How to Quit Focusing On Your Golf Results

It is challenging in golf not to focus on your results whether a shot, a putt for birdie or your score. You want to quit focusing on your golf results.

In this episode, I share with you on how focusing on your results does NOT help you perform better. I discuss how you can't control your results in golf and how, if you try to, it works against you.

I share a few things that you CAN control in your game so that you can start taking more talent out to the course.

https://MasterYourGolfBrain.com

https://KathyHartWood.com

Article on Lee Westwood

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

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, and welcome back to Above Par. I wanted to talk to you this week about results-based golf, where we focus a lot on our results, where we focus on our score, we focus on the shot at hand. We say things to ourselves like, I need to make this, I have to make it. We put that extra pressure on ourselves where we make the results so much harder to achieve. If you've listened to one of my other podcasts, I talk about a formula that I use where we the results is actually at the bottom of that formula. And we go about it backwards. We focus on the results. We focus on taking all these actions and steps where we try very hard, we take lessons, we worry and think about our mechanics over the golf shot. We're focused on things that we think are going to produce the results. We start at the bottom of that formula and we don't even pay attention to the top part of it. And that's why it's so much harder to play consistent and take your talent out on the golf course. Course, being results-based, focusing on your score is a very hard way to play consistent golf. It's a very hard way to play your best golf, but it's what we think we're supposed to do when we play, right? We're like, yes, I want to shoot a certain number. Yes, I want to make that putt. I want to hit it in the fair way. And I want to talk to you today about ways that you know that you're doing it right or to your advantage and ways that you're actually hindering yourself. So a few obvious ways that it shows up for you on the golf course is in putting, right? When you have one of those short putts that I really need to make this three-foot putt goes through your head, right? Or that you want to make a putt very badly for birdie when it shows up. Where on any other hole, if it was just for par, you wouldn't have that pressure on yourself. We think this is what we're supposed to do, right? I want to make a birdie for sure, right? So but we stand over that putt and we put so much pressure on ourselves that we don't really focus about the task at hand. We don't think about our stroke, we don't think about our routine when we're standing there. We're so focused on the results that we show up with not the same swing that we normally make or not the same stroke that we normally make. Think about chipping. When we go to hitting a chip shot or a short chip shot, if your thought is, God, I really want to hit this close, like so that I have a tap in. I always thought that. I mean, I do want that. I want that as a result. But if we stand over that chip and think I need to hit this close so that I don't have to putt, right? So that I have a chip in, we're going to get tighter. We're going to get more focused on the results. We're not going to show up with our best chip shot, right? If you're if you stand over chip shots and you really struggle, which a lot of people do with tension that gets in the way of those shots, we don't have very good feel, we're not very relaxed, we end up hitting some really ugly short shots. It's because we get so focused on the result. We're not focused over what we're supposed to do over the golf ball. Bunkers are a huge one in this. Bunkers, my friend, are very unforgiving. They don't like you showing up with tension. They really don't care. All they care about is that you swing as relaxed as you can in that shot. And what we do is we think so many thoughts like, I really need to get this out. I hope I don't leave it in the bunker. I hope I don't skull it out, right? I hope I don't make a bad swing because the miss is so dramatic in a bunker, right? We end up hitting some really ugly shots when we get up tight or we try too hard to help the ball out. Right? Your the bunker is really one of those places that you just have to relax as much as you can and take a swing that's similar to the grass. Not that I'm giving you any mechanical advice, but you know when you stand in that bunker and you're tight, you're not, or you're trying to help it, you're not going to make your best swing. And when you don't make that that swing, you get a really bad result. Right. And we did that, we stand in those bunkers that way because we're worried about the result. That's where it's kind of like this double-edged sword. We want a good result, but the more we focus on that result, the worse the results get. This shows up too when we're just trying to hit a green. We want to get it over the water, right? We're worried about it going in the water. We're worried about the result while we're trying to make the swing, and we're not going to show up that way. That language shows up for you more in the context of I need to hit it on the green, I have to hit it on the green, or I don't want to hit a miss. I don't want it to go in the water or the bunker out of bounds or all those things. You're putting pressure on yourselves because on yourself and your swing because you're worried about the result. Now, the biggest thing that most people do is worry about score, right? We get ready results based on our score. We want to shoot a certain number. We want to break 80. We want to break par, we want to break 100, whatever your number is. Or we stand on a hole and we want to shoot a number on that hole. We want to make birdie or par, right? We don't want to make a double. When we go to that thinking, right, it's just full of pressure and we can't show up that way. This is the thing, my friend, you can't control your score. And we think we can, right? And we put so much pressure on ourselves because if I shoot 80, I'm gonna feel so much better, or I break 80, I'm gonna feel so much better that if I shoot 80, right? And that pressure you're putting on yourself based on the result is making it harder for you to get the thing that you actually want. It's backwards a little bit, right? One of the hardest rounds of golf I've ever played in my life was when I had to um play in the playing ability test for the LPGA when I joined their division of the teaching and club pro division, which they've changed the name now, but that's what it was called then. So the way a playing ability test goes is that they give you a number that you have to beat. And if you beat that number, you pass. If you don't beat that number, you fail, right? So there's a certain score out there, which is what a lot of people do to themselves in their heads on shooting a certain number. I have never done that in my life until that moment. I had just come off playing for a living. I don't think I had shot in the 80s, and I couldn't remember how long it had been when I was playing for a living. I had some bad rounds, but I don't, I don't, I couldn't remember when I shot in the 80s. And I had to break 83. I was like, okay, that's totally doable. 83. I haven't shot that in forever. Not a problem. So I go out and I'm tooling along, playing my normal golf, and then I got to, I think I had four holes left. Maybe I made a bogey. I don't know what triggered this thinking. Maybe I made a bogey on uh on 14 or something. And so I'm standing on 15, I'm going, okay, so if I go double, double, double, double, if I double in, I can still make it. Okay, I'm good. Right. Then I make another bogey and I'm like, oh my God, okay, wait a minute. I can go double, triple, double, double. I'm like, what am I doing? It was crazy the where my brain had gone. That is totally not the way to play the game, right? I was starting to make bogeys when I hadn't made them, when I started focusing on the number that I needed to produce. I was putting so much pressure on the result. I was putting pressure on my game not to make mistakes, right? I was not showing up over the golf ball. I started steering the ball around the golf course to kind of prevent making mistakes. And we do this to ourselves when we become results focused. So the thing is, is what can you control? Because you can't control your results. All you can do is show up the way that you best perform, the way that you best show up, and the results will come. So let me give you an example of this. Lee Westwood has played some amazing golf over the last two weeks of the of the recording of this podcast, right? He's played some amazing golf. He's turning 48 this month, right? And we kind of haven't seen him in a while, right? He kind of went went away. And he looks like he's having an amazing time out there. He's smiling, he's having fun, he's enjoying himself, and he's playing great golf. Like, how can that be? Who does that? No one's smiling on the golf course when we watch golf on TV, not so much, right? So these were some of his thoughts that he had, and I just want you to listen to them. This is from Golf Digest online. He made the comment: I had fun out there. I felt calm and in control. Right? All he can control is how he feels out on the golf course. That is what you do control. He then went on to say, I don't treat golf as seriously. I probably have the attitude of 20-year-old Lee Westwood through the 30s. I started to treat it a bit too seriously and worry about what other people thought or look at trouble on the golf course. Now I just sort of stand up and hit it. And if it goes well, it goes well, and it generally does. Totally different. He's not focused on his results. He's also not focused on what other people think, which I had in another podcast, right? He's showing up as his best self, having fun and being relaxed, relaxed and not focused on the results. He's focusing on what he has control of. So let's review what you have control. First, I want you to ask yourself, what can you control? You answer that for you. Let me share some things that I think you can control, even though I don't know you, but let me share some things that I think you can control. One is you can control your pre-shot routine. You can control how you walk into that golf ball, the steps that you take before you swing. Your pre-shot routine has a purpose, right? It sets you up with the foundation of your swing. It takes care of your grip, your posture, your alignment, your ball position, and your width of stance. We do all of that, that foundation to our swing in our pre-shots routine. You want to have a very fine-tuned routine down to where I had mine timed when I was playing for a living. And I did it whether I thought it was slow or fast, it was always about 14 seconds. And I was very consistent. If I got thrown off of my routine or something happened, I would start all over. Your brain likes that. Your brain likes that certainty of your routine. It helps calm you down a little bit. It gives yourself that opportunity to control some thoughts in that space as well. The next thing that you can do is you can control your breathing, right? If you want to really calm yourself down over certain shots, you just breathe a little bit more deliberately and deeper and slower. That definitely can help. That's a tactic that you can do. You can control what you say to yourself. This is what Lee Westwood is doing for sure. He's controlling what he's saying to himself. He's controlling what things matter, like what other people think don't matter as much. What he scores or what his shot does doesn't matter as much. He's controlling what he's thinking. Listen, you're gonna have some thoughts come to your brain that you're like, holy moly, I don't want that shot or don't want that thought. Like the ball's gonna go in the water. What happens if I top it? Those show up. That's what our brain does. You don't have to listen to it. Just because it's offered up to you doesn't mean you have to listen to it. You get to pick and choose what you think and start practicing thinking things that help you feel better over the golf ball, less tense, less stressed because our thoughts control our emotions, which is what you also control. We often think that we are at the effect of the situation in front of us, that we are at the effect that tension is because there's people there, that our stress is because there's water, that we're nervous because we're playing in a tournament. This is not true. It is because of what you're thinking and saying to yourself. But most of us go through the golf, the game of golf kind of oblivious to what we're saying to ourselves. We're not even paying attention, right? We then and when that happens, you really are at the effect of every single situation out there. You cannot control your score from the standpoint of you can't control your bounces, you can't control your lie, you can't control whether you hit a little bump on the green, you can't control who you're playing with or the weather. There are so many elements that you can't control. There's a little bit of surrender to your results when that comes. All you can control is how you show up over the golf ball. You can control your routine, you control what you think, you can control what you feel, and then you just let the results happen. Then you have a shot of showing up your best. You're gonna make that swing, like um Lee Westwood said, I just make the swing and look at the results. Go check it out. He made the comment too that it that he wasn't disappointed at all in one of his finishes. He said, I really enjoyed the final day. Sometimes you can't control whether you win tournaments or not. You really can't. Right? You can't control what other people do. All you can control is how you show up over that golf ball. So I want you to give it a try. Stand over a couple shots next time you go out and play and just focus on your routine, focus on having a thought that is going to help you feel more relaxed. This is how you know a thought is not serving you. If you stand over the ball and you think, I need to make this putting and you feel pressure, that thought does not work for you. If you stand over it and say, I need to make this putting, and it helps you feel more focused and motivated, fine, you get to keep it. It's working for you. That's awesome. But everybody is different. You want to pay attention to what you're thinking and how it's showing up for you over that golf ball. You know, they say that there was a stat that I saw on a show about um the history of swear words with Nicolas Cage, and it popped up on the screen and I wrote it down. It says when you swear, your grip pressure goes up 5%, which I thought was a kind of a random thing to have on this show, but I related it to golf. Now I'm not saying that you're swearing, and that doesn't mean that you have to swear for your grip pressure to go up, but when we swear, right, we get a little more aggravated or ticked off or tighter and our grip pressure goes up 5%. That shows you that what you say affects how your your body, the tension in your body. So this is what I want you to do when next time you go out and play. I want you to fine-tune your routine. Make sure you're doing the same thing over every golf ball, the same number of steps, the same waggles, the same number of times that you look up at the target. I also want you to focus on what you're thinking. Make sure that what you're thinking is serving you and works for you as far as how you feel in your body over that golf shot. And then just surrender a little bit and swing and see what happens. See if your results don't get better. Tried, you're gonna catch yourself, you're gonna start focusing on the score, especially if it's been a habit, right? You're changing a whole new way of thinking about it. It's gonna take some time to do that. It's gonna pop up and just bring yourself back to being very present over the shot with what you can think and feel at that given moment in time. Give that a try and see if your results don't change. All right, my friend, I will talk to you next week. I want to make sure that you know that my master class is open. That is where we walk through these steps that I talk about in this podcast. I help you manage your thoughts, your emotions on the golf course around the game of golf so that you can perform better. So if you're interested, make sure you head over to masteryourgolfbrain.com and I hope to see you in class.