Why You’re More Irritable on the Golf Course Some Days

Why can you handle a bad shot one day—but completely lose it over the same shot another day?

It may have less to do with your golf and more to do with your capacity.

In this episode, Kathy explores how stress, mental fatigue, and life off the course can leave you with less patience for missed shots, slow play, and even the people in your group. You’ll learn how to check your “tank” before you play, adjust your expectations without lowering your standards, and stop a low-capacity day from becoming a confidence-crushing round.

Because sometimes your golf isn’t broken. You’re just running low on poker chips.

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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, and welcome back to Think Above Par. I am super happy that you are here and listening as usual, and I hope you're having a beautiful end to your summer playing some amazing golf. Hopefully, you're feeling nice and relaxed after summer, or you might be totally stressed out because you got kids and you're sending them off to school. It can be both. And I want to talk about today's capacity, your capacity to hold space for yourself, missed shots, maybe, and even people in your group. And I noticed this because of my lack of capacity recently. Very impatient when I'm on the golf course, impatient for myself because my plate has been feeling a little bit overfull. And so I don't have a lot of capacity. And I thought, you know what? I need to talk into this because it's unusual. It was unusual for me to feel some of the things that I was feeling on the golf course. And I had to make the connection to really what was going on for me off of the golf course and why that I was responding the way that I was and feeling the way that I was. So I want to talk about it. So when I talk about capacity, it means really your capacity to hold space for yourself or for other people. Almost think of it as patience. At least for me, it's directly correlated to patience, tolerance, even. So for instance, if you have a very long day, and I've talked into this quite a few times about playing golf after work, especially if you have a strenuous day at work or a strenuous day with the kids, or maybe you've had some arguments, or there's some family things going on that are really stressful, or health issues, doctor's appointments, you know, you had to wait in line for a long time. That always gets me. And you're just noticing that you just are a little at the end of your rope, so to speak, and you're feeling drained and you've given away all your poker chips. If you've heard me talk about poker chips, that's the analogy that I make about your ability to focus on any given day. So, in other words, you wake up in the morning, you kind of get a fresh start, you got a new little bag of poker chips, that's your attention, and where you give your attention to during the day matters because at the end of the day, if you're out of poker chips, you're out of poker chips, right? And this is where we can have mental fatigue. And I think mental fatigue can go on a day-to-day basis, and that might be something that's totally different than your capacity. It could be semantics, but I'm just saying, I think they're a little bit different. I feel like capacity, at least for me, is one of those things that I just feel like I get drained, like my container, my cup is empty. I have nothing in the tank to give anymore. And that usually doesn't get exhausted in one day for me. For some people, it can. You could be at the end of the day and you're like, I just don't want to talk to anybody, don't look at me, don't even breathe in my presence. I just need to just chill for a couple minutes. You don't want any more stimulation because you've had enough stimulation and draining and things out of you in the course of a day. Or it could be something that happens over the course of several days. And then you find yourself really being kind of empty. And then what happens is we go out on the golf course and we play, and one little mistake just sets us off. We have no tolerance for ourselves for a mishit shot, maybe something that really is something that a shot that annoys us, like a slice or a hook or a fat shot or a thin shot or a three-put. You're like, wow, why am I overreacting or reacting really strongly to something that normally I can tolerate? Something normally that I have way more patience for. And sometimes we wonder, like, what is wrong with me? What is going on? Why am I just so aggravated, annoyed, or irritated with myself? And then, of course, we know that the way golf works, that if you're playing from a state of irritation, it is not going to help you on your next shot. This was my experience for me recently, and I was really noticing how I was getting quickly irritated with mishit shots. And I was just really drained personally that I didn't have a lot of capacity or tolerance or patience for the mistakes I was making. I was getting quickly irritated. My fuse was very short, so to speak. And making the correlation to what is going on in your life and your capacity before you step on the first T and go out there and play golf is really going to serve you and what your experience is going to be out on the golf course. So, in other words, if you are self-aware enough to know that you've been going through a lot and maybe work is really heavy, or there's things going on with the family, or you've had some tough conversations, or there's some health issues going on, just things that are weighing on your mind, or you've just given so much of yourself that you feel really drained, and you're thinking, you know what? I'm going to go out and play some golf today. And I'm just going to relax and have a good time and just kind of get away from everything. And then you three-put and you want to break the shaft over your knee or throw it against the tree or run over in a cart. I've seen it all. Right? If that's just where you are and you're like, what is wrong with me? I have so little tolerance for mistakes and for myself out here on the golf course. I want you to step back a little bit and look at your capacity. How full is your tank? You know, I remember a conversation with Brene Brown. If you've heard about her talking about her check-in with her husband on where their tanks are, 100% capacity. And they would come home from work and she's like, I got 20%. And he says, I got 80%. And my 80%, I will carry you in your 20% and take up some of the chores or the work or dinner or kids or whatever they have when they come home. And being really self-aware of where you are at the end of the day, especially if you're playing golf at the end of the day, is going to serve you because I find it very challenging for golf to fill your tank up unless you go out on the golf course with the direct intention that you're going to have a lot of space for yourself and you're going to enjoy the walk and maybe the late afternoon golf and your company and fill your tank up using that. If you're looking for golf to help you feel better, it doesn't happen a lot because we're never satisfied with our results, basically, as golfers. But you going out and knowing where you are relative to the tank that you have, you can hold space for yourself and have some grace in your capacity to tolerate your own mistakes and your own golf humanness on the golf course. It's just an angle I want you to think about before you go play golf and being aware of where your tank is. If you had to give yourself a you know percentage like Brene Brown does, where are you? And what's been going on in your life and what's been going on maybe in the day that you've had. Right. If you had a really draining day and you go out to the golf course and you're like, I'm toast, but I'm going to go out and play, or I made the commitment to people, then maybe setting an intention beforehand, you might be able to have a little bit more patience for yourself out there, which is only going to serve your confidence and your experience. Right. If you're impatient or irritated or annoyed out on the golf course, you're more likely to make mistakes. And the more likely you are to make mistakes, then it starts dipping into your confidence and it becomes this little vicious cycle, unless you can make those mistakes neutral right away and like going, you know what? I don't have much in my tank. I'm going to give myself a pass today. And you're doing that for your own benefit, not because you're lowering your expectations of yourself. That's about you accepting how life is not the same every single day. And your life experiences affect your experience on the golf course, and golf affects your experience at home. So the second part of this that I want to do is reverse it. So let's say you went out and played a really tough round and it emptied your tank. You started out pretty high. You're like, I'm probably at 85%, right? And then you went out and made a bunch of triples and doubles. It wasn't a very fun round, and it just drained you for all kinds of reasons. The conditions were hard, maybe the group pairing was hard, it was slow, and you just are drained at the end of the day. Then you take that home into your personal life or with your family and friends. And it's worth you noticing what your tank is. Like, how big is your tank now? So knowing that you're taking in 20 or 25% to the people after the round of golf because golf sucked that capacity, right, for tolerance and patience from you, and you took that home. Now, you could be the person, like, I don't take my golf home. I get it, and I'm so glad you do not. But sometimes we have a capacity and tolerance and a tank within us that does get drained. It takes up some of those poker chips that I talk about that you get for focus, that when we end up using all the poker chips that we get in the beginning of the day for focus and we're done, we kind of become mental toast. So holding space for yourself after a tough round of golf is also very important and good for your life experience and the people around you. The third part I want to talk about is your tolerance for other people. And so this is where it gets really curious for you. And all of you listening are going to have a different, you know, capacity or something that kind of activates you to react. It's not going to be the same for everybody. Like for me, a fat shot, if I don't have anything in my tank, can make my head explode because it just irritates me so quickly. A thin shot does not. If I push it, nope, not so much. A fat shot is that if my tank is low, and this is what was happening to me, was my tank was low. I was exhausted, I was mentally exhausted and emotionally exhausted, and I went out and played golf and I had no capacity or patience for myself to hit a fat shot. So now I'm a little irritated. And then of course, what happened is I hit more fat shots. But if I was really a little bit more self-aware going in, that knowing I was a little bit empty, I had a lot of things that were showing up in my life, and I'm gonna take them out onto my onto the golf course and have a little bit of grace for myself or go into the round with a totally different expectation, that wouldn't affect my confidence, let's say, so much about hitting a solid golf shot. So this can also go to people, right? So you might find people very annoying, especially when your tank is empty. You're like, man, I could totally deal with Betty last week, but right now I low key wanna just trip her, right? Or something. Like she's just really bugging me today. Why is she bugging me more today than she was last week? It's just really good to notice. Don't trip Betty. I'm just saying, I joke about that stuff, but don't go trip people. But you know that feeling that you have, you're like, wow, I have zero patience for people in the group or slow play. Like last week I could deal with slow play. Today, not so much. It's driving me a little bonkers. And so instead of classifying yourself as somebody who's like impatient and intolerant of people, or maybe like internally, you're like, I got I'm kind of mean. She's really bugging the heck out of me today, but she's also gonna then affect your golf game. It's worth taking a pause and just noticing what's going on. What did I bring to the golf course today? How much did I bring to the golf course? How much patience do I have, not only for myself, but for also for other people? So you could be a person who is bothered by miss hit shots, which is me. Certain misses. I know, okay, I gotta take a look and see where's my tank. What did I bring to the golf course? How full was I before I came to the golf course? And because I just discovered this, really, I'm going to start doing this a little bit more ahead of time. So it doesn't start impacting more and more shots. So therefore, it doesn't start impacting my confidence. Also, I don't go to the range, start practicing some practicing something that's not broken. That's the biggest thing. And then the other thing, maybe it's that you don't have a very big tolerance for people. It could be conditions, like things that you can't control. What are those things that trigger or activate you when your tank is low? When you have limited capacity for yourself or tolerance or patience because you're a little bit drained as you're and you're at the end of the rope. And then noticing if golf drains you and how that affects you when you go home or into your family life or with friends or even in the clubhouse, what your capacity is. And I'm just gonna say, I know a lot of you are gonna say, I'm super pleasant and I'm totally fine, right? But internally you could be going, what the heck is happening with this bartender? Why is he taking so long to serve me? I really need my cocktail right now.

unknown 13:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

And you might find yourself less patient, even though on the outside you look super happy and cheerful. Internally, your capacity or your tolerance or your tank could be super low. So just a little tank or capacity analogy to golf and what your tank is when you show up on the golf course because of life and work and family, how much grace and patience you give to yourself because of that, and how much does golf drain your capacity that therefore your tank is empty when you go home? Just something for you to look at. Either way, we need to have a little grace for ourselves on and off the golf course. All right, my friends, come join me inside your mental caddy. I'd love to see you there and have a beautiful week. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Bye.