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.
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Think Above Par | Your Mental Caddy for Golf Mindset & Performance
How to Hit Fewer "Bad" Shots
•Kathy Hart Wood•Episode 8
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How we describe our shots in golf can directly and indirectly affect our performance. In this episode, I share with you how your description of your score and your shots puts unnecessary pressure on your game.
Instead of focusing on the results, I talk about a new way of describing your golf shots and your score that helps you perform better.
Get on the waitlist for The Golf Brain Masterclass here:
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 friend. Welcome back to Above Par. So I wanted to uh discuss today about our thoughts about our golf and some of the terminology that we use and the pressure we put on ourselves for results. So I'm going to tell you a couple of stories and put it into a different context and see if you can see how this affects you and your golf game. So one thing I think in golf that we use vocabulary that is not very good for our golf esteem, I like to call it, right? Is just out of habit that we categorize things as good and bad. Those are the those are probably the big ones, right? Good shot, bad shot, good round, bad round. We don't really have much in between, right? So to speak, right? So anytime you're hitting a shot, you're hitting a shot and you're calling it either good or bad. That was a good shot. That was a bad shot. That was just okay. That's not very good. That was horrible, right? There's so many adjectives on it that make us feel good and make us not feel so good. So whenever we're out there playing golf and we're putting the pressure on ourselves to hit a good shot, we want to hit a good shot because it feels good to hit a good shot. When we hit a bad shot and we say, I hit a bad shot, we feel we don't feel so great. I first heard this phrase, good shot, good person, bad shot, bad person, by from Billy Harmon. And so my friend Jamie and I were playing mini tours and we would hang out in Rochester, New York at Oakill. I took lessons. Well, my dad was a golf pro, uh, played in a lot of pro events with Craig Harmon, who was at Oakill, and he sent me to him. It kind of outgrew my dad at one point, and he sent me to take lessons with Craig. So I hung out at Oakill in Rochester a lot with Jamie. She was a member there. So Craig's brother Billy, who caddied for Jay Haas, was at um the golf course a lot. And he would see my particular emotional roller coaster when I was out competing. I would have good days and bad days. You could see it in my face. Like I'd have a good round, I'd be happy. I have a bad round, I'd not be happy. And he would make the comment, good shot, good person, and bad shot, bad person. And then he'd walk away. Right. And I would sit there and I'd go, good shot, good person, bad shot, bad person, right? Good shot. I would repeat it in my head. I'm like, I knew it was like hitting a mark with me, but I couldn't get I couldn't get my head around it. I'm like, wait, what did he really mean? Wait, come back. Like, wait, explain that to me. I said, I can, I think you're right on something, but I don't know how to shift it or change it. And this is the difference. I think it was like good shot, I like myself, bad shot, I don't like myself. I hate myself. Or as my mom would say, that's a strong word. So I dislike myself, right? So good shot, right? I like myself. You know, bad shot, I don't like myself, right? I'm angry at myself, I'm mad at myself. Not that I'm bad or good because I always like I'm a pretty good person. So that part didn't resonate me with me. But this is really what happens. A lot of times when we hit a bad shot, we we're we're upset with ourselves, right? Especially since we label it being a bad shot or a good shot. What happens though is we end up putting so much pressure on ourselves to hit good shots that by the way, we get to define what is good and not so good, right? We get to define what is bad. It's totally subjective, right? There is no, there is no uh barometer for this or way to gauge it or measure it. It's totally up to you. You took a beginner, beginning golfer, then they would they could hit a golf shot and be totally aesthetic. I remember when I started teaching, I had just come off playing for a living and I started helping people with their game. And I had a beginner golfer, and she hit a shot, she hit a driver up in the air, and I think literally it may have gone 60 yards. And I kind of gave like puppy dog eyes. I'm like, oh, like I'm like so sorry. And she goes, That's the best shot I've ever hit. I had to totally change the way that I looked at golf from that standpoint because I was like, and what and where people got pleasure from golf because she was ecstatic, right? So how we define good and bad is totally subjective. We get to define it. But when we make good shots, mean that we are a good person or that it's an opportunity for us to be to like ourselves or love ourselves or be kind to ourselves. It puts so much pressure on our performance. So now we're standing over the golf ball. And if we hit a bad shot, that means that we're not gonna be so happy with ourselves and we're gonna beat the crap out of ourselves. That's a lot of pressure. That is like that's a lot of pressure. This is like I'm gonna feel crappy if I hit a bad shot. If I hit it over there to the left of the green, or if I hit in the bunker, that's an opportunity for me to talk really badly to myself and feel crappy. So then when we have that as a way of judging ourselves on our performance, it ends up putting so much more pressure on each shot. All right, are you guys following me? So I like to take away the good and the bad from the shots. I know it is part of golf vocabulary. We love to say oh, good shot or bad shot, right? It's just a shot. I just hit it, I hit a shot up there and it's 15 feet from the pin. That's it. Go chase it and go hit it. I hit a shot, it's in the bunker. It's neither good nor bad. It's just in the bunker. It's it's very hard for us to drop that vocabulary because it's so common and we hear it all the time. And it's but it it changes so much about how much pressure we put on ourselves over each shot and how we talk to ourselves after the shot, right? Golf is no fun if you're constantly beating yourself up over every shot that you claim to be a bad shot or rounds, right? So you go in and you have a good round or a bad round. How'd you play? It's horrible, right? Terrible. It was bad. I hated it. It was right. We feel bad when we say that. It feels crappy, it does not feel good. And then often I was like never, I would never say I had a good round. There was, I could always find something wrong with my round, right? When you go in and you turn in, like someone says, What did you shoot? Well, I shot 78, but I had seven three putts. Seven, right? Right. It's always a way of tearing up the round so that you can feel crappy, or for me it was for sure. We can feel like, you know, not so good, not so great. It's not a great way about going through golf. It's not a great way for you to go out and bring your best golf on the golf course. What I would love for you to try and do is go out and go on a little vocabulary diet, right? So you're gonna go out there and try and play golf without calling any shot good or bad or great or terrible or any of those. Just call it what it is. It's on the green 10 feet. It's in the bunker. You know, how'd you hit it? It's over there, you know, on the left in the rough. Now you have a chip. How'd you hit the chip? I left myself six feet. That's the end of the conversation, right? So that you can feel a little bit more neutral so that when you go up to that next shot, that you can go up and find yourself being able to get into a state where you can perform better. When you sit there and say, that was horrible. I hit a horrible shot. For you to go up, you got to get past all of that crappy feeling before you go up and hit that next shot. It's so much pressure, A, on our golf game, and two, puts a lot of pressure on you to be able to have the skill set to be able to get into the state that you need to be in to perform your best, right? We really, like I've said this before, you only have seconds or minutes to get back into what you how you prefer to be over the golf ball. And when you're feeling kind of down and feeling bad about yourself, it takes a lot more energy, mental energy to bring you back up so that you can perform over that next shot. So try to go through a round and see if you can take out the vocabulary of good and bad. Just state the facts. Where'd you hit it? I hit it over here, I hit it over there. Go chase it and hit it again. Where is it? State it that way so that you can come up with a little bit more of a neutral feeling throughout that round. So you're not having the ups and downs of the emotions when you're playing golf. So that's easier for you. It saves your brain a lot of energy, and it's easier for you to get into a state that you like. Also, after you play, just state your score. No, no story behind it, no good or bad. You just shot a number. I remember I played a tournament. I'm gonna leave names and places out of this one. I played in a tournament and I asked the pro, it was a very difficult golf course, and I asked the pro, I said, How'd you play? And he said, 83, and just looked at me in the eyes. 83. No facial change in facial expression, nothing. And it was almost an awkward silence as I was waiting for an explanation, which is what we typically do after we play around. Well, it was 83, but I hit it, you know, out of bounds four times. And I, you know, I stubbed my toe, and you know, we then we got slow play, and then the wind kicked up and the temperature dropped, right? We have all these stories about what happened, right? And he just looked at me, he's just, it was just 83. Like it wasn't good or bad, it was just what it is. It was just 83. And then he said something about something he had to do and walked away. It was really quite amazing to me. Like to the point, like I said, it was almost a little bit awkward, but it was so good, right? He didn't judge himself on his round. It wasn't good or bad, it wasn't great. He wasn't embarrassed, it was just a number. So when we put the pressure on ourselves, too, when you think about it, to play a score or sorry, to shoot a score where we'll feel good at like what's your number? I had I had people that I coached that would tell me that if they shot below 80, they were happy. If they shot above 80, they were not happy, right? Like, think about that. Do you do that? Do you have a number? Like if you're below that, you feel pretty good about it. If it's above it, you're not so great. I'm gonna tell you, mine was 77. I just thought 76 looks so much better than 77. But I always thought 76, it's okay. Like that's like pretty close to being decent 77. Oh, horrible, right? It makes really no sense, does it? Because it's just a shot. It doesn't really matter here or there. But I'm gonna be happy if I shoot under this, like, you know, imaginary number that I pick that's totally subjective, that I have all these thoughts about. And above it, I'm not gonna be happy. So you're giving away all of your emotion and your day and how much pleasure you're getting out of the game based on a score. Now you're gonna go out there and play and put all this pressure on yourself so that I can finish this round and feel good, right? Because we want all we want to do is feel good for most of the time, right? And okay, all the time, right? When do we would not want to feel good? We just want to go through life feeling good. We play golf because we want to feel good about playing golf, right? We want to score well because it feels good, but we do so many things during a round that gets in the way of you even scoring well, even if you have the talent. And this is one of them by putting pressure on your results, by trying to force a result so that you can feel good about your result. Now, I'm gonna take this to an extreme. And if you're a parent listening to me and you have kids playing, you can just kind of get a bigger picture on this. So a lot of times juniors will think that I need to play well so that my parents love me and like me and are proud of me. Right. If I make a par here, or if I make a birdie here, or if I shoot this number, my parents will be happy. Right. We do this to ourselves, but if you can imagine the pressure that junior has to be able to perform so that they or their parents would be proud of them, is not too dissimilar than what you do to yourself. But it's okay for us to beat ourselves up in the sense that because we're we we do this so often just by nature, right? But I just want parents, if you are listening, to just be very conscious that that is a lot of times what your what your kids are thinking, especially when they get results-based. It's because they want to shoot a number so that they feel good, but they also want to shoot a number so that someone else is happy. And it's a very, very difficult way for you to perform your best on the golf course. So go out there, try and take some of the vocabulary, the good and the bad, those adjectives out of the game. Just describe it as it is. And when you get off the golf course, just announce your number. There's no story behind it, no number of three putts or mistakes or penalties you had. It's just a number. All right. Good luck you got this. Talk to you next week. Hey, my friend, I wanted to share with you that my master class is opening back up in a few weeks. So you want to make sure that you get on the wait list so that you're notified when it opens up. This is a four-week program that I devised to help you manage your mind around the game of golf so that you can take more of your skills out onto the golf course. I hope you'll join me. Get on the wait list at KathyHartwood.com forward slash wait list. Let's make 2021 your best year ever.
