Think Like Rory: 6 Mental Game Moves You Can Use Today

In this episode, I’m breaking down what Rory actually said after winning the Masters—and more importantly, what it means for you. Because here’s the truth: what Rory is doing to manage his mind is the exact same work you're learning here on this podcast.

You don’t have to be a tour pro to use these tools. You just need a brain (check), a love for golf (double check), and a willingness to practice (triple check).

This episode is your reminder that:
 ✅ You’re not behind
 ✅ You’re not broken
 ✅ And you are 100% capable of training your brain just like the best in the world

We’ll walk through 6 specific things Rory shared—and how you can use each one in your own game:

1. Remind Yourself Who You Are – Confidence starts with identity.
2. Have Your Own Back – Trust yourself to handle any situation.
3. Use Power Phrases on Purpose – Don’t wing it. Write them down.
4. Make Mistakes Neutral – Two double bogeys? No problem.
5. Play for a Feeling, Not a Score – Set your emotional goal first.
6. Battle Your Brain, Not the Course – Stay in the moment—again and again.

If you play golf with a human brain, this episode is for you.

🎧 Listen in and remind yourself: you’re doing the work, and it’s working.

💪🏻 Get 50 Power Phrase for the Course HERE

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

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Email Kathy at Kathy@KathyHartWood.com

Website: KathyHartWood.com

Transcript

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. Welcome back to Think Above Par. We are just post the Masters. If you're listening to this live or you're coming back to it, it doesn't matter. I am sure if you're in the golf world, you watched because to me it was. It's okay. It's the holy golf day of the year. That's what, that's what I tell my kids. I said, are you watching the Masters?

Wherever they are, and they're not really big golfers, but I said, this is the holy golf day. This is the holy day for golfers is probably the better way to say it. And descendants of golfers, so I shame them into putting it on tv. But anyway, it was a fantastic Masters. Hey, my golf friends, welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is going to be a fun one, especially if you watch the Masters.

This is the holy day of the year for golfers. The golf holy day. I don't know, what do we label it? Anyway, it is to me, I love Sunday at the Masters and this one did not disappoint for sure. And if you're listening to this podcast, you likely watched it or know all about it. And what I want to share with you here is the mental nuggets that came out of the interviews from the Masters.

And I'm really going to focus on Rory because he was really vulnerable and open and honest. And there's so many great things that I want to bring your attention to in case you missed it. And the best part is that everything he said lines up with what we talk about here every week and what I talk about with my coaching and what I talk about in my programs.

It's actually like he's in one of our coaching calls. So if you're ever wondering, does this mindset work really matter, I'm here to tell you it's just not useful. It's championship level. It's what tour players use. It's what every golfer use. If you have a brain, you're using this. So let's break it down. Okay, so just to be clear, this isn't about me just loving all Over Rory.

I was rooting for him. I also did have him in a little pool. But you had to feel for the guy, right? It was a big event for him, especially after the Open last year, Grand Slam stuff. But this is about me using him as an example to show you some of the tools that you're learning here, that they're being used by some of the best golfers in the world.

And Rory's interviews were just filled with mindset moments that I guarantee you've heard me say before. And what that means is that you're not behind, you're not broken, and you're not alone. You're doing the work that tour players are doing. And today I'm going to show you exactly how. Okay, so what I want to do is I want to go through five mental lessons that he shared in interviews.

The things that my ear can pick up. And maybe you missed, maybe you didn't, but maybe you missed him. And we talked about this in my membership, where we dive in deep with all this mental work. People ask questions. I talk about different topics. And this was the topic last week. We went through all of them. I played the audio live, but since it's secondhand audio, I really was recording it off the tv.

It's probably not gonna. It's not gonna play very well here on the podcast. So I'm just gonna read some of the lines and quotes that really were impactful, and I'm going to show you exactly what he did in those moments relative to the stuff that I talk about here on this podcast. So you may have heard him say over and over again that I'm the most complete version of myself as a golfer.

And what he's doing right here is he's reminding himself of who he is. Rory didn't wait for the round to tell him how to feel. He decided ahead of time. He blew up his confidence bubble. If you remember the episode on that, from the inside, he was reminding himself of facts, that he actually believes that self talk with a purpose. He was being intentional. Right? That sentence feels good, builds up his confidence.

It reminds him that he is the most complete version of himself as a golfer. He is at that right moment right now. It's the perfect time for him to win the Masters. So your takeaway from this is that you want to start your rounds from identity, from a place of who you are as a golfer. I'm a player who can handle anything. Today, my game is exactly where I need it.

And then your brain will go out and look for proof of that all right. The second thing he did was he said, no matter what situation I'm in, I'll be able to handle it. Okay. This is having his own back. This is part of what I talk about a lot in this podcast, is you got to have your own back. That's what helps you commit to shots and trust yourself, knowing that you're not going to beat the crap out of yourself.

Right. He believes in himself being able to handle anything that comes his way. He wasn't promising perfection, he was building trust in himself. This is next level mental prep. Not I won't mess up, but if I do, I'll figure it out. So many times we go into the round saying, please don't mess up today. Don't have any blow up polls. He was like, not a problem. If it happens, I'll figure it out.

I'll handle it. I have my own back. I know how to manage myself. So your takeaway from that is that confidence isn't about being flawless. It's not about preventing mistakes. It's about knowing that you will recover and having your own back, AKA not beating the crap out of yourself. Okay. So the third one, he talked about having phrases in the back of his yardage book to look at to remind himself during the round.

I have what I call 50 power phrases, caddy phrases that I share with people. If you want it, I'm happy to share it with you. There'll be a link in the show notes. There's just a list of things that you pull from. Find things that resonate with you. And what he talked about was they're really nothing special. They're pretty much your stereotypical kind of sayings. But I encourage you all to write down some of your intentions for the day and I encourage you to write down thoughts that you like to hear.

I call them catty phrases or power phrases. Because what happens when you're playing golf and when you're a little nervous and you're anxious and for sure, there's a lot of outside stimulation and distractions while he was playing over the course of four days, let alone just the last day, and you can't remember what you like to hear. And so being able to see it visually and going, oh, yeah, that's a good reminder.

You don't want to take the mental energy to say, okay, what was that thing that I like to tell myself? Because I promise you, when you're freaking out or you're stressed out, you're not going to be able to remember. You're going to Go blank. So I always encourage people to write things down. You might not have a yardage book, but just put it on an extra scorecard or a note card, something with stock paper so it's not making a lot of noise or get or deteriorating inside of your bag, and put it at a place that you can easily access.

I am not a big fan of you going to the phone to find them in your notes or anything like that. The reason is because you open that up and there's so many different distractions on there. Might have gotten some messages and some emails. That takes your brain off of what you want to do. And so your takeaway is don't wing it. Write down your power phrases before the round.

Write down your intentions and put them on a scorecard. Glance at them when your brain goes sideways. All right, the fourth one, he made his mistakes neutral. He said, I wasn't going to let two bad holes dictate the narrative for the week. This was from the first round. He took two double bogeys, and instead of spiraling out of control with his mind, he made them neutral. He made them neither good nor bad.

It's kind of like a goldfish with them. He didn't give them extra airtime. So your takeaway and what I talk about on this podcast is making things neutral. Don't let your brain turn a mistake into a meltdown or get dramatic about it or create a big story and a narrative as quickly as possible. Make it neutral. Make it dictate your round, anything about you, anything about the next couple rounds.

What happened, happened. You get to decide what it means next. Okay, the fifth one, he played from a feeling, not a score. And I talk about this if you're. If your objective is to go out and shoot a number, you're going about it the wrong way. He said, if I can go home and say that's how I want to feel when I play golf, that's a win. So what that means is he wasn't chasing a number or a result.

He was chasing a feeling. Probably calm, certain, confident, proud of the way that he showed up. That was his measure of success. This is my 18 proud. This is about setting an intention, searching for a feeling, knowing that's the only thing he can control is how he gets to feel. And then 18 proud, saying, I'm going to be proud of myself. If that was my objective, that was success for me, that I stayed committed to finding a feeling, not focusing on my score.

So your takeaway is to choose how you want to feel, then Play for that. And when you do that, the score will come. The rest of it is things you can't control, like golf. So many things that we can't control in golf and other people, we can't control that. Justin Rose played amazing that day. And the sixth one, I may have said five, but I actually have six.

He said, my battle today was with my mind. And he admitted that it was challenging and that it was hard. His brain went to 18. His brain went to what ifs? To pressure. And every time, he brought it back. Just like I talk about how your brain is like a puppy on a leash that wanders off. We gotta bring it back. And he did that over and over and over again.

He didn't make it a big deal. He didn't go, oh, my gosh, I have all these negative thoughts. My brain is going in all these different places. Of course it is. The reason it is is because it's the Masters, the last round he wants to win. It means so much. The more the result means, the more we shake our hamster cage that I talk about, and the more busy our brain is going to be, the more thoughts we're going to have to manage, right?

And he said, today was hard, today being Sunday, but he stuck with it. He didn't make it a big deal. He had a plan. He had. When negative thoughts came up, he replaced them with something that was more positive and useful for himself, which is another thing that I talk about here. So your takeaway is this is the work. Over and over, every shot. You're not doing it wrong.

If it's hard, sometimes you're doing it right. You want to witness your brain and not fight against it. You are not broken, my friends. If negative thoughts pop up. Rory has the same kind of brain as you do. The difference is he's practiced redirecting it more. And you're doing the same work here. You're doing exactly those steps. This episode isn't about being Rory. It's about realizing you already are like him because you have a human brain, the ways that matter the most.

And your brain will freak out, and you can train it, stay consistent. You follow the things that I share with you here. If you keep doing the work and you write down your phrases and you talk to yourself on purpose, and you make mistakes, neutral, and you play for a feeling that you love out on the golf course. That's the real win. The results will come. All right, my friends, what a great master.

So many wins and takeaways. And if you want those power phrases. Make sure you look for a link in the description. I'm happy to send them to you. You just got to put in an email address and they'll go right to you. All right, my friends, I hope you have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Bye.