’s just incomplete. These are outcomes, things that happen after shots are played. Real course management happens before you ever address the ball. Consider the three-putt. The obvious…

  • Today I was paired with Doug and his wife Lea in one cart, and Ted with me in the other. All three of my playing partners were excellent golfers with great swings and a clear understanding of what it takes to play the game. Such a pleasure to play with.…

  • Golf is a game of misses. Even the best players in the world are simply managing their mistakes far better than the rest of us. They also recover from a miss in astonishing ways. Ben Hogan said golfers should be satisfied with hitting just a few shots per round that…

  • Every unmade decision, every misplaced item, every uncertainty creates what psychologists call “cognitive load.” Disorganization creates a constant background hum of anxiety, pulling you away from the present moment. Professional golfers understand this instinctively. Watch them on tour: everything has its place, every routine is repeatable, every detail is managed.…

  • The range lies to you. Repetition every 10-15 seconds, identical setup, zero consequences. The course tells the truth: extended time between shots, building your stance from scratch each time, no mulligans, every shot different. The harder we try to control our swing, the more we interfere with what we already…

  • Try this exercise. Grab a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle. Label one column “Mechanics” and the other “Mental.” Now list the things you practice in each category. Take your time. Be honest. The Disparity If you’re like most golfers, the mechanics column filled up…

  • You’ve seen it a hundred times. A golfer misses a long putt by two feet, reaches out one-handed without a thought, and it finds the center of the cup. No read. No routine. No effort. It always seems to go in. Golfers joke about it: “I’ve made more putts one-handed…

  • You’re striking the ball well. Then one shot in ten feels off. Poor contact. Unexpected direction. Easy to dismiss. That’s golf. But it crops up again. One in four. One in three. Something has changed, and you didn’t notice it happening. This is invisible drift—small, imperceptible changes in your setup…

  • A pitch crosses home plate in roughly 400 milliseconds. A professional baseball player must decide whether to swing, commit to the motion, and execute, all before conscious thought has time to interfere. There’s no room for analysis. No opportunity to second-guess. The body knows what to do, and the analytical…

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