“Mistakes are not a problem. Repeating the same ones, is.”

Golf, and life, are funny. They give you the test first, and the lesson second. I think that’s why when someone does or experiences something for the first time, it’s a bit of a crapshoot. The reality is that there is hidden and unknown information in any first attempt.

When people try something f…

Read more

It has been a very busy summer (and it isn’t over yet). With that, I wanted to share some thoughts arounds handling ‘majors’ (whatever they are for you) more effectively.

Enjoy.

—

Play to play your best - not ‘get in’

Whether it's making match play, making the cut, or qualifying for the next stage, the moment your objective becomes simply getting in, your …

Read more

I’ve been trying to answer a simple question: What actually determines performance?

I think performance is more behavioral than psychological.

You don’t play your thoughts or emotions. Rather, your ability to behave effectively is constrained or enabled by the relations…

Read more

Just because you know what deserves your attention and you have clarity around what you are trying to create, it doesn’t mean that you’ll do it.

The hinge point - and the line in the sand that people either cross (or not) - is willingness.

At some point befor…

Read more

If attention is the gateway to performance, it can be helpful to think of intention as the direction you travel.

Once your attention is online and on time, the next question becomes: what am I trying to accomplish here?

At first glance, the answer seems obvious. In golf, the task is remarkably simple: hit the best shot you can at the correct target. Yet a…

Read more

“Control the controllables.” Sage advice, but what does that actually mean?

At this point, I believe that all we can really control in any given moment is:

• what we pay attention to,

• what our intentions are,

• what we do,

• and the manner in which we do it.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a closer look at each of those four things.

Let’s start with attention.

Th…

Read more

What actually qualifies as a ‘good shot’? It’s an interesting question.

Before we can really answer questions of quality, we need to understand what we are pursuing. What is the purpose of a shot?

Most golfers think they have a ready answer. Hit it solid. Hit it online. Hit it close. That’s definitely a big part o…

Read more

Problems tend to arise when we make our behavior conditional.

When our actions become dependent on something needing to feel a certain way, or circumstances needing to be a certain way, we introduce instability into our performance—especially when:

• The conditions are transient and not always ava…

Read more

We operate in a probabilistic world. Nothing is ever 100%, and almost nothing is 0%. On each shot, probability emerges from the interaction between strategy and our own inherent variability.

From where I’m sitting, I think that’s the task of the golfer: to assess probability as accura…

Read more

We’ve all played poorly. It stinks.

When we face a bad day, conventional wisdom is to find the highlights, and then forget about it. Emotionally, that advice can help. But from a learning…

Read more

I’ve been watching a lot of golf lately. Some great rounds, some not so great ones. More than anything, I keep noticing the same pattern: players playing well, doing most things right — and still signing for what feels like the highest score they could have shot that day.

It’s rarely drama…

Read more

Grab a quarter and flip it 25 times. But don’t flip it aimlessly — try to get it to show tails as many times as possible.

Given that task — tails as often as possible — what could you do to make tails appear more frequently?

You could experiment mechanically: apply more or less energy, try to control the number of …

Read more

How could you know something will happen a certain way before it happens?

That impossibility is why insurance buildings are huge—and why Vegas casinos always win.

When you ask someone about foresight outside of sport, the answer is usually obvious. We can’t know how somethin…

Read more

I had the good fortune of traveling to Argentina with a couple of athletes for the South American Amateur.

Events like these are valuable. They offer a behind-the-curtain look at how athletes travel, prepare, and perform. You get a sense of their level of independence, their flexibility in the face of newness and ambiguity, and—inevitably—the current sta…

Read more

Most conversations about junior golf development start with certainty. This one starts with the opposite.

I’ve had the chance to read (and re-read) Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned. While it’s a manifesto on achievement written by computer scientists, it’…

Read more

I love a passage from The Psychology of Money that speaks to a tension most people feel but rarely name well.

Read more

“I don’t feel comfortable.”

It’s something I hear from young players and experienced ones alike.

Take a par 4 with out-of-bounds left and a penalty area right. When you actually look at the hole objectively, there’s roughly 70 yards of real estate between the two—almost three tennis co…

Read more

Problems tend to arise when we make our experience or behavior conditional on certain events occurring or circumstances being a particular way—especially when those conditions are transient or outside our direct control. When that happens, our pursuit of what matters becomes dependent on things we cannot consistently produce. We end up in a loop where our behavior is governed by something other than our own volition.

The if-then or when-then loops often sit at the core of performance difficulties. Beneath them usually lives a belief that some outcome must occur—or must be avoided—because its consequences feel permanent, pervasive, and deeply personal. (More on that later.)

Read more

Last night, I shared a post on Instagram from Steve Magness where he was talking about the arrival fallacy — the belief that once we get the big win, once we reach the thing we’ve been chasing, then we’ll finally be happy.

Been there. Suffered from it (still do).

The post — along with some comments from others — got me thinking about achievement, success,…

Read more

When you really think about it, when competing, the core task of golf is both decidedly simple and incredibly stable: hit the best shot you can at your target.

Why then does it seldom feel so simple? What creates all the friction?

I think it’s important to differentiate between the task …

Read more