WHEN PIA STARTED TO WORK with the Swedish national teams, she wanted to pay more attention to what was going on in the minds of her golfers while they were on the course. At the time, she was working mostly with the younger players, but the women from the senior team approached her and asked her about giving them some coaching help, too. Pia remembers them as well-behaved, upper-class ladies who loved golf but didn’t have a lot of confidence. So she and Charlotte Montgomery embarked on an experiment. They asked the group, “Please say aloud all the things you say to yourself before, after, and in between your shots on one hole, and remember what you said. Then tell the rest of us.”
One woman announced, “Before a shot, I’ve said to myself, Don’t mis-hit this drive like you did yesterday.” Another lady reported, “I’ve said to myself, I can’t believe that shot went into the bunker. You’re a total loser.” Charlotte and I were shocked, as one lady after another admitted talking to themselves, and judging themselves, in extremely negative ways. “I’d never speak to another human being the way I speak to myself,” one of the women said later. She had no awareness of her internal monologue while she was playing. It was a revelation.
We call our internal conversations “self-talk.” Other people call it the monkey brain, which is an endless cycle of random thoughts that lead us in a million directions. Neuroscience research says we have upward of 70,000 thoughts a day. Where do all these thoughts come from? Are they accurate? Does anyone fact-check them? Or are they the work of some sabotage-minded monkey sitting on our shoulder?
In reaction-based, shorter competitions, athletes don’t need to spend as much energy or skill managing their internal conversations. The 100-meter sprint world record is 9.58 seconds—not much time for negative conversation in your brain. A professional sumo match can take as little as three seconds.
Other sports, however, are endurance contests that can challenge the mind as much as, if not more than, the body. In 2010, American tennis player John Isner took 11 hours and 5 minutes (over three days) to beat Frenchman Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon. They played 183 games, the longest match in tennis history.
The longest playoff in golf history took place in 1949. Cary Middlecoff and Lloyd Mangrum both shot closing 69s in regulation during the final round of the Motor City Open. Middlecoff, who had just won the U.S. Open, and Mangrum began the sudden-death playoff tied after nine holes, matching each other with eight pars and a birdie. As darkness fell, they met with tournament officials and decided to play two more holes, halving both with pars. At that point, they were declared co-champions.
Even in a normal round of golf that takes three, four, or five hours, the mind can become a decisive factor in performance. It can help elevate us to the height of performance—or drag us down. We became interested in what kind of internal conversation or “self-talk” helps performance, and what kind hurts performance. Our purpose was to develop a human skill that would help golfers manage their self-talk.
In 2009, we were invited to Morocco to speak to the International Society of Sport Psychology. While we were there, we interviewed several psychologists who had done research on athletes and self-talk. One of them, Judy van Raalte of Springfield College, said self-talk was a huge factor in how athletes performed, and showed us how thoughts create feelings, feelings create behaviors, and how those behaviors then reinforce our thoughts. That’s how we gained a better understanding of the dangerous self-talk feedback loop.
Here’s how it works. You hit a bad shot, and you say to yourself, “I’m an idiot.” Then you start to feel like an idiot. And then you start behaving like an idiot, getting angry or slamming your club. By that point, you have become an idiot. It’s no different from saying, “I’m a crappy putter.” After you miss the putt, it tends to become a fact. Then you continue to putt badly. We call this looping. It’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Golfers have three choices: Quiet the mind, let the thought float away (meaning, don’t give it any attention), or distract and manage it.
Some meditative techniques help the mind open and discard its thoughts. Other techniques can help focus. Then there’s the kind of meditation practiced by some Buddhist monks, who center their attention on positive emotions such as love and kindness. We meditate every day, so we find it fun and interesting to explore different styles and how they apply to golf.
For golfers in general, we find targeted sensory focus to be the most practical way to abort the self-talk feedback loop. For instance, Lynn’s brain often loops into the past, so she likes to quiet her mind by getting more physical—feeling her feet and wiggling her toes in her shoes. Our minds go to where we put our attention. Doing mini-meditations, or “being present” drills, on the course for 15 to 20 seconds helps to break a self-talk loop, and raise present awareness through your senses. If you’re headed toward negative self-talk, look at the trees, listen to the birds, or feel the breeze on your neck while your partner is hitting.
We also love the exercise of playing a hole in complete silence—with no talking, either to your playing partners or inside your own head. For some, this becomes a very peaceful and restful experience. Others find it impossible. (As we say, you get good at what you practice, and you don’t get good at what you don’t practice.) Many golfers spend too much time engaged in self-talk during a round.
Self-talk becomes destructive when it focuses too much on the future or the past, especially if we obsess about things out of our control. But can self-talk be useful if it’s aligned with our goals and who we want to be? To test that idea, we asked students to write down how they wanted to talk to themselves between shots. When they went on the course, we asked them to replace any unproductive self-talk with more productive self-talk (which you believe—anyone can say positive things, but “I’m a great putter” can backfire if the person doesn’t really believe it). Instead of walking up the fairway thinking, If I miss this green, it’s a sure double bogey, they’d say to themselves, I’ve hit a lot of good chips lately, or, This is a fantastic golf hole. I’m so good at committing to my decisions. During the 2016 U.S. Women’s Open, Brittany Lang would approach her ball on the course and say to Luke, her caddie and brother, “What a great lie I have!” The specifics of the positive self-talk aren’t as important as the function it plays in crowding out negative thoughts. Pia describes it as “good brainwashing.” Was it a coincidence that Brittany won the U.S. Woman’s Open?
The first time PGA Tour pro Kevin Streelman came to see us, he said, “I have a confession. When I stand over the ball, I sometimes have thoughts that I’m going to hit it out of bounds, or I’m going to pull it. Sometimes I’m standing over the ball, and I say to myself, Kevin, you’re going to hook it. Or, Kevin, you’re going to three-putt. Do other golfers do this?”
We said, “Well, yes, Kevin. Everybody does it. That’s the human condition.” He was incredibly relieved. He thought he was the only one.
One of the first things we did with Kevin was help him understand that the voice in his head didn’t define him. This comes from meditation research. “It’s just a thought,” we told him. “It’s not who you are. You don’t have to believe it.”
So, what is the best way to counter negative self-talk? The first step is to identify it. Notice if you’re thinking too much about winning the match, or worrying that the 18th hole doesn’t suit your fade. Then distract or cut off those thoughts. Start counting your steps. Sing a song. Tell a joke to your caddie. We don’t care what you do, but the more quickly you catch your unproductive bias and shut it off, the better you’ll perform. We don’t tell players what kind of self-talk to use. It’s up to you what works best, but you need to make it congruent with who you are, and what your goals are, so that you can believe it.
Pia was once with a group of male teaching pros at Muirfield in Scotland. The course doesn’t have par during regular play—the sign just tells the player how many yards the hole is. “I was playing from the back tees, so I knew it was long,” says Pia, “but I didn’t know if it was a long par-4 or a par-5 hole. I just played it as best I could, but I had a totally different attitude. I wasn’t saying to myself, If I don’t reach the green in two, I won’t make par. Or, This is a short par 5, so I should make a birdie. I would have automatically started creating unproductive expectations in my mind. But I didn’t, because I didn’t know. I was like, Wow, this is different.”
Research indicates that when it comes time to perform, no self-talk is best. Learn to quiet your mind and be completely present through your senses in the four to nine seconds of your Play Box. When you’re on the golf course and you start thinking about things that aren’t helpful—Am I going to lower my handicap today? I pulled those last two shots—cut the loop by counting your steps or talking to someone. Don’t let self-talk take over your brain.
We like to tell our students the story about Annika Sorenstam, when she won the U.S. Open in 1995 at Pine Needles in North Carolina, and again in 2006 in Newport, Rhode Island. At Pine Needles, she was about to tee off on Sunday, and her brain was going berserk with self-talk: Am I going to be able to keep my lead? What if I don’t keep my lead? She decided before the round what she would say to herself before and after every shot: Fairway, green. Fairway, green. It was an intentional mantra she used to calm her monkey brain.
Kevin Streelman played in 152 PGA Tour events before he won his first tournament. He was playing in the Tampa Bay Championship in 2013, and after the second round, he knew he was performing well enough to beat the field. Before the third round, he knew he would have to control his self-talk to achieve his goal. He told his caddie that if and when doubt crept into his mind, they would sing songs and recite Bible verses. And that’s what they did. In quieting his unproductive self-talk, Kevin went bogey-free over the last 37 holes. He didn’t miss a shot on the last 11 holes of the final round, and he shot a 4-under 67 for a two-shot win over Boo Weekley. If you ask him how he broke through on the PGA Tour, he’ll tell you, “I stopped my negative self-talk.”
WHEN WE SPEND TIME working out in the gym, we get stronger. But which muscles are we strengthening? Are they the correct ones for what we want to accomplish? Are there additional muscles we should be strengthening that we’re ignoring? The mind is one of the foundational “muscles” for golf, and strengthening your mind will be very, very useful for your game.