Podcast Transcript
Josh Nichols
Is every mental game struggle caused by fear?
Dr. Gio Valiante
That’s a really good question, Josh. You know, when I wrote the book Fearless Golf, what’s interesting is that book, when I was talking with the publisher, they were expecting it to sell maybe a thousand copies. In fact, they wanted me to write a book for a broader audience, but I was dug in that I was going to write it for the sort of the high-level player, sort of the elite player and the competitive player. And what happened was it ended up being translated into I think five or six different languages. And so the book was a huge hit, which caught everyone by surprise. And the reason is, to go back to your question, is because fear is such a pernicious and common thing in the human condition. So in psychology we call it one of the universalities of the human condition. And I say that because while fear is probably the most common and universal and powerful driver of a lot of human behavior, it’s not the only driver of sort of mental issues in golf. It’s a huge one, but it’s certainly not the only one, no.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, the way that I… I guess it would matter the definition of mental game issue. But the way that I’ve kind of experienced it is, I struggle to, if I get guidey, if I swing guidey, if I struggle to close out a tournament, if I yip a three footer, it seems like, on some level it’s a fear of consequences. That seems, and like you said, it’s a universality of the human condition, but it feels like fear is maybe the biggest one on the Venn diagram of what maybe people, when people are quote unquote suffering or struggling in their decision making and daily life and instead of thriving.
Dr. Gio Valiante
Yeah. It’s huge, it is huge. And it’s everywhere at both conscious and unconscious levels. But I’ll sort of try to frame that question for you. So I ended up, you know, I wrote two books in golf psychology. Fearless Golf was the first one. And the second one was a book called Golf Flow. And both of them were basically research projects. You know, I was an academic and a college professor doing, just doing psychological research. And when I wrote Fearless Golf, I didn’t start with a title and then write the book. I was just doing research and the theme of fear is what kept emerging. So the book sort of titled itself. And I think most golfers would agree that being fearful, playing fearful golf is just a miserable state of affairs. And it doesn’t matter how good your skills are, it doesn’t matter how talented you are, it doesn’t matter how much practice. If you’re playing with a lot of fear, it’s going to undermine all of those skills and abilities. Like fear cripples, you know, talent, skill and all that. So that’s one end of the spectrum. Well, the other end of the spectrum is called the flow state, right? Being in the zone.
So I spent two years doing a similar process that I did with Fearless Golf, which is essentially interviewing golfers. And so I was out on the PGA Tour traveling, you know, 25 weeks a year. And what I would do was whenever a golfer would come off the course having shot a low round, call it a 60, 61, 62, and when you travel on tour, everyone becomes friends over time. It’s like a travel circus. Everyone knows everyone. So golfers, whether it was my guys or just guys who I was friendly with, were very gracious with their time. And I would ask them, I’d say, tell me what just happened. Talk to me about what just happened. And I had a series of structured questions to try to investigate and understand what happens to golfers when they get in the zone. And what started emerging, and it was really, I think it was additive to the overall literature and flow. So there’s a book called Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. But I do think that the research, golf is such a great laboratory, great testing ground for so many areas of psychology for many reasons.
But I do think that that book contributed to the overall understanding of flow states because it revealed, we call the paradoxes of flow. So what golfers would tell me were things like, was the round of golf fast or slow? And they would think about it and eventually they’d say, it both. It went by very quickly. When you’re in a flow state, it’s like, what just happened? It’s over. But while they were in it, it felt very slow, very unrushed, right? So that’s the paradox of time. The paradox of awareness. So for example, when they would be in a flow state, they would be completely unaware of what was happening around them. The noise, the crowds, maybe they don’t even know their own score. I’m thinking of like Chad Campbell, when he shot a 61 at the Tour Championship one year. And I think the next lowest round was like, 69 or 70. It was like 30 mile an hour winds and Chad Campbell shoots a 61. And I asked him, said, were you aware of, you know, of your scores? Like not at all. Like I was just, it’s just, you know, in the present moment with Dr. Bob Rotella, so I saw be present. Well, flow states are characterized by being present. And so, you know, I tried to bookend golfers experiences. What’s the worst state and what’s the highest state, right? And I think there’s work to be done if anyone’s interested in doing it. I’ve been raising three kids, so I don’t have time to get to it. But like, OK, what is the real difference between golfers when they’re at their, you know, the highest form of themselves and they’re and really sort of. But I tried to bookend golf psychology and at least put a framework for future generations to explore, you know, what does it mean to have a really good mental game?
Josh Nichols
Yeah, and I love that. That’s awesome. That’s fascinating. And when you say the highest experience and the lowest experience. Should we be striving to never encounter fear? One, is that possible? Two, is that a worthy goal? Is that unrealistic or unfair?
Dr. Gio Valiante
Now that’s a good question. Again, on some level it depends because everyone’s architecture is different, right? Everyone’s amygdala is governed differently and some people are just sort of born with a predisposition for, you know, to be a little more high arousal and a little more jumpy and other people are born. Have you seen the documentary? I forget who that mountain climber is. There’s a rock climber who is free, free some… Yeah, it’s got this great documentary.
Josh Nichols
Yes, Alex Honnold.
Dr. Gio Valiante
He doesn’t feel fear. So here he is, you know, with no ropes tied to him, climbing up mountains where any mistake is certain death. But I think they did brain scans of his brain and like the architecture of his brain is such that he just doesn’t feel the physiology of fear the way that, you know, we feel it. Most normal people feel it. So, you know, the simple answer is, contextually it depends. But the other way to think about it is for most golfers the answer is no, you’re going to feel fear at some point. And there’s all sorts of reasons for that. Number one, we’re wired for fear. Most people are wired for fear. Now, why is that? Well, if you understand natural selection and evolution and sort of the origin and how we’ve come to the modern day human brain in the last 300,000 years of modern humans, the brain did not evolve for you to be evolved. It’s not like there was a master plan, say, natural selection, we’re going to move in a direction where we’re going to have this feature of a human being, the brain, that’s going to make them a great golfer.
And so the human brain, by all inferences in evolutionary psychology, is designed to keep you alive long enough so you can pass on your genes. And the best vehicle for keeping you alive is learning. So the brain is an instrument designed to just learn. How does the brain learn from experiences? Okay, and so through natural evolution, the bias is that if you go back 100,000, not even 100,000, if you go back a few hundred years, if you’re in a dangerous situation, your brain has to learn, hey, this was dangerous, don’t do that again, because it’s trying to keep you alive. So the brain over indexes toward danger, and that’s why fear is such a powerful driver because if something painful or dangerous happens, the brain is essentially saying, hey, you better remember this. This is really important. This is life threatening. So so and that’s sort of why actually something like PTSD is so impossible to shape because not only lives in the brain, it lives in the body and not only a psychological level, but a physiological and physical level. So what happens is the brain has been designed to over index to keep you alive.
We overreact to threatening situations. And the way we overreact is fear. Because again, the brain’s primary motivation is to keep you alive. So how does that play out for a golfer? It interacts with… So believe it or not, the primary experience in the human condition that leads people to be afraid is social judgment. It’s being judged by others. Now, why is that? Well, going back to evolutionary psychology, to be a bit of a lone wolf or a loner, as opposed to part of a tribe or a community. If you’re part of a tribe or a community, there was safety in numbers. To be ostracized and to be alone meant just danger, right? So we evolved to be accepted, to want to belong to a community for safety. So what happens naturally is human beings care what other people think of them, because we’re wired to care what people think of us.
Now put that set up. The brain is an instrument that is designed to keep you alive and a primary vehicle of safety is acceptance by other people. And now fast forward and put someone on a golf course with that set up. In a game where you’re gonna make mistakes in front of other people. Right? And all of a sudden what you come to find is the primary driver of fear. It’s not the threat of physical harm like in boxing or MMA. It’s the fact that we are going to be judged by other people. Right? So then what you see happen is since we don’t want that feeling is by and large, most people play golf not because they love golf or not because they’re trying to be better at their craft or it’s… They want to sort of impress people or show off or demonstrate their competence to other people. Now they wouldn’t say that to you, but if you really talk to them and they want to say, why are you nervous? Well, I don’t want to hit a bad shot. Why don’t you want to hit a bad shot? And you start to unpack and say, well, because I’m going to look like a fool in front of other people. So yeah.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, man, wow. The root cause of not wanting to look like a fool, not wanting to embarrass yourself, wanting to be accepted by other people. Is that, I would assume, naturally that’s why we feel more of these feelings, nervousness, anxiety, fear, the more people we’re being watched by? Is that how that, why that happens, you think?
Dr. Gio Valiante
Well, it’s not only the number of people, it’s who’s watching, right? It’s who it is. And if it’s somebody whose opinion you care about, it’s really the indicator. You know, Jack Nicklaus has this great story that, you know, he was never nervous playing golf. And then Bobby Jones came and watched him play once. And when he knew that Bobby Jones was in the ropes, Jack hit a high block right over Bobby Jones’s head out of bounds, right? Because that’s Bobby Jones as a childhood hero. And I think everyone has a version of that, right? It’s like if you’re playing with someone, if you’re playing with people and you don’t really, you know, they’re perceived as just friendly, like you don’t feel nervous, but once someone, whether it’s a boss at work, you get to the PGA Tour and you’re paired with Rory or you’re paired with Tiger, you’re paired with somebody, you know, who you’ve seen on TV. This happens to rookies on tour all the time. It’s just like, my God, that’s Brooks Koepka, that’s Bryson DeChambeau. I mean, that’s… These are role models and heroes.
So what I always say to rookies is, when you show up on tour, two things you have to think about. Say, number one, day one, like stare at your feet and don’t look up to the end of the year. Just don’t look around, just literally. And get lost in the process of playing the golf course. Not the other players, not the leaderboard, not the money list, not the FedEx. Get lost in the process of playing a golf course one shot at a time. So that, you know, the more, and that’s why, you know, it’s a bit cliche in golf, you know, process, process, process, routine, routine, routine. But people, you know, fail to ask, why is that so important? Why are psychologists talking about and coaches talking about the value of having a good routine? Well, because a routine immerses you in the process of playing golf course. Whereas, and it gets you out of sort of the variability of the audience and being judged by others, yeah.
Josh Nichols
And you mentioned kind of mastery of craft at one point, how that’s not usually the motivation of why we play golf. We play golf to impress others as we tend to and the resulting fear and mistakes that come from that. But maybe a pursuit of mastery, because in Fearless Golf you mentioned mastery versus ego and it sounds like that’s what we’re talking about here is when golf is an ego pursuit, then you’re afraid of knocks on that ego. You’re afraid of any time that that ego could be damaged or whatever, threatened. But a pursuit of mastery kind of negates the opinions of anybody else because you’re on a more pure pursuit, maybe more individualized pursuit. Am I getting that right?
Dr. Gio Valiante
Yeah, that’s right. I think it was the second chapter of Fearless Golf. I wrote about it in Golf Flow too. When we do these psychological studies, they begin with a simple question. Why do you play golf? Why do you play golf? And if you ask a thousand people that question, and then you start to categorize the answers, generally speaking, you do find that there’s clusters to two reasons why. Number one, some people play golf for the love of the game. They’re the mastery of the craft. Called a mastery orientation. It’s not just golf, this isn’t any achievement domain. And then alternatively, you have what’s called an ego orientation. Why do you play golf? It’s well, I wanna beat a certain person, I wanna demonstrate my competence, I wanna win, right? It’s not about golf, it’s about what you get from golf, right?
But here’s the fascinating thing, Josh. We talked about mastery versus ego. Everyone starts out as a mastery golfer. Now why is that? So let’s say you’re a kid. Whatever, it’s just using it, 10 years old, 12 years old, you were 12 when you started playing, right? You pick up a golf club and you start hitting balls. And I’m actually watching this with my own kids right now. You know, we’re here in Florida, we didn’t play much in the fall, holidays came and went. And just last week for the first time, my kids, I’ve got a set up in my backyard, it’s a little bit like Topgolf, I got a 20 foot net and we got so my kids can go hit anytime. Watching my kids hit balls and all of a sudden they’ve gotten bigger and stronger in the last six months, five months, and they’re hitting these shots and their eyes are lighting up and they’re so excited, right?
That feeling that you get when you’re hitting a perfect shot and how far you can hit it and what you can do. We’ve all had that. Anyone who’s in the game knows the feeling I’m talking about. It’s that moment, that feeling where all of a sudden it’s like, I’m hooked. It’s like falling in love with your wife. It’s like, it’s like. This is my person, right? Golf does that to people. It’s like, this is my calling, right? We’ve all had this incredible feeling. That’s mastery. When you’re doing a pursuit for the love of the pursuit itself, intrinsically motivated, that’s the experience that golf gives everyone at some point.
Now, if you follow what happens from there, so now you’re motivated to do it more. And by virtue of the fact, so you start to practice, which means you’re going to get better. Then you start getting good and people notice it and they start giving you compliments. That’s when the next shift happens, because all of a sudden it feels good to be important in your community. Maybe you’ve, because you’re a mastery-oriented golfer who loves to learn, master the craft, practice all the time, gets lost in solving the problems in the game, you get better and better, then what happens is you start getting rewarded for that.
So for example, let’s just say you get a college scholarship. And as a college athlete, you get free gear, you get cool gear, you get all these perks. And then what happens oftentimes, Josh, is that there’s a psychological shift. No longer are you motivated to play the game for the sake of the game itself. Now you’re motivated to get the things that the game gives you. Generally, in order, praise and recognition, status and stature, awards, trophies, and then in the era of NIL, maybe even money. Right? So it happens unconsciously. But you start to realize that we get attached to results and instead of playing golf for the sake of golf, we’re playing golf as a vehicle. We’re using the game to get what we want. And that’s where the game, you know, generally puts people into some version of like a psychological straightjacket.
Josh Nichols
Hmm. So golf becomes a means to an end rather than the end in itself. Should we be constantly trying to make golf an end in itself? Is that, I know should is the wrong word maybe, but yeah, is that where we should all be trying to point our focus?
Dr. Gio Valiante
It’s so it’s it’s not you know, thing about psychology is sometimes it could be a little bit messy, but but you know to simplify it if we assume that you know, everyone has it in them to be a little bit mastery and a little bit ego some more than others right some with others and and the other reality is that mastery and ego both live inside anybody. And like listen, let’s say you go shoot a great round of golf with your buddies. And people say great round of golf. It’s okay to feel good that you did that in front of your friends or with your family. But what I always say is the order of operations, like the order has to be mastery and then ego. It can’t be ego then mastery.
You know, so long as the primary driver is, you know, is you’re playing golf for the sake of golf, you’re immersed in the process, love the game itself. And then… And you’re like, you I’ll give an example. There’s a golfer right now. Her name is, is Ena Kim Shad. Ena just won, I think for the second time, the US Women’s Mid-Am, for the second time at like 40 something years old. And if anyone who’s sort of travels in sort of amateur golf circles, knows Ena because she’s always playing golf. She’s always somewhere with a golf club in her hand and she doesn’t do any of it for the glory. She just loves golf. In fact, she left, if I understand the story correctly, she left a really promising career in finance because she missed golf so much, right? So she just plays the game. And she’s, I think, a perfect example of what a modern day mastery golfer is. It’s like she’s so lost in the process of trying to solve the game, but also solve herself in relation to the game. And as a natural consequence of that, she gets to win a bunch of trophies. Like that’s how it should happen. The trophies and the awards should come as a natural consequence of the pursuit of excellence and mastery of the game but also mastery of the self.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, man, that’s obviously hard to do because of our hardwiring as a seeking acceptance. But also we’re in a way we’re hardwired to, like you said, we start off in a mastery orientation. So that’s hardwiring and also. Man, I don’t even know, it’s a fascinating topic because I’ve experienced maybe both, I’ve experienced both where I struggled for a really long time because I was ego-driven and then I shifted to what I thought was a mastery orientation and then suddenly I started accelerating because as I’ve always said it, was, I went from needing good results to, just want to be a better golfer. Like that’s, that’s kind of been my, the phrase. And now kind of since then, since I kind of put my clubs down for a while, I’m, I’m back to the result ego orientation of, want to get back to where I was because it felt good. And I liked the recognition and whatever. So I’ve, I’ve gone back and forth to both, but I have felt my best. I’ve played my best golf when I’ve been more oriented towards mastery. So is it? Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Gio Valiante
And by the way, just touching base on what we said earlier, statistically speaking, a mastery orientation is statistically correlated to flow states. An ego orientation is negatively correlated to flow states. In other words, it’s almost impossible to get into flow if you’re approaching the game from an ego orientation.
Josh Nichols
Right? Yeah, when you’re trying to impress other people and that’s constantly in your awareness bubble, then you’re pulled out of the present moment all the time.
Dr. Gio Valiante
Right. Yeah. That’s right. All the time. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I remember I had a Hollywood director come come in, spend a day with him, come want to do one of my ideas, fearless golf academies for people. And he flew in and he said to me, he said, I don’t understand this, darn game. He said, you know, I could be with all these rich, famous people and I don’t, you know, and I’m comfortable, but get me on a golf course. And he goes, I just, feel all this fear because it’s nowhere else in my life. Do I feel how I feel in the golf course? We started talking about it and then we went out to the golf course and he pulled out a ball and I looked at the ball and I said, what kind of ball do play? And he goes, he goes, I forgot to tell you doc. He said, is the only thing I do well in my mental game. And the golf ball on it said Fig Jam. Fig Jam, the acronym, right? F, I’m good, just ask me. He goes, this is what I tell myself for every shot. And he thought that that was a positive thing.
Josh Nichols
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.
Dr. Gio Valiante
And I said to him, OK, I think we I think we know the source of the fear. Let’s go back to the office. We don’t need to play. I said, we don’t even need to go hit a ball. Let’s go back to the office. And then explaining him this dynamic and mastery. He was playing because he’s Hollywood, right? Exclusively to show off to other people. Which is why he was great on the range. Sorry, on the first tee just would melt down because Hollywood, right in L.A. scene, it’s all about demonstrating how good you are to other people has nothing to do with the game. It’s all ego. And so we, you know, we fixed that and like men, like almost every golfer that’s ever come through, where that’s been the problem, start playing better almost immediately. Yeah.
Josh Nichols
Right. And the… How, you know, how, okay, what did you, what did you guys go back to the office and talk about? How do you shift from an ego orientation to a master orientation?
Dr. Gio Valiante
All right, this is gonna be a bit of a long answer. So just cut me off if I get too long winded. In fact, if you don’t mind, let me illustrate with a story. Something just happened last year. This is maybe two years ago, maybe a little less than two years ago. So there was a golfer named John Pak. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of John Pak. So John Pak was an all-American golfer at Florida State University, dominant golfer, won eight times. John Pak in like 2000 and maybe 2021, something like that, won the Hogan Award, the Haskins Award, and the Nicholas Award. All three awards in college golf, he swept. Dominant college golfer. And then if I remember correctly, he won PGA Tour U, universally. So, you win that, and he got bunch of starts on tour, because he’s that good. PGA Tour will give you access and an on-ramp, if you’re that dominant. And as the story goes, I wasn’t there for any of this, but…
You know, I was told this, yeah, didn’t have a good first year on tour. So got demoted to, to Corn Ferry, you know, apparently didn’t have a good year on Corn Ferry, lost status there. And, and then I think didn’t have a good third year. And just randomly, literally just randomly, I’m at my local club and John Pak happens to be on the driving range. He was actually on his way to qualify for an event. And I was with my son and, I could, you could just tell a really good move when you see it. And I asked the head pro, said, who’s that? He’s like, oh, this kid John Pak is driving through, asked if could use the facilities for the day. So I told my son, said, so why don’t you go over there and watch that kid practice? I said, you’ll become better watching him practice than you will by hitting balls yourself, right? Because of the mirror neurons in the brain and the things that happen by serious learning. As it turns out, John is one of the sweetest human beings you’ll ever meet in your life. And even though…
Here he is in a career slump. So most golfers when they’re slump are just grouchy. John Pak is such a sweet human being. I look over and all of sudden he’s talking. They’re talking and apparently he’s like, I asked myself, what shot do you Are you gonna see me hit this shot? want to do that? And then all of a sudden, a few minutes later, John Pak is giving my son a putting lesson on the putting green. And I’m like, so I go over and I was like, hey, know, just answer yourself. Really appreciate you doing that. And.
Josh Nichols
Yeah.
Dr. Gio Valiante
And John said, goes, are you Dr. Giovanni Valiante? I said, your books and he said, do you mind if get your number? I said, John, I’m not really working with golfers right now. I’m doing other stuff. said, but I’ll tell you what, anyone who’s not kind to a child, I said, why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? Join us for dinner, tell me what’s going on. And.
You know, I’ll dust off the old playbook and see what would be helpful. Anyway, John Pak proceeds to tell the story at the dinner table about, went from the dominant, number one player in the country, college golf, and just has had a really rough few years. He tells the story at my dinner table, which point my kid’s eyes are wide open going, Dad, you have to help. I guess I was like, So listen to this, this is what happens next. So John, said come back next, come town next week and we’ll.
To the Valiante Golf Academy to the people. And in that day, you uncover exactly what we’re talking about. So imagine being the dominant golfer in college where everyone’s expectations of you are so high. And being a great human being and a good kid, you want to live up to other people’s expectations of you. It’s bit of an ego, but it’s more just like people have invested in you, they’ve worked hard, your coaches, your family, your friends. And so naturally you want to play well, but you also want to do right by others. And then what the natural progression is, is, okay, so you have a tough start. What’s the natural reaction? I’m going to ask you this question, Josh. What’s the natural emotional reaction to bad golf? How do most people experience bad golf? What do they feel?
Josh Nichols
Yeah, disappointment, frustration, maybe rejection, that line of feelings. Okay. Yeah, okay, yes. Yes.
Dr. Gio Valiante
And you’re missing the big one. Embarrassment.
So what we know psychologically is the most painful psychological experience. So psychology, know two things. Number one, psychological pain generally can be more painful than any physical pain, right? The most painful physical pain, maybe like burns, right? But like psychological pain is generally more cuts deeper than physical pain. And if all the psychological pain people could feel, the most painful is grief.
Grieving over the loss of a loved one. And the second one is embarrassment in humiliation. So imagine a situation, and I won’t even talk about John now, let’s just talk at scale to any golfer. Any golfer who plays badly and then feels embarrassed, or what you’re talking, disappointment, rejection, any of those things. The brain experiences those things as painful. Follow me here. So here’s exactly.
And this is probably the most, if anyone’s gonna watch this, this is probably the most important thing that I’ll say on this podcast. So let’s say I hit a bad shot. Let’s say you hit a bad shot and right after you, and then I’m like, you Josh hit a bad shot. And after that bad shot, I come up and I give you a smack on the leg or I deliver some sort of pain, anything painful or like a little jolt of electricity or a pinprick, just pain. What happens, your brain will associate bad shot with pain, right? That’s the consequence of that shot. In this case, it’s physical pain. So let’s say that we go play, we do that actually again. You hit a bad shot.
Right after you hit that bad shot, deliver pain any form. It could be an electric shock. It could be a pin. It could be a sniper. On that third shot, the next shot, as you’re standing over a golf ball, what do you think your brain is doing?
Josh Nichols
Yeah, it’s gonna fear. I need to hit a good one because if I hit a bad one, I’m gonna experience that thing because there’s a pattern now. I’ve done it twice.
Dr. Gio Valiante
So what happens is your brain is doing exactly what it’s designed to do. It’s learning. So what does it’s anticipating? If I hit a bad shot, pain is coming. So now you’re standing over a golf ball and your brain starts reacting with what’s called the fear response. Heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up, pupils dilate, right capillaries constrict, grip pressure tightens.
Your brain’s anticipating the consequence of a bad shot, which is pain. So now, instead of being motivated, your primary driver being focused on hitting a great shot, you’re actually focused and you’re driving motivated to not hit a bad shot. So it’s like the psychological equivalent of the prevent defense in football. You’re playing to not mess up rather than playing to play great. Now, why is that? Because you’ve conditioned, or in this case, we conditioned your fear with pain.
In real life, I don’t have to be out there delivering pain to a golfer. They’re doing it to themselves with how they react to a bad shot. Shame, rejection, particularly embarrassment. If you are a golfer and your reaction to a bad shot is embarrassment, it’s with 100% certainty that you will be conditioning your own fear. Your brain will start to learn, when I play bad, I feel embarrassed.
The brain experiences embarrassment as severe pain. So now you’re governing unconscious drivers as pain avoidance or avoidance of failure and nobody can play great trying to not play bad. So you can actually see the concept how, now to complete the puzzle, why is mastery golf so much, such a better play away than ego golf? If you ask a golfer, why do you play golf? And he’s like, well, I play because I love the game. I play for improvement. I play to learn.
I get lost in the process. If you hit a bad shot as a mastery golfer, the natural reaction is curiosity or acceptance. The two reactions of a mastery golfer are curiosity or acceptance. By the hit, you’re learning and getting better. The natural reaction to an ego golfer, remember an ego golfer’s primary goal is image management, status stature. If you hit a bad shot, if my goal is to impress you and I hit a bad shot, the natural reaction is going to be embarrassment.
Or any one of the toxic emotions. At which point now I’m playing fearful golf, I’m playing terrifying. Unconsciously I’m scared to mess up. And then all of a sudden you get what you said earlier, you get guidey, you get steery, the cup shrinks, the fairways look more narrow, all this aperture changes. And so I think that’s why the track record, and I really mean this, this is not…
This is not me patting myself on the back at all, because these ideas were in psychology before me. The amount, if I don’t want to go through the catalog of improvement of golfers that we’ve worked with over the last 20 years, but the before and after is so stunning that as a scholar and as an academic, you’re like, this is unbelievable. Because when you start out as a psychologist, it’s all theoretical.
You don’t know if it’s going to work. So it’s called the theory to practice bridge. You apply, start applying these ideas. You’re like, Oh wow, that works. Try it again. So my career, didn’t, I didn’t start out as being a practicing sports psychologist. I was just a researcher. But what happened is golfers just kept getting better so quickly that the phone kept ringing. You know, 2002 Jack Nicklaus, I worked with Jack Nicklaus. Jack Nicklaus hadn’t made a cut on the PGA Tour in two years.
And I traveled with him and his family up to the memorial and I was staying at the house with them and he made the cut. And when the media said, Jack, where did this come from? He said, well, there’s a young man staying at our house this week who’s reminding me how I used to play golf. Translation. He’s reminding me about mastery golf. And another example, Justin Rose, right? Justin Rose hadn’t won on the PGA Tour. He was 0 for like 200.
Run to her for nine years, it never won, despite the fact that was the number one ranked ball striker on tour. Right? Now, what happened with someone like Justin Rose? Broadly speaking, it’s like, well, he almost won the Open Championship at 17, and he’s on the radar, and he’s young, and he’s famous, and everyone’s got these expectations of him, very similar to someone like a John Pak. But then, you know, golf, no one gets better in a straight line in golf, right? There’s, right?
And so Justin starts getting worse. I think what happened some version of it’s like, yeah, you shift from mastery to ego. And then all of a sudden you get so close to winning, but that fear takes over. So Justin Rose, I’ll never forget, he, you know, he reached us like, hey, can we have a conversation? said, sure. So we had breakfast one day. And I knew exactly immediately, said, oh, this is a classic mastery versus ego set up. And I ended, it was very clear why. So we shifted Justin Rose.
From being an ego golfer to a mastery golfer. Now mind you, he had gone nine years and never won on the PGA Tour. He won 15 days later. And then he won again 14 days after that. You follow me? Now let me go back to John Pak, the certain last year. John Pak was in a three year slump. He was 0 for 20 in Monday qualifiers. When John Pak came in, shifted him from ego golf to mastery golfer.
I think it was 12 days later, he Monday qualified for the Korn Ferry event and finished top 10, which got him another start the next week. Next week, top 10 again, which got him three more starts. Then at the end that season, you start playing well by playing mastery golf or single golf, finished 19th on the Korn Ferry Tour and made it to the PGA Tour. So how do you explain John Pak in a three-year slump? I didn’t teach him how to swing the golf club. I didn’t give him any more talent and I didn’t give him any more skill and I didn’t give him a swing lesson. didn’t give him. All it was was a psychological shift. So after three years of poor play, John Pak in 12 days won the Monday qualifier, had, I don’t know, eight top tens on the corn ferry and a win. Like that’s not, it’s not an accident. You don’t go through three bad years. Your game doesn’t go from here to here in a week or two weeks. And Justin Rose didn’t go for a hundred and however many turns he played in nine years to winning in 15 days. And like that pattern, Nick Jack Nicklaus didn’t make the cut for two years, made a cut.
Jester Rose, know, 0 for 9 years, wins in 15 days. The talent and skill was all there. Jester Rose’s talent, it’s world class, it’s elite. Golf swing, elite. But why didn’t he win for 9 years? John Pak won 8 times in college. Won the Haskins, the Hogan, and the Nicklaus award. 3 years produced really bad golf, 0 for 20 in Monday qualifiers. How is it that within 2 weeks after making a psychological shift, wins a Monday qualifier, top tens on the corn ferry, earns status, wins and goes to the PGA Tour. How does that happen? So like people talk about like this psychology real. Like you tell me.
Josh Nichols
Is it well. Right, yeah. So is it as simple as get more curious about your mistakes, be more accepting about your struggles?
Dr. Gio Valiante
It starts earlier than that. It starts at the fundamental level of why do you play golf? It’s got to start there. Why are you going to practice today? Why are you doing this? Then you just always got to understand. So I would say go read Fearless Golf. I’m not trying to plug a book here, but go read that chapter in Fearless Golf. Because I’ll tell you, Jack Nicklaus was on ESPN doing a fishing show once.
Like ESPN outdoors and they weren’t catching any fish and he said I’d ESPN because it doesn’t matter because I’m a mastery fisherman anyway, I care about fishing more than I care about the like it’s like so it really infuses a lot of parts of people’s lives. So I just think of a working understanding of the dynamic between master and ego. It makes you a happier human being it makes you better at whatever is you’re doing and you’re having more fun at your craft. So yeah, I think it’s really important.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, shifting from, I need this result to, I just love the game. So when someone were to kind of audit themselves and say, okay, why do I play this game? Because maybe they don’t have access to someone like you or someone like me or whatever, but they say, okay, I’m gonna figure this out. Why do I play this game? And they realize, I… I play this game to impress others. Play this game to not embarrass, not probably, they wouldn’t say I play this game to not embarrass myself. I play this game to impress other people. A big one that I hear a lot when I ask golfers, why do you play golf is I like competition. I like the competitive golf, which now that we’re talking about it through this lens, that sounds more ego than mastery because competition, and I don’t know the, I’ve done a word study, but competition and comparison are both have the maybe root C O P. I don’t know if that’s, if that’s maybe.
Dr. Gio Valiante
Good, that’s good. You may or may not be right there, but certainly a good connection. I’ll tell you, word compete, it’s a Latin word, is rooted in compitere. Compitere translation, to strive together. To strive together. So what happens, this is a very Western thing that, know, sort of that, the dualism and sort of the human brain likes to think in binary terms, and particularly in sort of, you know, American, you know, sort of ethos of, know, winner-loser, know, second is the first loser. And this really started in the 80s and 90s. That’s a pretty modern phenomenon. But the actual translation of compete means to strive together, compete.
Now, early in my career as a sports psychologist, one of the things I did with golfers, with competitive, this is true, high school, PJ2 or LPGA, I would ask people, are you a competitive person? 100% of them said yes. You can imagine, right? My next question is this, Josh. Who are you competing against? And this is where it got interesting. One person would say, I’m competing against everyone in my group that day. Another person would say, I’m competing against the leaderboard. Third person is, I’m competing against myself. Fourth person would be like, well, who’s in the field? Know, Phil Tiger. I’m competing against someone like that guy.
As long as I beat him, we were college together, never liked him. I’m competing against old man par. Someone was there. Was, you know, whoever the case may be. I’m trying to shoot a score. And then every once in a while you hear people say, I’m competing against the golf course. And so people have this competitiveness, but a lot of times they aim it at the wrong thing. Now why? So, so not to get too long winded here, but you should never be competing against another golfer. Now why is that?
If you and I are competing, let’s say that my goal is to beat you, and we’re paired today, and I wanna beat you, right? And the first hole, you make a birdie, and I make a bogey. I’m like, I’m two down. Next hole, I make a par, you make a birdie. I’m like, I’m three down. Now all of a sudden, I’m attaching my confidence to you. But the problem is I have no control over you. And what we know, and what we know in psychology, let’s see if I can find the book, confidence…
Is rooted in some level in our ability to control things, control the outcomes that matter to us. If I attach my confidence to something over which I have no control, which is the other player, I essentially have no control of my confidence. And so like, you should never be competing. Now, let’s say I want to beat you. The best chance I have at beating you is by getting lost in the process of playing the golf course itself.
Right? And so like here again is one of the paradox of golf. If you want to shoot a certain score, your goal shouldn’t be to shoot a certain score. If you want to beat a certain player, your goal shouldn’t be to beat a certain player. If you want to win a golf tournament, your goal shouldn’t be to win the golf tournament. In all three of those cases, what you should do is go out, take your game, make a game plan and execute against that golf course. Get lost in the process of playing a golf course and then add them up at the end.
That’s you do mastery golf. The psychology of mastery golf, how do you actually do it? Know, in psychology, we talk about the difference between conceptual knowledge and procedural knowledge. Conceptual knowledge is to know something, procedural knowledge is to know how to do something. That’s how you do mastery golf. And that’s how, generally speaking, you’re get the best, certainly the best results.
Josh Nichols
Hmm play the golf course not not other people so yeah You you kind of compared old man par other people myself the golf course why is why is competing against the golf course better than competing against myself?
Dr. Gio Valiante
Why is so… One of the reasons is this, the human brain very naturally reacts to targets. It’s rooted in brain development. There’s a thing, for example, it’s called the secondary grasping reflex. Here’s the secondary grasping reflex. If you take a newborn and you hold a piece of food out in front of a newborn, in front of the so what you’ll see is they will reach for it, but they’ll start out at the last minute, they grab it.
Right? It’s just, they can latch onto the thing, but they find their way to intervention. That’s how the brain is with regard to targets. Right? We can, if we just react to a target. Most ego golfers, but most viewers of the game, they see golf as something like a horse race. It’s one golfer against another. It’s a horse race with a leaderboard. For the player, him or herself, you should think of golf as a target game.
It’s hitting the shot to a target, so you can do it. The reason that playing the golf course is superior to playing against oneself is because playing the golf course, part of the process of playing fearless golf, or mastery golf, fearless golf, is before every shot, you ask yourself the question, what’s my target?
Furthermore, if your internal dialogue is a conversation with yourself about yourself, you’re really not into the process of executing a golf shot to a target, right? And so the psychological becomes physiological, which becomes mechanical, and focus on the self is different than focus on the task, right? And so what you want is people immersed in and the task itself, not thinking about themselves. Yeah.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, yeah, where self-awareness is valuable, there’s a tipping point where it becomes, this is no longer valuable, now you’re ripped out of the task, and you’re now focused too much internally.
Dr. Gio Valiante
Well, that’s what the research on flow states for being in the zone says. Once you realize you’re in the zone, you immediately get out of it. Know, once somebody tells you, hey, hey dude, you’re in the zone, you’re all of a then you can’t get back into it. What gets us into the zone is deep immersion in the task we are doing. It’s being task oriented, not self oriented. And the translation for golfers, the task is executing shots at targets against the golf course.
Josh Nichols
Wow.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Man. I love that. Okay. Bring it. Bring it.
Dr. Gio Valiante
Can I give another example real quick? I want to say the name, the NFL quarterback, talented as can be, fell into a pattern where anytime he was playing against another marquee quarterback, he would play badly. So if the other team’s quarterback was like a Mahomes or a Brady or whoever, now what would happen is, what he was telling himself is, because the way the TV would frame it, it’s Mahomes versus Allen, it’s Mahomes versus whoever, and he believed that. So now he would start trying to force balls into windows or do spectacular things, but it never worked out well, risk taking, decision making, know. So, met with this quarterback and shifted his psychology. Said, listen, who are you competing against? If it’s, you’re never on the field at the same time as the other team’s quarterback. You have no control over that. You shouldn’t be thinking about the other quarterback. Going back to golfers, well, you’re competitive. Who are you competing against? So we shifted this quarterback psychology to say, hey, listen, if you’re thinking of anyone, it should be the other team’s defensive coordinator. For golfers, if you’re thinking about anyone, it should be the golf course architect by the.
Like if you’re competing, you’re someone who needs to be, your dialogue should be with Seth Raynor or Tom Fazio. What were you thinking here? You’re trying to draw my eye here. You do court crunch like, but that’s the dialogue. It’s the architects. You’re playing against their golf course. And for an NFL quarterback, it’s the other team’s defensive coordinator. And so for a quarterback, mastery football, right, plays out that.
Your competition is the other team’s defensive coordinator. So your goal is to execute the playbook, our playbook, against that person’s scheme. So it happens in all different competitive arenas that the ego takes over and we’re competing, but we’re competing against something over which we have no control. And that diminishes skill and decision making and all sorts of things. Yeah.
Josh Nichols
I love that competing against the architect because it and the way you said, where are you trying to draw my eye where so it’s you you enter this round of golf with a curiosity and an exploration and a let’s see what I can do sort of mentality rather than it needs to go this way. I hope they see me do this. I need to do this. Yada yada yada all these ego things.
Dr. Gio Valiante
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, have a conversation with the architect. I mean, if you take nothing else, like if you just want a sort of simple thought, you get up. First question you ask, who’s the course designer? Before you even get on the first tee, hey, who designed this place? Oh, it’s a court Crenshaw, it’s Seth Raynor, it’s Jack Nicklaus. All right, all right, Jack, what are you thinking here? Oh, I know you like your second shot golf course. So, okay, so where are you trying to draw my eye? Where’s the risk reward, right?
Where’s the safe part of the green? Where’s the leave? And you’re having a dialogue with the architect, which gets you focused on the course itself. And if you’re thinking about the golf course, guess what you’re not thinking about? What does that person think of me? Or am I being judged? Or how am I being perceived by other people? You’re lost in the process playing the golf course.
Josh Nichols
Mmm.
Josh Nichols
I love that. Okay, at the risk of potentially going for hours and hours and hours, I need to cut myself off from talking to you. Dr. Valiante, this is fascinating and I’m looking at my list of items I wanted to ask you about and two out of probably 20 have been checked off. So maybe again someday, but this is awesome. Thank you so much.
Dr. Gio Valiante
Josh, this was really fun for me and I appreciate you reaching out. Keep doing good work and spring time’s coming. So golf season’s right around the corner, but I hope you have a wonderful spring and to everyone out there, I hope you all have a great 2026 playing this beautiful game.
Josh Nichols
All right, Dr. Gio. Thank you.
