How to Play Your Best Golf

Ever catch yourself saying, "I just want to play my best today"? It sounds like a solid goal, right? But what does your best actually mean? In this episode, I break down why this common phrase can secretly add pressure to your game—and what to focus on instead.

I’ll walk you through: ✔️ Why this thought might not be as useful as you think
 ✔️ What your best really looks like (hint: it’s not perfection)
✔️ How to set yourself up to access your full talent on the course

If you’ve ever felt frustrated by not living up to your “best,” this episode is for you. Let’s redefine what playing your best really means so you can step onto the course with clarity, confidence, and a bit of freedom.

Unleash Your Golf self-paced program is available at:  https://www.unleashyourgolf.com

Mastering Your Golf Brain - A Guide to Self-Coaching

Mastering Your Golf Brain - The Workbook

Mental Golf Journal - A Range for Your Brain

Are all available at KathyHartWood.com/book

Private coaching starts with a Free Discovery Call here: 

Email Kathy at Kathy@KathyHartWood.com

Website: KathyHartWood.com

Transcript

Did you ever catch yourself saying, I just want to play my best today? Well, I'm going to talk about that in this podcast, whether that's a useful saying for you and exactly the steps you need to take to play your best golf. Ready? Let's go. 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 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. Hi, my girlfriend. Welcome back to Think Above Par. Hope you're having a beautiful week. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing the podcast with your friends. If you get a chance to give a review and a rating, I would really appreciate that so that other people can find the podcast as well.

I wanted to say hi to some of my international friends. I know I have listeners in Australia and New Zealand and England and Canada. I know that some of you have reached out to me. So super cool. Thank you for listening all over the world. Okay, so today I want to talk to you about how you play your best golf. And what I mean by that is the saying, one of those other thought errors, golf sayings that I kind of throw in here every once in a while is, I just want to play my best today.

Have you ever said that? Have you ever heard somebody say it? I just want to play my best. That's all I want from today. Not much. I'm not asking much. Just to play my best. All right, so I want to talk about that golf thought, that golf statement that we just use in the game as a general. Of course you do. Like, yes. Like, it's an objective for the day.

It's up there with the thought or the statement is, I just want to play well today. They're super similar, but they're not quite the same. You know, when people say, I just want to play well today? I'm like, what day don't you want to play well? And that goes with I just want to do my best. It's what day don't you want to do your best? But we get to define a few things with what is best as we define things with what is playing well.

Playing well usually means a score or a number. Doing your best might be something else. Saying to somebody that I just want to do your best. That statement is really, it's just assumed, isn't it? Doesn't everybody want to do their best? It's not like someone's going to go, oh, my gosh, today, Today's the day, okay? I'm going to let everybody know that today's the day that you want to do your best.

That's just not the way it works. I mean, we want to do it every day. There's not a day we go out and like, today I'm good with not doing my best. Or you might hear after a round where someone says, yeah, that just wasn't my best. Today I didn't do my best. Right? So I want to talk about three different points. I want to talk about why, what and how.

And we're going to clear up whether this statement is useful for you or not. I am going to say it is not a useful statement. It's just something that we say we don't think about in golf. We really never question it. Okay, so let's go. So why. Why do you want to play your best? Right? It's usually because you get to feel something or you get to avoid feeling something.

So I want to play my best because if I play my best, at the end of the day, I'm going to feel really good, I'm going to be proud. I'll be happy, right? Which implies that doing your best is the only way to be happy. Doing your best is the only way to have a nice day or enjoy the round. It also implies the opposite when you're saying, I just want to do my best, because if I don't do my best, I know what that feels like, and that feels horrible.

That's disappointment and that shame and embarrassment, and I don't want that. So it's like praying to the golf, please just let me do my best today so that I don't end up feeling all these negative emotions. That is also implying that shots or scores or situations on the golf course create your emotion of disappointment, shame, or embarrassment, which is not true. Right? This is where we give away our power.

So what's going to happen in that case is you're trying to prevent disappointment. You're going to put pressure on your golf game. It's almost a little pleading. There's not a lot of certainty in it. It's like a little hope in there. Hoping, I should say, hoping for something usually creates anxiety and fear because there's uncertainty involved. Creating hope is, you know, is a useful thing. Like that means it's possible.

But this statement implies there's a little Bit of, you know, uncertainty, fear, pleading with the golf gods, praying to the golf gods. So the first question I want you to ask yourself is, why do you want to play your best? Is it because how you're going to get to feel, or is it how you're going to get to avoid feeling? What are you going to make it mean if you don't play your best?

Because this is the reality. Golf and life are 50, 50. Let's just go through that assumption if you already haven't heard me talk about this. So you're going to spend 50% of your time or 50% of your events, let's say in the negative end of the spectrum and 50% in the positive end of the spectrum. We need this. We get this contrast. Otherwise we wouldn't appreciate either side.

We wouldn't know what good was if we didn't experience bad. Every day that you walk out the door is not a great day. Not every single moment of the day is awesome. We can go out and have a day and at the end of the day say, you know what? I had a good day. But in the middle of the day, there were a lot of things that weren't so great.

But at the end we get to say, yeah, it was a pretty good day. Then there's other days where I call them the red light days, right? Or the red light rounds, where you're just like, nothing went my way. Everything seemed to be going in the wrong direction. I hit every red light. Nothing was smooth. And we have golf rounds like that, too. And all that implies is that they all aren't going to be equally divided on any given day that you're going to exactly 50, 50.

You might have a day that's all a green light day. Today was amazing. Nothing could go wrong today on the golf course or off the golf course. It was a beautiful day. I want every day to be like that. But if you had every day like that, you'd end up not appreciating them, right? And some days they're all bad days. That balances out, too. So in the scheme of things, on the average over time, it's about 50, 50.

So it's not really realistic that you can do your best every single day. That would be saying, I want my green light day every single day. It's not realistic. But really what we need to do is we need to do the what. What is your best? Define it for me. Define it for yourself. You don't have to define it for me. Define it for yourself. What is your Best.

And this is where I think this statement gets us a little upside down. Because if I gave you 10 balls and you went to the range, your best might be the one that lands three feet from the pin, but on average, you might end up doing it actually one out of 30 times. If you went to the putting green and I dropped down a bunch of balls at 20ft, you know, you'd eventually make one that might be your best.

But the percentages or the chances and the probability of you making it maybe 10%. And what implying that what your best is, is means that you want to have those small percentages of each individual shot that you can do show up that one given day, right? I want all my best drives to show up. I want all my best approach shots, all my best chips, all my best bunker shots.

I want them all to show up on one given day. Even though the reality is, is that 50, 60, or 70% of your shots, you know, you. You miss, right? And depending on your handicap and level of golf, the severity of your miss is going to vary, right? So there's some expectation in there. You're not meeting yourself where you are. Where you are is what your data is at this given moment in time.

A snapshot of that, an average of that. Doing your best sometimes is hitting 50% of the fairways. Doing your best is 3. Putting twice around. That's your best. Doing your best might be hitting eight greens for the day. That's your best, because that's who you are. That's where your game is. That's what you do. Just because you can hit the green once doesn't mean you're going to hit it and repeat it every single time.

And yet that's the story that we create in our head about when we use that statement. I just want to do my best. I want all my best shots to show up on this given day today. And then I. I want him to show up tomorrow, too, right? And the next day and the next day. So let's redefine what your best is or make sure that you are very clear on what your best is.

And as you may have heard me say, I encourage you to go out and collect your data on the driving range, on the practice area. When you're in a relaxed state, when you're calm, certain, and confident, go out and hit 10 balls with each club in your bag. And do the math on it. Get your percentages. 10 is easy to do the percentages on, right? If you hit 7 out of 10 on the green with that club, you're 70%.

If you're calm, certain and confident on the golf course, that's what you can expect. On average, some days you might be 50%, some days you might be 80%. So you got to meet yourself where you are. You got to know where you are. Because we tee ourselves up for great disappointment and frustration because our expectations exceed reality, right? So know your reality, my friend. What actually is your best?

Okay? And then it comes to the ultimate question. How. How do you play your best? Right? And I kind of described it in the last one. When you go to the range and you're hitting shots from calm, certain and confident on the driving range or the practice range, if you're in that state, most people are. I know people who get stressed out on the range. So if that's where you are, that's not useful because you're not accessing your talent.

You're not thinking clearly. But let's say that you're swinging, you're pretty calm and relaxed, and you're in that place, and you're hitting to your talent level at this given moment in time, right? You hit 5 out of 10 drives that look like they're going to hit a fairway. Then your expectation, how you play your best to go out, which would be hitting seven fairways, by the way, seven out of 14, if there's four par threes, is 50%.

So then your expectation, your best for the day would be to stand over as many shots or drives, in this case as possible from calm, certain and confident, or confident. Confident or a useful state or emotion, so that you can access your talent. That's how you play your best. That's it. Right at the end of the round, if you did that, that was the best that you had that day.

So really, the definition of doing your best is to go out and hit as many shots from CCC as possible, add up your score, slap it on the scoreboard and say, that's the best I had today. And if where you are right now is that you can only hit 50% or 60% of your shots from calm, certain or confident, and that's what you did, that's your best, you might not be a player who can yet hit 70% of your shots from CCC, you're hitting still 40 to 50% of your shots from a place of anger or disappointment or pressure or shame or anxiety.

Not that you can't hit good shots from there. It's just not predictable. It's not reliable. You're not really going to access all your talent. So your best not only includes what you can do as far as your talent goes, but also what can you do as far as managing your mind. And once you know what your best is, what your average is, what you are, who you are right now, doesn't mean you're going to be there forever or you're going to keep working on this and evolving and changing and growing.

I hope that's what we're designed to do. But right now, meet yourself where you are. And at the end of the round, instead of being ticked off that you missed some shots, take an evaluation of how many shots did I hit from certain or competent, how many shots did I give myself a chance to access my talent and my skill set? And that, my friend, would be your best for the day.

All right, so if you go and you tell your friends, you know what? Today I just want to play my best. And you know that that means that you're going to go out there and try and hit many as many shots from a place where you can make your best swings and think clearly. And at the end of the round you did that, that would be your best.

All right, my friends, reframing that phrase that sometimes tease us up to put a little extra pressure on ourselves and tease us up for the at the end of the round to be a little bit more disappointed and shame ourselves. So take a look at the way that you use that phrase on the golf course. And if I can help you in any way you want, any coaching on this or you want to get involved in any, any of my programs, head to kathyheartwood.com

and you can find me there and all the programs I have going on right now. And make sure that you check out the links below to get access to some of my books and my workbooks and my mental golf journal. All right, my friends, have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Bye.