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.
Think Above Par | Your Mental Caddy for Golf Mindset & Performance
How to Shoot a Specific Golf Score
•Kathy Hart Wood•Episode 78
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
0:00
|
12:21
if you tell yourself that you want to shoot a certain score...or NOT shoot a certain score, this episode is for you. I share with you how to shift your mindset to something more useful.
One of the hardest things you can do is try to NOT shoot a number. For example, you might want to NOT shoot higher than 80.
In this episode, I share some insight on why you want to shift this thinking and what the objective and focus ideally should be during a round.
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. Hello my golf friends, and welcome back to Above Par. I hope you're doing amazing, having a beautiful week, playing amazing golf, enjoying your summer, whatever you're doing, shooting all those great scores. Because that's what I want to talk to you today about is shooting a number, shooting a score. When you find yourself saying things like, I need to play well today, or I need to break 80 or 90 or 100, or I need to shoot 75 to qualify or 85 to qualify. When we start picking scores and picking numbers, when you hear yourself doing that, I want to talk to you about that today and how it's not useful for you showing up and giving and taking out most of your talent onto the golf course. I had to go through this when I was playing for, I came off playing for a living and I joined the LPGA as in their teaching club and teaching division, which is what it was called at the time, PGA, also like a club pro or teaching pro. You had to take a playing ability test, a PAT. And basically what it is is you going out there and proving that you're not a hack, right? They don't want people who shoot 120 or 30 claiming to be PGA or LPGA pros. They want to have people who can play to a certain level. So you have to shoot this number. Now, I had come off playing for a living and I hadn't shot around in the 80s in a while. And I think I had to break like 82 or 83. They just sign it based on the on the golf course. I was like, oh, this is not a problem. Right. So I go out and I'm playing and I'm plugging along and I get to like 14 and I start adding up. If I doubled in, like, would I still make it? I have no idea why I went there. I've never had to do that before when I play stroke play. You're that's just not the way your brain's designed to think about the score. And I start adding them up.
unknown
Right.
SPEAKER_00
So I'm like going, all right, if I went double, double, double, double, let's see, do I still qualify? Yeah, I'm still good. Then I make a bogey and I'm like, wait a minute. Okay, wait a minute. Let me do it again. Okay, so I've gone double, double, triple, double. Oh, I need all right, I need to make one more bogey and then the rest could be doubles. I'm like, what am I doing? It was the hardest round of golf I've ever played because I really stumbled in because my brain was starting to actually I intercepted that. I think I shot like 75 or 76 after I made a couple of bogeys, worrying about trying not to make a bogey, trying not to make a double. It was so interesting. But I hear so many amateurs do that when they talk about their golf games. They're like, you know what? If I just break 80, all I want to do is break 80 today. All I want to do is break 90 or 100, whatever your score is. If I go out there and if I shoot a 75, I should qualify. That should be good enough. I'm just gonna go out there and shoot 75. Or you might go out, I have a tournament today, I need to play well. I need to make a par. I need to not make a double bogey. I need not to make a triple bogey coming in. And I just want to share with you and talk a little bit about that today because it's not useful. It does not serve you. It's very challenging for your brain. I'm gonna go through and explain why it's not useful and some things that you can say to yourself instead if you're catching yourself trying to shoot a score or a number or break a score or saying that you need to do something on the golf course. So let's start with the first one. Like I need to play well. You don't need to do anything. You don't need to play well. And if you think about it off of the golf course, when you tell someone or someone tells you, listen, you need to go do X, Y, and Z. If you're a kid, you need to clean your room, you need to take out the garbage, you need to finish this project by four o'clock. You need to go pick up the kids. I don't know, whatever is in your life scenario. Anytime we hear need, there's pressure, and sometimes we're just like a little annoyed, depending on what it is. Right? Instant pressure with I need to. And I just want to mention by saying you don't need to do anything. Anything. To stay alive, you need to drink water and eat every once in a while. You can go without food for a long time. You don't need to pick up the kids, you don't need to take out the garbage, you don't need to finish the project by four o'clock, you don't need to clean your room, you don't need to do any of it. You want to do those things because you want to get a raise or you don't want the garage to stink or you want your kids to be safe, or you don't want to get in trouble by mom and dad. Right? We want to do those things. Whenever we hear ourselves saying, I need to do something, and just remember you don't need to do anything, but you want to. Why do you want to do it? And when you come from that energy, it's so different than I need to. I need to is pressure. I have to, I need to, that's pressure. I want to is totally different. It's much lighter. Okay, so when I share those people, they're like going, okay, fine, I want to play well today. I'm like, great. What day don't you want to play well? If today's the day you want to play well, tell me which day you don't want to play well. Which day don't you want to make a double bogey or not finish well or not get off to a good start? Of course you do. You want to hit every shot great. You want to play every hole great. It's just a given. But when you remind yourself that I need to play well today, it's not useful or serving you and your golf game. Basically, what you're saying is I need to play well today so that I can think blank about me so that I can feel good and proud and accomplished. Or you might be saying, I need to play well today so that I don't think I'm not good enough and that I suck so that I feel crappy and disappointed. That's really the end of that story, the end of that sentence. Right? So if I asked you why do you need to play well today, you're like, well, so that I can, you know, finish well in the tournament. Why do you need to finish well? It's always about how we get to feel, how you get to think and how you get to feel. What do you think you'll feel if you play well today? That's what you want. So if you go and say, I need to shoot a number today, I need to shoot 75, if I shoot 75, I'm good. Do you know how hard that is to actually go out there and shoot a number on purpose or break a number on purpose? If you could do that like by just snapping your fingers and saying that's what I'm gonna do today, if that was even a possibility, the PGA tour and the LPJ tour would look totally different every week. Like, why wouldn't they just so I could say I'm gonna shoot 63 every day, 62? There's so many different factors involved in golf. You could go out there and play amazing golf and not score well one day. You could play really crappy golf and score well the next day. You could get all great bounces one day and great lies, the weather being amazing the whole time around, the wind never stopping and gusting during your round. There's so many things that are out of your control when it comes to golf that you trying to control your number number is pretty challenging. It's putting extra pressure on yourself and it's not useful. And then the third one is it's like if I just break a number, if I just break a number today, I just all I want to do is not shoot 80. I'll take 79, I'll take 78, I take 77. I used to have this 76. If I shot 76, I felt incrementally better than if I shot 77. I don't know why. 77 just looked like I crossed that barrier up closer to 80. Right? It's one shot, but it made a huge difference in my head. It was because of the story I told myself in my head. At 76, I'm still pretty good. I'm okay. I'm acceptable. 77, kind of sucky. So why do you need to break that number? I do this with my clients a lot. So if I put up on this on the board, I shot 83 versus I shot 73, what story do I get to tell myself about each one of those scores? It's all about how you get to feel and what you get to say to yourself and how you get to treat yourself. Period. If I shoot 79, I get to feel good and I get to feel proud and I get to feel like I'm good enough, I get to say nice things to myself. If I shoot 81, then I get to tell myself that I'm a loser and I'm not good enough and that I suck and I'm never gonna get this game. And I get to feel crappy about myself. Like it's out of your control. And that weighing on your round, hanging out, that what's gonna happen, it's like getting a spanking at the end of the round. You're like, it's like when you know at the end of the round, I know spankings aren't. And now I got spanked, but I'm just gonna say it's like having to go and get the my dad used to make us go get the hairbrush. Okay, I'm just gonna tell a spanking story. I just, I'm in a different generation, so hang in there with me. And he used to do this slotted hairbrush. And if we did something bad, which I rarely did anything bad, that we got a spanking, he would say, go get the hairbrush. That walk to go get the hairbrush would be like the slowest walk on the planet. And I would cry like a like a fire engine, like the whole way there to get the hairbrush. And my dad would be cracking up laughing at our reaction to it, also not nice, but so it's that anticipation of having to go get the hairbrush that you're gonna get spanked, right? Is how we play golf sometimes where we know at the end of the round we're gonna give ourselves a spankin'.
unknown
Right?
SPEAKER_00
If we don't do everything really great out here, and if we don't shoot this number, we're gonna give ourselves a spankin' with that slotted wooded hairbrush. Listen, don't send in any notes to me. I know spanking is not in I'm a different generation. I got spanked, right? I got spanked. But anyway, that's what it's like. We can give ourselves these our own spankings. When you do that too, there's like a lack of appreciation for the game. You can't control a score. It's not useful. And you're putting pressure on yourself that is not serving you and not allowing you to take all your talent out there. When you're saying I need to play well, the rest of the sentence is I need to play well so I get to feel good at the end of the round. When you can sit there and feel good at the end of the round, then all that pressure gets off of you so that more of your talent can show up and you actually get to play better. The goal, when you go out there, if you notice yourself doing this, focusing on a score, focusing on a number, or putting pressure on yourself to play well, your goal is to make as many swings from calm, certain, and confident as possible. Just add them up.
unknown
Right?
SPEAKER_00
Be proud of that. Look at look at I'm managing more of my mind on more shots. If your score added up to 80 and you added up how many you were calm, certain and confident over, and if it's 40 of them, you're like 50% of the time, I'm calm, certain, and confident. Good for me. I'm working on it. I'm gonna work on that next 50%. And the more you do that, the lower your score is gonna get. Promise. Yeah, because the goal is just to hit every shot individually, putting as your best effort into it, adding them up at the end, slapping it up on the scoreboard and seeing how you fare amongst the other people who are trying to do the same things. Sometimes you're gonna fare better than other times. And then you wanna have your own back. You wanna know that you're not going to give yourself a verbal spanking at the end of the round. That's what having your own back means, is that you're gonna finish this the end of the round, you're gonna sign your scorecard, and no matter what that number is, you can feel disappointed, but you're not gonna beat the crap out of yourself. And when we can take that fear away at the end of the round, it's gonna be so much easier for you to show up. But when you're putting a score out there and saying, this is the number that I need to hit, you're going to be looking for different ways that you're gonna miss that number on the golf course. The minute you make a bogey, if you're saying I need to shoot 75 or 80, whatever the number is, right? You're gonna sit there and you make a bogey in your head, you're gonna start going, hmm, how many do I have left that I can make? Like I did with my PAT qualifier. Right, then you're gonna make a number one, now another one, you're gonna be like, oh crap, I only have this many more to make. And you're not being present, you're not thinking at the shot at hand, you're thinking about the result, right? And the hairbrush that's at the end of that round. So hard for you to take all of your talent out there. So hard for you to focus and be present when we start thinking about scores, when we start thinking about numbers. So be aware, my friend. Start listening for that conversation you had. It can be very subtle. You might not be saying it out. Sometimes you say it out loud, sometimes not so much out loud, but start paying attention to it because it's putting this little subtle pressure on yourself because of how you get to feel at the end of the round. And when you can have your own back, it's gonna be much easier for you to go out there and play from a calm and certain place on more shots, which means better golf all around. All right, my friends. If you need help with this, reach out to me at KathyHartwood.com and I hope you have a beautiful week. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Bye.
