Two of the best golfers in the world recently said something that should stop every serious player in their tracks. Neither used the words mindfulness, presence, or flow. But that’s exactly what they were describing.
Pay attention.
Pebble Beach: February 2026
Collin Morikawa stood on the 18th fairway needing a birdie to win the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. In the group ahead, Jacob Bridgeman had hit his approach onto the beach, then watched it carom off the rocks and into the ocean. Rules officials. Lengthy discussions. A long walk back to the fairway. Another attempt.
Morikawa waited. And waited. Twenty minutes from the time he hit his tee shot to the moment he could finally pull the trigger on a 4-iron with the tournament on the line.
How did he spend that twenty minutes?
“Honestly, I just stared at the ocean. The last thing I wanted to do was think about how I was going to hit that shot. If I started thinking about it—’Okay, I have 220 to the front, 236 to the hole’—that was the last thing I wanted,” said Collin.
He paced back and forth to the water’s edge about ten times. Not to rehearse. Not to visualize. To get out of his own head and let the Pacific Ocean do what no practice swing could.
“You look at the ocean, and I think you forget about everything else in life.” 1
Then he hit one of the best shots of his career. He gives a good amount of credit to his sports psychologist, Rick Sessinghaus, who he spoke with throughout the tournament.
What Morikawa understood instinctively in that moment is something most golfers never grasp on purpose. You can’t think your way into not thinking. Trying to force yourself to stop analyzing just creates another layer of conscious interference—activating exactly the wrong part of the brain at exactly the wrong moment. Instead, he redirected his attention entirely. He gave his conscious mind the ocean, and let his procedural memory run the swing.
He didn’t manage the shot. He allowed the motion.
The Players: March 2026
At the Players Championship in March 2026, Scottie Scheffler—the world’s number one player for the better part of four years—was asked about managing expectations during a slow start to his season. His answer was almost offhand. “Your expectations of me are living week by week. My expectation of myself is almost more shot by shot.”
Shot by shot. Not tournament by tournament. Not even hole by hole.
Scheffler went further. He said he doesn’t dive deep into statistics, not because he doesn’t believe in them, but because he trusts how he feels more. He described rounds that looked terrific to the outside world where he walked away knowing something was off—and rounds that looked unremarkable where he felt completely dialed in. “My expectations are based around what I want for me mentally on the golf course,” he continued. “Being committed to what I can do, and controlling that aspect.” 2
That’s a man who has quietly built his entire game on his faith and process over outcome. He’s not playing against the field. He’s not even playing 72 holes against the course. He’s playing against the best version of himself, one shot at a time.
I believe what Scheffler is describing—without naming it—is what neuroscience calls procedural memory in action. When a motor skill is fully encoded, the brain doesn’t think about the motion. It produces it. The brain’s basal ganglia take over from the conscious mind. Neural activity actually decreases as mastery deepens. The brain works smarter, not harder. Scheffler has practiced the motion so thoroughly, for so long, that all he does is play the memory.
Here’s what connects these two stories. Scheffler has built a career on a mental framework and his faith. He lives inside it so naturally he barely has language for it. Morikawa found that same place in a single high-pressure moment by consciously choosing to step away from mechanics and trust something quieter. One is a habit. The other was a brave choice.
Both are pointing at the same thing: the motion you practice on the range is stored as memory in the neural circuits that produce it. On the course, the job isn’t to rebuild it from scratch under pressure. The job is to switch on the memory.
The instruction world spends most of its time on the mechanics side of golf, and that knowledge matters. But Scheffler and Morikawa are pointing at something the lesson tee rarely addresses. The ability to set the analytical mind aside when it’s time to play. The willingness to trust what you’ve trained rather than manage it in real time.
That’s not a talent. It’s a skill. And like every skill in golf, it can be learned, practiced and improved.
Practice the motion, Play the memory
That’s the part of golf no one taught you. The Swing to Flow process will help you quiet your mind and access your best golf. swingtoflow.com.
Notes:
1 Blackburn Rovers News: A United Kingdom Media Company. https://www.hitc.com/what-collin-morikawa-did-during-his-20-minute-wait-on-the-final-hole-at-pebble-beach/
2 The Athletic: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7105888/2026/03/11/scottie-scheffler-players-championship-mental-game/
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