The Hidden Pace Problem in Golf

Ever notice how some golfers seem to be playing in fast-forward while others move like they're on a Sunday stroll?

In this episode, I'm sharing a simple analogy that can help you understand your mental game in a whole new way: your personal speed limit.

Some golfers speed up under pressure. Others slow down and get stuck overthinking. Neither is wrong—but when you get pushed outside your natural pace by your playing partners, pace of play, or your own emotions, your performance can suffer.

I'll show you how to identify your speed, recognize when you're getting out of your zone, and stay in a rhythm that helps you play your best golf. Because confidence isn't about playing faster or slower—it's about knowing your pace and trusting it.

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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 golf friend. Welcome back to Think Above Par. Hope you're having a beautiful week. So if you get my emails, you know that I just launched the founding membership for my mental caddy app. And I just wanted to give a shout out to some people who have already put it to use and are getting some amazing results. So Rick C sent me a note and said, My word for this morning's round was certain, but I got off to a bad start and was plus six through six. I stood on the seventh T and told myself to stay in there and make the swing I'm capable of. I birdied seven, nine, and ten. I shot 82. I was certain about 50% of the round, but I was proud of the way I fought back and salvaged the round. My mental caddy is working for me. Thank you very much. All right, Rick. I love how you're putting the work in and giving your brain evidence that you can do this. That is awesome. I'm excited for you and your golf. So you can still access my mental caddy app. The link will be in the show notes, or you can go to course.masteryourgolfbrain.com. So if you have the app and are using it, please share with me how you're putting it to use. And of course, this is in beta. That's why there's a founder's launch with lifetime access right now. And I want the feedback on what's working and what's not working and what you might want to shift or change. So I'm excited about how this is going to develop and become a really powerful tool for lots and lots of golfers, as it's already starting out to be. So I just got back from the Indy 500. It's my second time going. It was a great trip until my Uber driver on the way to the airport thought that he was also in the Indy 500 race. I looked over his shoulder because I was sitting right behind him and I was like, man, you know, we're really zipping by these cars on the highway here. Are they standing still? I couldn't figure it out. And I didn't want to look, but I peeked over his shoulder and he was going 92. And I think for an Uber driver to go 92 might be a little excessive, especially since his car was not an indie car. It was like a 1972 red van. I don't think, I don't think it's supposed to take the turns going 80 on the way to the airport. But I feel like so many people in town were just flying down the streets. They got that race fever going. And it made me think about speed limits. Okay. Don't ask how I jumped here, but this is where my brain goes. I love analogies. I like visuals. I was talking with a client and I created the analogy of speed limits. So she was playing in a partner event and was challenged with some things mentally about pace of play, but not only her pace of play, but also the pace of play of her partner, who is known to be a slower golfer. And so she spent a lot of energy trying to move her partner along and keep up the pace of play. A series of events happened where they were playing really slowly and it agitated her and threw her off her game because it wasn't going to the speed limit that she is set to, and her partner wasn't going to the speed limit that she is set to. So let me explain this a little bit more thoroughly, right? We all have our own personal speed limits. My Uber driver thought that 92 was the speed limit. Kathy, half sloth over here, would sit there and say, maybe five miles to eight miles over the speed limit. The one that's posted, that's kind of my jam. That's my speed limit. My husband, who I'm married to, is triple A. His speed limit is 90 miles an hour. My dad used to call him the flash. He'd say, Where's the flash? Because the guy doesn't stop. He has two speeds, on and off, awake and sleeping. So he has a different speed limit than me. Mine is much slower than his. If we were both 90 mile an hour speed limits, we'd probably clash and collide. And that's why those relationships don't necessarily work. Different topic, but related to how we are on the golf course with people. So if you're a type A person, you might be vibrating and moving at a faster speed limit than the people around you. Doesn't make it right or wrong. We're not going to get a ticket for this. It's just who you are. And you need to recognize who you are and what speed limit you're at. You like to move a little bit faster. You might be a person who walks ahead. You might be a person who has a tendency to step up to the T first and want to hit. When you get anxious or fearful or angry, you start moving a little quicker. You walk faster. You might start pacing. You might become very impatient with the people around you. Your tempo can get affected, by the way. You can start swinging faster. That might be something to look for. There's nothing wrong with you. This is just the way that you vibrate. You have a different speed limit. With that being said, someone whose speed limit, like this client's partner, her speed limit was like 40 in the 55. She doesn't know that she's slow. Do you know these people? They don't even know that they're slow. This is just the pace that they go. It's just what they do. They walk a little bit slower. They're a little bit more methodical over the golf ball. They're not worried about the pace of play. They're not worried about the people behind them per se, or keeping up. To push these people and make them play faster would be unnerving to them. It would rattle them because we're moving them out of a comfort zone that they're in. Be like me going 92 in a 1972 red van on the way to the airport. I'm not very comfortable, whether I'm behind the driver or behind the steering wheel. Doesn't mean it's wrong. Doesn't mean that they're wrong. It's just recognizing who you are and how you vibrate. What's your speed limit? You are going to benefit yourself in your performance and how you show up on the golf course if you stay within your speed limit as best you can. Now, with that being said, knowing the people in your group and what their speed is is helpful because you get arguing with yourself that they should be playing faster or they should be slowing down. You're just going to suffer unnecessarily. But if you feel like you have to play faster because of the person in your group, if you're asking someone to play faster and they're your partner, you're not going to be helping the team out, and vice versa. So some of this might go into who you pick as a partner.

unknown 6:46

Right?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

If you are at 80 miles per hour and you pick a partner who's at 40 miles per hour, while this might be lovely in a long-term relationship on the golf course, it might not be so great. I told the story once about playing in a pro pro with my husband. I don't think we were married yet, which is really amazing that we got married after this tournament because female pro, male pro tournament, like LPJ, PJ. We partnered up to play in it. It was in South Florida. And I just came off playing for a living. So this was my jam. I was very comfortable on the golf course competing. He doesn't play in a lot of tournaments, and he got a little frazzled. We weren't doing very well. He was hitting duck hooks left, and I was hitting duck slices into the water right, and it was alternate shot in that second round, and we were tied for a second going into it, and things went downhill fast. He got really, really fast. He got faster because he was angry and he was frazzled. And what I did unknowingly is I slowed down. I got slower to counter his fast. Little did I know this really, really pissed him off because he interpreted as me not caring. And it was just survival for me because I was trying to stay calm in the midst of his chaos. Needless to say, we've never played another tournament as partners again. But my point is not about me. My point is picking your partner and knowing their energy. Now, it would have benefited him to know how he was vibrating to support me. And it would have benefited me at that time to understand what was going to happen to support him. But picking your partner and knowing your own speed limit is the whole point of what I'm saying. Like what speed do you go at? And recognizing that, let's say you're a 70 mile per hour kind of person, a little type A, you have a tendency to move a little bit faster. One of your dangers is to rush, get fast, your tempo gets fast, you get walking faster. That'd be something you'd recognize. It's good to know when you start moving up, pressing the paddle down, getting to 80 miles per hour, it's not going to benefit your golf game. So you want to have some strategies and tools to slow yourself down. Now, if you're a 50 mile an hour person and the speed limit's 65, and you go a little bit slower, it's good to recognize that you might have a tendency to overthink, overanalyze. You might get behind. You might feel frazzled when other people are playing at a certain pace. And it might not take you much to feel like you're really getting out of your zone because you're really comfortable going a little bit slower. So faster people or a faster pace of play might be something that feels a little unnerving to you. None of this is a problem, other than I want you to recognize who you are, the people that you're playing with, understanding that they get to have their own speed limit too, but also even picking your partners if you're looking to play in some member members or team events, so that you both can support each other in your speed. And above all things, knowing that in a round of golf, rarely is the pace of play, the speed limit in general over four hours consistent. So you being able to regulate yourself for the benefit of your golf game is going to be something that's really going to serve you. All right, my friends. And by the way, if you want to know how many shots your mental game is costing you, you can go to quiz.mymentalcaddy.com and take a two minute assessment to show you how many shots your mental game is costing you on the golf course. All right. Have a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Bye.