253: FundaMENTALS – Acceptance: Stop Playing Scared Golf

Podcast Transcript

Okay, if you’ve ever let a bad shot affect another one, then you already know why acceptance matters. The players who win don’t hit perfect golf shots all the time. What they’re better at than most is hitting imperfect golf shots and moving on. But how do they do that?

We’re going to explore how to see golf shots as they are, how to remove judgment from the golf shots, and then how to play freely without fear. You’ll be able to move on to the next golf shot as if it’s the only golf shot. Trust me, I have struggled with this. It took me over a decade and a failure in a USGA championship to learn this. But once I did, everything about my game changed.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Mental Golf Show where we discuss all things golf psychology to help you improve your game. As always, I’m your host, Josh Nichols. I have been a mental coach for over six years and I have been playing high-level competitive golf for over 20 years.

This episode is actually going to be the first in a new series that I’m calling fundamentals. Yeah, I know that’s kind of a cheesy name, but I couldn’t think of a better one or more simple one. We’re gonna be working systematically through what I have learned and what I consider to be the most important facets of a good player’s mental game—the things that will allow you to access your skills more often.

Before we get into the episode, do you want to hit shots more present and freed up? Well, it’s not about how many waggles you take or how many looks at the target you take before you hit the shot. It’s about your mental pre-shot routine.

In my new course, the Perfect Pre-Shot Routine, I will take you through the five key steps that every player should go through in their mental pre-shot routine: pick a good target, commit to that target, pre-accept the results, let it rip with freedom, and then the post-shot routine. In the course, you will get detailed lessons, strategies, practical exercises, all sorts of stuff to help you ingrain a good mental pre-shot routine into your game.

Check it out at joshnickelsgolf.com/course, or click the link in the show notes.

All right, let’s get into the episode. Today we’re gonna be talking about acceptance. In order to do that, we’re gonna break it down into three main parts: fear, how to overcome fear, and how to train it and ingrain it into your game. So let’s start with fear.

I used to really struggle playing with fear. I would make guide-y swings. I was always afraid of what I would shoot, other people’s opinions of me, where I was on the leaderboard, getting recruited back when I was in high school, worrying about my future as a golfer to kind of live up to my own potential, to justify all the effort and practice I was making.

All those things led to me making guide-y swings on the golf course, fearing bad results. But that’s where acceptance comes in, because the opposite of all of this fear of outcome is acceptance.

So even if you haven’t experienced all the things that I was talking about, which I’m sure you can relate to on some level, we probably all know the feeling of like the first tee jitters. Everyone has this kind of fear, worry, future anxiety, or maybe just a good level of nerves on the first tee.

That’s because on some level, you have this uncertainty about how the round might go. So you have just a little bit or a lot of fear of it going poorly, of you failing, of you not living up to your expectations, of you not playing well, or of you not hitting this first tee shot very well, of you getting off to a bad start.

And that’s because this is our default. Our brain’s job is to fear bad things. It’s to help us look out for bad things.

So when we’re on the golf course and there’s a situation that we perceive as bad, that we truly don’t want to happen, your brain’s gonna do its job and help you avoid that thing. So that’s going to lead to tension and guidey swings and steering the ball out there and mind wandering to past and future, worrying about other things. Your brain is just doing its job to help you steer away from that thing that you’re worried about.

Of course what we can do is to hit a golf shot with all that fear, but then accept the result afterwards, right? We can hit a terrible golf shot and then move on and say, okay, that one’s in the past. I’m just going to try to hit the next one better. And that’s good. That kind of post-shot acceptance is good. We shouldn’t deny the value of that one.

But an even more important one, in my opinion—what I’ve learned, what I’ve read, what I’ve experienced—is pre-acceptance. I think it’s honestly the kind of middle pillar, the strongest foundation, the deepest root of a good mental game, more than anything else.

That’s why I’m starting this series Fundamentals with acceptance, because I think it’s the most important. And we could call it pre-acceptance specifically.

Because if you can pre-accept the result, then you’re not going to swing with fear in the first place. If you can pre-accept the potential bad outcome, then you’re not going to be afraid of a bad outcome. So you won’t swing scared of a bad outcome.

And if there was like a sentence or a phrase that kind of manifests this pre-acceptance, it’d probably be something like, “This ball can go anywhere and I’ll be okay.”

And if you can truly believe that, truly feel that, be able to step up behind the golf ball and say, you know what, this ball could go there, it could go there, it could go out of bounds, it could go in the water, it could hit the green, it could come up short, I could chunk it, I could skull it, whatever. All of that could happen and I’ll be okay.

Because truly all of those things could happen. We have no real certainty of where the ball’s gonna go. There is always a level of uncertainty of where this ball might go.

So if you can see that uncertainty as real, then you can have a better relationship with failure. Honestly, you might not even call it a failure because it’s just one of the potential outcomes that can happen.

And because you’re able to see this uncertainty and this potential outcome or this range of potential outcomes as real, then you’re not so afraid of it. You’re not gonna like walk around on eggshells, always waiting for the bad shot to happen or you’re going along really well and you’re just worried, okay, when is this all gonna fall apart?

And because there’s nothing to fear, then there’s nothing to guide away from. There’s nothing to steer the golf ball away from. There’s no reason to swing with tension. There’s no reason to play scared. And of course, if there’s nothing to fear and there’s no reason to swing guidey, then there’s every reason to swing freely. If you’re not afraid of anything, then you will be freed up.

There’s this really good analogy in the book Golf Beneath the Surface by Raymond Pryor—I know you’ve heard me talk about it. It’s one of my favorite golf books. It might be, I think it is my favorite kind of psychology book in general.

He talks about a car driving down the road. So if the road is super wide and there’s lots of room to kind of swerve in and out of your lane, then you’re probably gonna drive more relaxed and you’re gonna kind of feel more freed up behind the wheel. You might even be able to multitask and do other things—not that you should—but we feel more freed up because there’s margin for error.

But as the analogy goes, if the road is just wider than the width of the car and on either side of the left and right tires is a cliff that you could drop off and you would fall into lava, well, are you going to drive very freed up then? You’re going to be death gripping the steering wheel trying to make the car go straight.

So you’re probably going to go slower. You’re going to be more robotic and conscious with the way you drive. You’re not going to be freed up. You’re going to drive scared and you’ll probably drive worse and you’ll be probably more likely to steer off the cliff because you’re overthinking it and injecting conscious effort into the process.

Whereas on the super wide highway with lots of margin for error, you’re able to drive freely and that probably helps you drive better. And you end up staying straighter in your lane than you would if there was zero margin for error on a really narrow lane.

So that can literally happen on the golf course where you’re on a really tight par four, and the fairway’s really narrow, there’s rows of houses down both sides—there’s lots of golf courses like that around where I am, probably where you are too—and either side of a big miss is out of bounds.

So literally you’re on that narrow road with very little margin for error. So naturally you’re gonna guide the ball out there because you’re probably scared of the ball going left out of bounds or right out of bounds.

And truly this situation is hard to have acceptance. Truly difficult to step up on that tee and say, this ball could go anywhere and I’ll be okay, because you might not genuinely feel that deep down.

And truthfully, if you don’t feel that deep down, then there’s gonna be some level of guidiness and there’s gonna be some level of tension. And if you can be okay with that, then you can play with the tension and play with the guidiness and not beat yourself up when it happens and be okay playing a little bit scared.

The ideal, of course, is to be able to step up on that tee box and say with genuine authenticity, you know what? This ball could go there, it could go there, and I will be okay.

And how do you get to this, right? How can you just step up and say this radically accepting statement of I’ll be okay wherever this ball goes? Well, that comes from a deeper root. Where is your identity at? Is your identity in needing a good result or is your identity in hitting the shot to the best of your ability? What do you value?

So we’ve got identity and values at the very bottom. So if you value good scores, good tee shots, and you hate bad golf shots, and you hate failure, then bubbling up to the top and the highest symptom is gonna be that playing scared and that swinging guidey and that worrying about where the ball’s gonna go.

But if your deeper root, your identity, your values, if they are more based in process related things they’re more based in acceptance and I’ll be okay and there’s more to life than golf and hitting a bad golf shot is not the end of the world and it’s far from the end of the world—there’s so many worse things that can happen—there’s so many genuine ways and reasons and evidence for being able to say, you know what truly like if I step back and zoom out truly wherever this ball goes I will truly be okay. My family will still love me. My dog will still wag its tail when I get home. All these things allow you to have that deeper root of acceptance.

So I want you to bring to mind a pie chart. Imagine the different slices that can make up a pie chart. But imagine if a massive chunk of your pie chart was golf and then other things are like family and my dog or whatever.

But if that massive part of your pie chart is golf and golf goes poorly, then who you are as a person, this pie chart of your life, who you see yourself as, of your identity, if that part of the pie is bad, then you are bad. You are not okay.

The main point of your identity—maybe it’s not golf specifically, but maybe it’s success or fear of failure or wanting to live up to your own standards, live up to other people’s standards—if that’s a major part of your pie, if that goes poorly, then your life is like not super full anymore.

But having a more spread out, balanced identity where your pie chart is made up of several evenly sized pieces of pie and maybe golf is like proportionately small relative to family or friends or whatever faith or whatever your pie chart is made up of, whatever your life is made up of—if you have an evenly balanced pie chart, then golf being on the smaller side of a pie, if that goes bad and you take it out, well your pie chart is still very, very full.

You still have 80% of your life or 90% of your life or for some of us it should be 98% of our life is still fine, right? That tiny little sliver that is golf, if that goes poorly, you’re still okay.

So why are we talking about pie charts? To bring it back to the golf course, if you’re able to have a deeper root, a solid identity based in my life is more than golf, there is much more to life than golf, then you can truly say, if this shot doesn’t go where I want it to, I will be okay. This ball can go anywhere and truly I will be okay.

Golf as a whole, this round, this tournament, this year of golf, this my golf career, you could call it, it could go poorly, I’ll still be okay. And most of us, if not all of us, should be able to say this with authenticity because our lives are not golf. Golf is a small part of our lives. Even if it’s a pretty big part of your life, you still have other parts of your life that matter.

So no, you shouldn’t have this kind of existential conversation with yourself on the tee box of a tight par four, but you should reflect on this outside of a round of golf maybe, or before you get out of your car when you pull into the parking lot, remind yourself, okay, where is golf in my life? How would I feel? What would happen if this round didn’t go well? What would happen if I hit bad shots today? Would I be destroyed or would I still be okay?

That’s a really good kind of foundation to set before you ever even start your round. So that’s kind of like a bigger picture identity check.

But if we’re talking really practical—like let’s have something that actually works on the golf course—something you can do is when you’re on that tee box feel the fear notice the fear in the moment notice how you feel notice the sensations notice the tension maybe is in your shoulders or in your forearms or in your jaw or in your gut or chest or something notice that tension notice where the fear is manifesting it.

And then name it, name what you’re feeling. Name that it’s fear. Call it fear, call it what it is. Because when you name it, you disembody it from yourself. You detach yourself from it. Instead of saying, I’m afraid, you’re able to say, I am feeling fear right now.

There’s a big difference between I embody this feeling rather than this feeling is happening to me right now for a short amount of time.

So do that little quick check-in of noticing the fear, maybe mentally naming it, yep, there’s that fear, and then hit the golf shot. And maybe you still feel a little bit tense, that’s okay. Hit the golf shot, but then you’re going to reflect.

After the shot, you’re gonna ask yourself, did the thing that I was worried about actually happen? And if it did, then you’re gonna ask yourself, okay, was it as bad as I thought it was gonna be?

And if the thing you feared, the feared outcome didn’t happen, then you probably will realize what was I so worried about? I don’t need to be so scared of an outcome that wouldn’t even happen.

But if the feared outcome happened and it was truly bad and you were rocked to your core that it happened, then you probably need to have that kind of deeper check. And maybe between that golf shot and the next one, you’re walking up the fairway or writing your card or something, or maybe you’re with an especially deep playing partner that you can talk about this kind of stuff with.

Maybe, I don’t know. Man, I was really scared on that shot. I was worried about that outcome and then it happened and then I’m like really been out of shape by it. In that case, you need to have this deeper conversation and do a deeper check of where is golf in my life? Why am I so attached to needing results?

So if you do this over and over and you keep exposing yourself to these situations, you keep showing yourself that either the bad thing that I’m worried about doesn’t actually happen that often or if it does, it doesn’t actually feel that bad. It’s not the end of the world.

The worst case scenario can happen and I live to play another golf hole, I live to hit another golf shot. If you keep exposing yourself to this, you will learn experientially. Experiential learning is miles better than intellectual learning.

So I’m just like giving you these tools and giving you this information to go use out on the golf course and experience it. And once you experience this over and over, your brain’s gonna naturally reroute yourself to, I don’t by default fear things anymore because they just don’t feel good. That fear doesn’t feel good. I would rather swing freely.

And if you would rather feel something, if something palpably feels better, your brain’s gonna do that more often.

So let’s recap. Fear leads to less freedom because you’re going to guide the ball away from what you’re scared of. The brain’s default is fear. It’s job is to fear bad things is to protect you from bad things.

And then we’ve got your deeper root of identity check, checking in with your values. Where is golf in your life? How much of my life is taken up by golf? And then you’re going to notice the feelings of fear in action on the golf course and hit the shot and then reflect. How was it? Was it that bad? Am I destroyed by it or was it not as bad as I thought? And then you’re just going to move on and hit the next shot and have that post shot accepted.

Working on these things will systematically help you play with less fear. You’ll play less scared golf. You’ll hit fewer guide-y shots, tentative putts. All of this will serve to help you play better golf because you’re going to be playing more freely.

Alright, thanks for tuning into the Mental Golf Show this week. I hope this gives you something that you can take onto the golf course to help you play better.

Thanks again to Putter Cup for sponsoring the show. You can check them out at puttercupgolf.com/mental-golf-show, sign up for their newsletter. You’ll get 15% off and you’ll support the show.

If you want to go deeper into the mental game, you should check out my perfect pre shot routine digital course. Head to joshnickelsgolf.com/course and you can check it out there. The links to all of this will be in the show notes.

All right, get out there and play freely and I will see you guys next week.