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.
Learn how to think above par—so you can play below par. Subscribe now to your weekly dose of golf mindset coaching and start transforming your golf brain today.
Think Above Par | Your Mental Caddy for Golf Mindset & Performance
Why Your Brain Sabotages Your Golf Game
•Kathy Hart Wood•Episode 265
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Ever feel like your brain turns against you on the golf course?
One minute you’re standing over the ball… and the next your brain is yelling: Don’t hit it in the water. Don’t mess this up. Everyone’s watching.
In this episode, I’m sharing a funny story about my husband assembling a bike rack without reading the instructions—and how golfers do the exact same thing with their brains.
Here’s the truth: your brain wasn’t designed to help you shoot lower scores. It was designed to keep you alive. That means it’s constantly scanning for danger, mistakes, embarrassment, and anything that might go wrong.
So if your mind goes negative on the golf course… nothing has gone wrong.
You just haven’t been given the instruction manual.
In this episode, I’ll walk you through why your brain works this way and how a little awareness can help you guide your thoughts instead of getting pushed around by them.
Because when you understand your brain, the pressure drops—and the game gets a lot more fun. ⛳️
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. Welcome back to Think Above Par. I just got back from a little vacation in Florida, and I wanted to tell you a story about my husband. I usually don't talk too much about on here, but it was just a funny story, and it created an idea for this podcast. His friend Don had just gotten a delivery for a bike rack that they were going to put on the back of their car, and it's for electric bikes. So it's a big bike rack that is really suited for motorcycles. The guys have gone through and assembled this bike rack. They put the bike on, they tied it up. There's a couple problems with it. One, it's just sitting out really far from the edge of the car. So someone's going to take it down, right? Someone is going to hit that one tire. And they couldn't figure out what this one pin was supposed to do. Even though they got it put together and it looked great. There were just some things and some questions like how it actually sits in there, how to tie it down properly, what this magical pin was supposed to do with this bike rack. And I said, I don't know. Have you looked at the instructions? And they lift up a piece of paper off of the ground and they hand it to me, as in, you know, me look at the instructions. They've never looked to read the instructions when they put together this bike rack. There's one to figure it out. The two of them. This is how we operate. Now, is this you? Are you a person who puts it together before you have a glance at the instructions and how to do it? Have you gone through and gotten frustrated on how long it's taken you? Or maybe you put one end in upside down or backwards or missed a piece. I mean, there are going to be times for sure that you have done it successfully without the instructions, but there's other times, you know, maybe I should look at the instructions. Or are you a person who always reads the instructions first? All of us can go about this differently. But the instructions were literally sitting right there on how this thing operates and what to do. And I want to offer that we're doing the same thing with our golf brains. However, we're not given instructions. No one gave us a manual on how to manage our brain. We weren't born with it. We were born as a species that needed to survive as caved men and women. Our brain is designed for survival. Even though we're all given a brain, it is not designed for greatness. It's designed not to be eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, a prehistoric hyena, or get kicked out of the tribe, or starve. That was the only way we were going to survive. No one at that time needed to understand their brain. They just did. They just were. They just existed. But now nobody explains to us what our brain is actually up to and what it does, how it works, why it does weird things, how to manage it. We don't have a sheet or a manual. We just assume that we shouldn't think negative things or we shouldn't feel nervous. We think there's so many things that we should be doing and there's so many things that we shouldn't be doing. But it's like assembling a bike rack without reading the instructions. It's frustrating. It sets us backwards. We don't feel very good about it. We put in a lot of effort and we don't make any traction.
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And that's because our one primary job was to stay alive. It wasn't to shoot lower scores or feel confident or chase dreams or perform well under pressure. That's not the way our brain is designed. Our brain is designed for scanning for danger, mistakes, threats, embarrassment, rejection. Even though society and the world has changed greatly, our one primary job stays the same. Keep us alive, not shoot lower scores or feel confident or chase dreams or perform well under pressure or worry about what Betty's thinking. Your brain is scanning for danger. It's scanning for mistakes. It's scanning for threats. It's scanning for embarrassment, rejection. Any way that you might have emotional or social pain is considered a threat. Okay, that's why we think don't hit in the water, don't mess this up. Everyone is watching. What are they thinking? Do I measure up? I'm not enough. I don't hit it far enough. Score low enough. Do all the things. That would get me kicked out of the tribe prehistorically. And I just want to reassure you, nothing has gone wrong. Your brain is just doing its job. It just looks different. You would agree with me easily if I explained it to you from a caveman or cave woman standpoint. But when I show you that your brain is perceiving a lot of the things on the golf course the same way, your logical brain's like, but really, it doesn't really matter. It's just golf. It doesn't matter. If your brain perceives it as a threat, it's going to pay attention to it. And the bummer of all of this is that your brain has a negativity bias, meaning it's looking for negative things first. So you're going to pop up negativity before you pop up positivity. Your brain is worried to notice what went wrong, what might go wrong, what could hurt you, not what went well, your progress you're making, the improvement that you're making. Right? Because you could have 15 great holes, but your brain remembers the three bad ones. Why? Because your survival brain studies mistakes. It is not so useful for confidence. And this is the thing: your brain doesn't just notice things, it creates stories. So you could have a scenario that your friend you're playing with also has the same scenario, and your brains will create two totally different stories based on your experience, your genetics, your history. Two totally different stories. Nothing goes your way. But those are not facts. They're just stories your brain produces automatically. And we believe them like they're the truth. We don't question them because we did not get an instruction or a manual on what's going on. They were probably raised by parents who didn't get an instruction manual either. And the thing that's challenging is that you might have some evidence of some people who are pretty good at managing their mind. It seems like they have it all figured out. But really, figuring it out by yourself can take forever. It takes a lot of trial and error. It takes a lot of self-awareness. It takes a lot of noticing, well, that didn't work. Let me try something different. It takes you noticing patterns in yourself before you're like, okay, maybe that's not true. Maybe I could think something different. Maybe I could do something differently. Right? Which trying to figure it out by yourself is like the bike rack analogy in the beginning. It just takes longer. You might have done it enough times to figure out that you could probably get 80% of it on point, but you might miss some. You might put in a couple wrong bolts, you might put it in upside down backwards. But in that process of trying to figure it out, we're probably gonna spend a lot of time getting frustrated, beating ourselves up, maybe even going backwards a little bit with our golf game. And that's just because we never learned how the brain actually operates. You're trying to assemble something really complicated without instructions. I know I did this for decades playing competitive golf, but I've also spent years studying it, testing it, reading about it, understanding it, coaching it. I basically went and found and created the instruction manual for your brain. I'm not downplaying a brain scientist. I'm just saying I understand the basic instructions for you to create success with your brain, what to anticipate with your brain, the negativity, that thoughts are optional, that you create your emotions from your thoughts, that your brain is wired to look for ways that you aren't going to survive, the negativity bias of your brain, the being onto it and being aware of what's going on instead of buying into the story about how you're not enough or that you're gonna fail or that you're struggling and everybody else is better than you, and comparing yourself to other people. It's being able to see through all of that and then having the steps and the process to direct your brain on purpose so that it serves you, so it's working with you and not against you. It's not, it's trying to keep you alive. It just thinks that the things that you think are important are actually a threat. Part of it is because you think it's so important. Hitting over the water is so important to you that you feel like you might have emotional or social pain if it doesn't get over the water, your brain will scan for all the ways that you might screw up to keep you safe. Thank you, brain. But also noticing that's not true. I am not going to die as a species if I don't hit the ball in the water. The more golf matters to you, the more it is important for you to score a certain way, whether you're attached to a number or not, or just to impress your friends, or you worry about judgment, or you worry about embarrassing yourselves. These are all things that your brain perceives as a danger. And then it is going to create a lot of noise on the golf course. It is going to point out all the things that could possibly go wrong for you. This is a beautiful brain that you have working for you, doing exactly what it's designed to do. And it's not that you have to control your brain, you just have to learn how to guide it. And I want to reassure you if this is resonating with you at all, there's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. Your brain's not broken. You're not mentally weak. You were just simply never taught how it works. So the next time you're on the golf course and you hear your brain say, Don't mess this up, you could simply say, That's my brain in survival mode. What do I want to think right here? What is going to serve me? What is something that I can think instead that feels better and that is going to create a better result? And that moment of awareness separates you from the thought. It reduces the pressure and it gives you choice. Not feeling like you're so much at the effect of your brain. And that's what learning how your brain works feels like. It's like suddenly things make sense. The frustration drops, the progress speeds up. I'm not saying it's easy. Having a human brain is not easy. Because it's not designed to create confidence. We have to work on it every day. It's not designed to go after greatness and success. It's not looking for ways that you're going to get over the water. It's looking for ways that you're going to go in the water by default. You have to think the other thought on purpose. So we were never given the instruction manual. The guys putting the bike rack together were, but we weren't given an instruction manual. You're not supposed to naturally know how to manage your mind or guide it. But I share with you simple instructions on how to do that. If you're willing to put in a little effort, if you're willing to put in a little awareness, if you're willing to pay attention, if you're not, your negative brain, your default survival brain, will take over on the golf course or off the golf course. All right, my friend? This is some of the work that we do inside of your mental caddy. This is the work that I do with my clients. This is what I show you how to do in my courses. And I'd love to show you if you are not familiar with or not really sure what I'm talking about when it comes to the instructions. I encourage you to go to my website, KathyHartwood.com, and check out some of the programs I have. There's so many different ways that I can walk you through this, the instructions step by step, so that you get to change your experience and the way that you show up on the golf course and in your life and how you feel and the results that you create. All right, my friends, have a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you next Wednesday.
