Think Above Par | Your Mental Caddy for Golf Mindset & Performance
Serious golfer? You know you’ve got the talent—but your brain keeps getting in the way. Think Above Par helps you master the mental game of golf, stop overthinking, and quit worrying about what others think on the course so you can play calm, confident, and consistent golf every round.
If you’re a serious golfer who knows you’re leaving shots out on the course, Think Above Par is your go-to podcast for mastering the mental game of golf. Hosted by Kathy Hart —a former Tour player, Top 50 Teacher, and Certified Mental Coach—each episode helps you strengthen your golf mindset, manage pressure, and play calm, confident, and consistent golf.
You’ll discover why you underperform under pressure, how to stop overthinking your swing, and what to do when you’re worried about what others think on the golf course. Whether you struggle with performance anxiety, perfectionism, or negative self-talk, Kathy shares proven mental-game tools to help you unlock your talent, enjoy the game again, and lower your golf scores.
Learn how to think above par—so you can play below par. Subscribe now to your weekly dose of golf mindset coaching and start transforming your golf brain today.
Welcome to Above Par. I'm your host, Kathy Hartwood. I show you how to take more of your talent to the golf course without practicing harder, taking more lessons, or buying new equipment. I show you how to end the frustration of underperforming so you can start playing to your potential. This is where you are going to learn how to think above par so you can play below par. Let's get to it. This is the second part of a three-part series on golf emotions, right? How to make the best use of them, what to do with them, how we judge them, we deny them. That's what I talked about last week. If you haven't listened to the episode, I encourage you to do that because this episode is about the work. What do you actually need to do on the golf course? What is the ultimate goal for you to be able to manage your emotions on the golf course? So I talk about a lot about being in a state, a preferred state or a preferred emotion that allows you to move your body freely with all the talent that you have and allows you to think clearly. That gets us up in the prefrontal cortex so that we can make good decisions. For the most part, for most people, that's calm, certain, and confident. I call it the three C's. You decide for you. We're all different, but it's probably going to be a synonym of that. It doesn't matter to me as long as you're like, yes, I love this. I play great golf from there. Okay, you get to decide. Once you decide, then the goal when you're on the golf course is to hit as many golf shots from there as possible. Like be a scientist about it. Did you make some swings from anger or frustration or nervousness or stress? Or did you make more swings from calm and certain and confident? Because if you did that, then more of your talent was going to show up on the golf course. You might not score amazing. There's more to golf than that. There's lucky bounces. There is just the natural misses that you're going to have if they happened at a right time or not a right time. There's more to it than that. The goal is to just manage your mind as much as you can over each shot and allow your talent to come out. And then the game of golf takes care of a lot of the rest. So nowhere in there did I say not to be angry, not to be stressed, not to have pressure or disappointment or anxiety or fear or embarrassment. I didn't say not to experience those. We can't deny them. They're going to happen. They are not a problem. Negative emotion is never a problem. It's just vibrations. Doesn't mean we have to like them, but they're not a problem until we make them a problem with what we decide to think about them. So the goal is to experience that emotion. Let's say you hit a shot and you're disappointed or you're frustrated. Maybe you got a bad bounce and it kicked dead right or it plugged in a bunker and you're going to be ticked off. Of course. A little disappointed, annoyed, whatever it is. Of course you are. Now what are you going to do? You just filled up that balloon. If you listened last week, I talked about the analogy of balloons. Each emotion, a mix picture, each emotion, a balloon. And when you have an emotion, you're filling it up. It's there hanging out with you. You're going to attack it to the back of your shirt until you let the air out. So we're going to work through this together. You hit a shot, it goes up into the bunker, it plugs. You're ticked off. Now you're going to tell yourself, don't be mad. Or you stay mad. Those are the two things. Either you try and deny it or you stay mad because you don't know how to let the air out. And you're going to go to that next shot. And if you hit that shot from anger or frustration, it shows up in your body. You might swing harder or faster or squeeze tighter. You're not going to think clearly. You're going to make this big ass swing and you're going to go, oh crap, I forgot there was water over the green. And you're going to skull it into the water over the green and you're going to wonder why you make big numbers. Right? Your job, the work, is to notice I'm frustrated, I'm ticked off. And then you need to let that air out as best you can. And then you need to fill up calm, certain, or confident balloons. Going back to my analogy from last week. That's the work. It is not about being emotionless on the golf course. It's not about denying any of those emotions that you have. You can't, you can't. You're human. It'd be denying your humanness. You have a thought, it creates little chemicals in your body that create an emotion. You can't help it. All you can help is change in the thought. You get to decide and pick the thought. But most of us are so detached between our thoughts and our emotions. Some of us are totally totally detached from what we're thinking. Other people are totally detached from their bodies and their emotions. Right? And they've never made the connection between the two. That's where you're in charge. That's the work. That's the fun work. Sometimes just even realizing that you get to think whatever the heck you want so that you can feel whatever the heck you want is the biggest epiphany. But if you go through life, which I talk about, this letting the hamsters in the back of your brain drive the bus or drive the golf cart, you're not going to like where it goes, where it's going to take you. That's what it's about about being intentional and thinking on purpose, being onto your brain and what it's designed to do. We are working against it, so to speak, because of our primitive tendencies, the way that we always are looking for danger. And it's like just a little bit negative by design so that we survived. So for you to play your best golf on the golf course, I want you to picture a house and calm, certain, and confident, that emotional state in your nervous system resides in the center of the house. That's where you play your best golf. You might get a little bit towards the ceiling a little bit, you might get a little bit closer to the floor every once in a while. But if you stay in that range, you're pretty good. You're pretty on point. You're gonna be able to make some pretty good swings and think pretty clearly. So the job is always to be in the center of the house. Some of our emotions take us up to the attic. Our energy gets very fast. It's elevated. Excitement, anger might get up there for you. Pressure or stress might take you up to the attic where your nervous system is moving a little bit faster. Conversely, we can get down and low, we can be disappointed, we can be sad, we can feel sorry for ourselves, we can have pity, we can feel despair and hopelessness and doubt. And that takes us to the basement. And the basement is a slower energy. It slows ourselves down. We don't move as quickly. Our body is gonna be slower. We're gonna walk slower, our head's gonna go down. In the attic, we're walking faster. Our head's probably a little bit taller. We might be moving quicker. We're gonna swing faster over the golf ball, might squeeze tighter. That stuff's not useful. It's not very helpful for us taking out our most of our talent. So your work is to really, if you picture the house, is to notice where you are at any given moment. I say that hit as many shots as you can from the center of your house, whatever you decide that is. If you're up in the attic and you're a little elevated up there, how can you get yourself back to the center of the house? If you're feeling a little low and disappointed and doubtful and hopeless, how can you bring yourself back up to the uh center of the house? Like some simple things to do are just if you're up in the attic and you're moving very fast, slow yourself down, breathe a little slower, slow your breath down. You could hug yourself, squeeze your arms, all that stuff slows your nervous system down. Put your hand on your stomach, whatever. Try different things that work for you. But you gotta be aware. You gotta notice, like, oh, I'm like totally in the attic right now. I'm not gonna make a lot of great swings from here. I need to slow myself down. And then sometimes we'll hit some shots and we'll feel a little bit of disappointment and we'll be our energy is very low. We feel like quitting, we just want to go in. We don't want to be out there anymore. We might feel sorry for ourselves. We're gonna sit there and notice my energy is really low right now. I need to bring it up. So you could breathe faster, you could move a little bit quicker, you could jump up and down a little bit, get your energy going so that you can lift yourself up to the center of the house so that you can make some more swings from calm, certain, and confident. Your thoughts definitely play a role in that. Your thoughts are the ones that brought you down, right? Your thoughts can bring you back up, but sometimes we can just change our physical state in doing that too. That also is very useful. Slowing our energy down or lifting our energy up, depending on where we are. So, your goal when you go out and play golf is to stay in the center of the house as much as you can, as many shots as possible, calm, certain, or confident, or whatever you like. Notice where you are when you're getting yourself towards the ceiling or if you're totally in the attic. And of course, you're not gonna make your best swings from there because you're in a different energy, you're gonna move your body more uh quickly for the most part, or swing harder, right? And you're not able to think clearly. Same within the basement. You don't think as clearly, you don't make good decisions, you might not focus as much because you don't care as much, the energy is lower, tempo might get off. These are things that happen to us when we're in different parts of the house other than the center of the house. So when we go through life denying our emotions or judging our emotions, we're not helping ourselves get back to where we need to be. Just acknowledge it. I'm feeling really embarrassed right now, very disappointed, or I'm super ticked off. This is not a problem. It's just an emotion. I can get myself back to the center of the house. We don't do ourselves a service when we deny the emotions. Because when we do that, we're gonna stay in a different part of the house that is not serving us. And then we get super frustrated at the end because we're not taking all of our talent out there. That's why I always say, I'm like, your job is first to take the talent that you have right now. If you can manage your mind, like get yourself back in the house, manage your thoughts and emotions so that you can make your best swings and then keep working on your talent. Versus trying to go out there and have like this amazing talent and still not be able to manage your mind and your thoughts and get yourself back into your preferred state. Who cares? So much harder. Let's say if you only can take out 50% of your talent right now because you get in your own way because of what you decide to think and feel out on the golf course, and you're like, all right, well, I'm gonna up my ability, you're still only gonna take 50% of that out. You would have been better off managing your mind and taking 75 and 80% of your talent out there versus working super hard on up-leveling your talent and still only taking 50% off. Your net gain would be so much better if you could manage your mind. Do that and work on your golf game. And that applies for when you practice too. You being able to stay in the center of the house during your practice sessions allows you to learn faster. All right, my friend. So that is the work. Your work is to play as much golf from calm, certain, and confident, not to deny yourself or judge yourself when you get up into the attic or you're down in the basement. To stay in the center of the house. That is your job. That is the goal when you're out there playing golf. If you want to be ticked off and disappointed, all those things after you sign your scorecard in 18, fine. But your job when you're out there is to get back into the center as many times as possible. If it's challenging for you, that's why I encourage all my clients to practice it on and off the golf course because you're still a human off the golf course. And the work is for you to practice it all the time because when you do that, then you're gonna get better at it. It's getting faster and you're gonna be more efficient. And you're not gonna have so much drama over all these emotions when they show up. All right, my friends? That's the work. Get at it. Stay in the center of the house. If you need any help, reach out to me at kathyheartwood.com and I'll see you next week.
