Why More Practice Won’t Fix Your Tournament Play

You’re putting in the reps.
You’re taking lessons.
You’re grinding on the range.

So why does your tournament play still fall apart?

In this episode, I’m breaking down why more practice alone won’t fix your performance under pressure — and why tournament golf exposes something completely different than your swing.

Practice builds skill.
But mental reps build belief.

If you’re striping it on the range but tightening up in competition… if you’ve ever wondered why you can’t access your talent when it matters… this one’s for you.

We’re talking about:

• Why tournament pressure reveals your mental habits
• How negative self-talk becomes automatic
• Why managing emotions is a skill (just like your swing)
• What to focus on this season if you want better tournament performance

Because you don’t need more balls on the range.
You need to stop practicing mental mistakes.

And that changes everything.

Get details on The Competitive Edge HERE

Receive free weekly mental golf tips HERE

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Take the quiz here: quiz.mymentalcaddy.com

Continue your mental journey at Your Mental Caddy HERE

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

Email Kathy at Kathy@KathyHartWood.com

Website: KathyHartWood.com

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 golf friend. Welcome back to Think Above Par. I hope you're having a beautiful week. Thinking about the upcoming golf season, thinking about how much you go out to practice, maybe your tournament schedule, what you're preparing for this year, if you're not already in the middle of some tournaments. But what I wanted to talk to you today about was the mindset that the more you practice, the more lessons that you take, the more you'll be able to control your tournament performance. It's a mindset and it's a vicious cycle, and it happens with golfers for sure, because we know that we do need to work on our skill set. We know that we do need to practice to maintain our skill set. But we also have a tendency to think that when we struggle out there playing golf, that the answer is to practice more. And I'm telling you, and I want to share with you in this podcast about how that's not always true. There's gonna be a lot of teaching pros and golf pros who might disagree with me. And you might disagree with me. But you can practice five days a week and stripe it on the range and feel ready and still tighten in a tournament. I make the comment I don't really care how pretty your swing is or how beautiful your track man numbers are, or how much you care, or how much you practice, or how much money you spend on lessons, if you can't manage your mind on the golf course, if you can't manage mistakes, if you can't manage challenging days, pressure, words people say, you're not going to be able to access all that talent. And that's confusing, really. Especially if you're really successful in other areas of your life or you were an athlete, you're like, what the heck? I could do this in other areas. What's wrong with me? Why do I feel so broken? Right? Most competitive golfers think I practiced, I prepared, I worked. Why did it fall apart? That's because golf is a skill and you're building a skill. Playing in a tournament or playing in some competition or going out there and playing with friends challenges your mind, reveals your ability to access the talent and the skill that you just built. And it can be demoralizing when we're wondering what the heck is wrong with us that I can't access this talent. I'm a smart person, I'm successful in other areas, I should be better than this, I should know better. What's wrong with me? And I think we often underestimate the power of our mind on the golf course. It doesn't take much frustration or fear or nervousness for you to miss a putt. And going back to the putting green and deciding to hit 100 putts from three feet does not take away the fact that the next time you go out there and you have a three-footer to win a match, that you're not going to again experience fear or anxiety or pressure. And it is going to have the same impact on your body regardless of how much you practiced. And I'm a practicer. I love to practice. I encourage people to practice because you are building a skill. This is what I want you to think about it as. And there's lots of skills that we need to learn in golf. You have your full swing for sure. We've got to learn how to chip and pitch, distance control, and bunkers and putting and hitting different kinds of shots and off of different lies. Those are all skills that you go to the range to learn the skill. Where do you go to learn the skill of managing your mind? Because this is the thing. When you go to the range, practicing builds this skill. Proper practicing develops good skill. You go to the range and you hit balls and you're rehearsing something. If you are properly practicing, you're rehearsing and building a skill, most likely. If you're not properly practicing, you are rehearsing something, and it might be a skill that doesn't serve you. I have done this, I have witnessed it, I watch it all the time. If you go to the range and you practice not finishing your swing or finishing on your back foot or a reverse pivot, all you're doing is building the skill of knowing how to reverse pivot. Because you're repeating it and you're rehearsing it. So hopefully you are practicing properly and building the skills up that you need or that are going to work for you or make the game more repeatable. Listen, a reverse pivot can work. It's not something I want to rely on. Someone can swing over the top and hit a big old slice. That can work. Make sure you aim left. It's just not as efficient as a swing that has a proper path. It's not as powerful, right? But they work. And so you go to the range and you practice, you're practicing something. That thing is either going to work for you and make your game more consistent and predictable, or it's not. But you're rehearsing and you're repeating. And this is the way we build skills. You also are repeating something mentally, whether you know it or not. And in the sense of that, you are also building a skill or a belief or a habit. You're either saying crappy thoughts about yourself and negative thoughts about yourself over and over again, and then it becomes a habit. You have rehearsed it. Your brain puts it on autopilot. It's easy for you to pull up. You miss it a shot, it's easy to say you suck because you've said it so many times. The thing that I want you to get out of this is that you are also, whether you know it or not, rehearsing and practicing your mental game. It might not be intentional, and if it's not intentional, then you would be lucky for it to be serving you. Because our brains are slightly negative. We're working against a negative bias. So if you're not doing something intentional, likely the negative bias is going to show up. And just like when you practice something in your golf swing and you repeat it, and then you realize, oh, for F's sake, I've been practicing the wrong thing, and now you got a little loop-de-loo in your swing or something, you're gonna have to take a lot of effort and practice and rehearsal to undo that, to get a new, better habit in its place. Same thing with your brain. If you are out there repeating patterns, such as quitting on yourself on the 14th hole when things get uncomfortable, saying negative words about yourself after you've made a double bogey, putting unnecessary pressure on yourself to make a three-foot putt so that you won't feel embarrassed at the end of a round. Telling yourself don't screw up these first couple holes, telling yourself that you can't put two good rounds together, shaming yourself for not hitting as far as the partners in your group, telling yourself over and over again that everybody's better than you or that you never win or that you're a shit show out there playing the game of golf. If you're repeating those and saying those to yourself over and over again, you are building up a mental skill. Might not be a useful mental skill, but you're building up a mental skill. And this is the thing: anybody can manage their mind on a sunny day. On or off the golf course, that's easy.

unknown 7:10

Right?

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Our thoughts are quiet. We're like, I can do this. And you might have evidence that like I know I can do it, I know I can manage my mind, I know I have good thoughts in there. I know I can play golf from a state of being calm or certain or confident. I know I can make my best swings, I've done it before. Sunny days, beautiful days, green light days, that's not what challenges the mental part of this game. It's those red light days, those hard days. It's where it's not sunny, where things get tough. That's where your mental game shows up. That's what reveals what you've practiced and what you've rehearsed. So as you go out into this next season and you're practicing your skill, which I encourage you to do, so that it is more repeatable, that it's more on point, meaning that it's predictable, kind of like the shortest distance between two points, less loop deludes I have in my swing, the easier it is to repeat. The more times you're standing over the ball consistently, going through your routine consistently, the more you're gonna be able to access that talent for sure. But what are you doing for your mind? What are you rehearsing? And this is a great question to ask yourself. What are the things that I say to myself over and over again? It's like, is it a mental shank? Are you practicing a mental shank? Or a fat shot. That was a mental fat shot. A mental chunk. But we don't look at it that way because we talk so poorly to ourselves off of the golf course, too, that it just seems normal. But anytime you are saying to yourself something that is not going to put you into a state where you can swing freely and think clearly, where you're in a state of one of the three C's or something else that's useful for you, you're not gonna access all the talent that you just practiced. If you have no idea how to pivot out of pressure, or there's a new situation that comes up and you feel like you got the rug pulled out from underneath you in the middle of a round, and you don't know or have the tools to go back to a place that's gonna serve you without it spiraling out of control, then you're really gonna be at the effect of the game of golf because it's gonna happen. We don't always get the sunny days. Because the bottom line is that practice builds skill and mental reps build belief. And every thought you rehearse is training something. It's either working for you or it's working against you. So, what are you training? What are you training this year going into this tournament season? This club season, whatever you're going to be playing in. I would encourage you not to let the season go by and not be way more aware of the things that you're rehearsing in your head, the thought patterns that you have, the beliefs that you believe, the emotions that get in your way. How are they affecting your ability to access the talent that you spend so much time working on, so much money taking lessons, so many dollars spent on equipment and gear. And at the end of the day, fear and nerves, emotional dysregulation, bad mental habits get in the way of all of that. All right, my friend. So be a little bit more curious about asking yourself the mental patterns that you're creating or that you want to create this year. And if you're playing in some competitive events this season and you're tired of feeling like your game changes when it matters, I open something specifically for that. It's called the Competitive Edge. It's a 90-day program, small groups, personalized mental plan, private calls, and you can look at all the details in the show notes. It starts March 4th. And if you're listening to this after March 4th, just get yourself on a wait list for the next time. All right, my friends, have a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Bye.