The Part of Golf No One Taught You

  • We often talk about “muscle memory” in golf. Grooving your swing. Pitch shots or putts you’ve practiced so many times they’re automatic. Repeatable motions you can trust under pressure. But your muscles don’t have memory. The proper term is “motor memory.” Memory lives in your brain—specifically in the neural circuits…

  • The Golf Labs robot can replicate Tiger Woods’s swing or a weekend hacker’s slice. Set the parameters, press start, and it delivers the exact same shot—perfectly—every single time. The Golf Labs robot has been the industry standard for testing equipment for over 30 years. It’s how manufacturers know if that…

  • You’re standing on the tee. The group ahead is still in the fairway. Five, maybe seven minutes before you can hit. What happens in your head? If you’re like most golfers, you find this annoying. A violation of your right to play when you’re ready. “What is that guy doing?…

  • The shot after a mistake is one of the most important ones of any round. You hit a poor shot. The ball finds the trees, or the water, or buries in a bunker. What happens in the next 90 seconds determines whether you save par or make a double. Most…

  • I hear golfers say to themselves while addressing the ball, “Commit to the shot.” Or, after a poor shot, “I didn’t commit.” Commitment is essential to skilled performance; full stop. But commitment is mental, not mechanical, which means it usually ends up at the bottom of a long list of…

  • 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.…

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