Think During Your Routine, Not Your Swing

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. They taught me a lot.

Doug hit a tee shot on the 12th hole he was not happy with. His immediate reaction was almost nothing at all. Then he calmly said to me, “My college coach once told me, Think long, think wrong.”

You’ve seen it happen—maybe to your playing partner, maybe to yourself. You go through your pre-address routine then step up to the ball, There’s a pause. A thought arrives. You adjust. Another thought. Another micro-adjustment. The club feels wrong. Your stance feels off. You’re thinking about your backswing, your grip pressure, that bunker on the right, whether you’re aimed correctly, if this is the right club after all.

By the time you finally swing, you’re a mess of conflicting thoughts and tension. The ball goes exactly where you feared it would. Or worse.

This is “Think Long, Think Wrong” in action.

Why This Happens

Your conscious mind is not built for real-time athletic performance. It’s slow, analytical, and loves to second-guess. It’s excellent for planning your strategy from 150 yards out. It’s terrible for executing the swing once you’ve committed.

The longer you stand over the ball, the more opportunity your analytical mind has to interfere. Doubt creeps in. Your body tenses. The smooth, integrated movement you’ve practiced fragments into a spiral of mechanical thoughts.

This is the opposite of where you want to be. Your best golf emerges when conscious thinking steps aside and lets your intuitive mind take command. Your analytical mind observes but doesn’t interfere. There’s no commentary, no correction, no second-guessing. Just action.

The Research

A European Tour study analyzing over 22,000 shots found that golfers with consistent, efficient pre-shot routines made significantly more cuts and could add hundreds of thousands of euros to their annual earnings. The key word: consistent. Not long, not elaborate—consistent.¹

Research comparing elite and recreational golfers reveals a striking difference in what happens over the ball. Elite golfers focus on a single cue—the back of the ball, the rhythm of their stroke, a specific target. Recreational golfers stand over putts with multiple mechanical thoughts running simultaneously. The difference shows in the results. ²

Studies on motor performance have found that greater time spent thinking about an action correlates with worse task performance (Flegal & Anderson, 2008). Your brain is processing so much conscious information that it interferes with the trained movement pattern you’ve developed through practice.³

University of Chicago researchers studying performance under pressure found that high-pressure, anxiety-producing situations—like overthinking a decision—lead to lower performance on cognitively demanding tasks (Sattizahn, Moser, & Beilock, 2016). The repetitive thoughts and self-doubt consume working memory that should be directed toward execution.⁴

This isn’t speculation. It’s documented across peer-reviewed studies in sports psychology (Christianson et al., 2021). Standing over the ball too long creates the exact conditions that degrade performance: anxiety, divided attention, and interference with automated movement patterns.⁵

What To Do Instead

Develop a consistent pre-shot checklist with a short time limit. Decide on your shot, then run through your checklist before you are ready to address the ball. Then step up and go. No pause. No extra thoughts. Commit and execute. No one does this better than Ludvig Åberg. Watch him.

If you find yourself standing over the ball with multiple swing thoughts cycling through your mind, step away. Reset. Start your routine again. But this time, trust that your body knows what to do.

The range is where you work on mechanics. The practice green is where you groove your putting stroke. But on the course, your job is to get out of your own way and let the motion happen.

Think brief, find relief.

Think during your routine. Not during your swing.

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Learning to quiet your mind over the ball is just one element of playing golf in a flow state—where mechanics, mindfulness, and intuition work together seamlessly. For a complete system that shows you how to get there, check out Swing to Flow: A Mindful Approach to Better Golf.

Sources:

1. European Tour & RSM Consulting study on pre-shot routines: https://www.wickedsmartgolf.com/routine
2. InnerDrive research on elite vs. novice golfer focus: https://www.innerdrive.co.uk/blog/pre-shot-routine-tips/
3. Flegal and Anderson, 2008. Overthinking skilled motor performance: Or why those who teach can’t do: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/PBR.15.5.927
4. Sattizahn, J., Moser, J., & Beilock, S. L. (2016). University of Chicago study on working memory and performance under pressure. Referenced at: https://asana.com/resources/analysis-paralysis
5. Christianson, P., Hill, B., Strand, B., & Deutsch, J. (2021). The wandering mind and performance routines in golf. Journal of Human Sciences, 18(4), 536549.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355989027_wandering_mind_and_performance_routine_in_golf