Think Above Par | Your Mental Caddy for Golf Mindset & Performance
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If you’re a serious golfer who knows you’re leaving shots out on the course, Think Above Par is your go-to podcast for mastering the mental game of golf. Hosted by Kathy Hart —a former Tour player, Top 50 Teacher, and Certified Mental Coach—each episode helps you strengthen your golf mindset, manage pressure, and play calm, confident, and consistent golf.
You’ll discover why you underperform under pressure, how to stop overthinking your swing, and what to do when you’re worried about what others think on the golf course. Whether you struggle with performance anxiety, perfectionism, or negative self-talk, Kathy shares proven mental-game tools to help you unlock your talent, enjoy the game again, and lower your golf scores.
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Think Above Par | Your Mental Caddy for Golf Mindset & Performance
How to Find More Satisfaction With the Game of Golf
•Kathy Hart Wood•Episode 176
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Unlocking True Satisfaction in Golf
In this episode, we dive deep into the elusive nature of satisfaction in golf. Inspired by insights from Justin Thomas and a revealing moment with Shane Lowry at the PGA, we explore why even top golfers often feel unfulfilled despite their achievements. By digging into the real meaning of satisfaction and focusing on what we can control, this episode aims to help you discover how to make your golf game more fulfilling, satisfying, and ultimately, more enjoyable.
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 girlfriend, how are you? Welcome back to Think Above Par. Thank you for listening and putting in the work and sharing the podcast with all of your friends. I appreciate that. Share it with some potential teammates that you have coming up this season. Maybe someone you're playing with in the member member or member guest. Share some episodes with them so that you all are on the same page, know how to talk the same language, right, so that you have a better experience and hopefully play a little bit better and perform a little bit better too. Okay, so today I want to talk about satisfaction. I want to talk about golf satisfaction. And I was struck by this when I heard Justin Thomas say at the PGA, he said, as tour players, we're just never satisfied. You can go out there and shoot 62 or 64 and still not be satisfied with your round. And I really paused when I heard him say that because that's so true. I mean I really think back to when I was playing golf for a living and I played college golf and junior golf, and even the golf that I play now, the amount of times that I'm actually satisfied. I'm gonna say right now, I'm way more satisfied with my golf at any point in my life, but I've done a lot of work and I've done this work to really get my mind around it. But it is true that there's always shots that we feel like we could have done better. We could have made that putt, we could have not hit it in the bunker, we could have not hit a ball in the water, we can critique our game, the score, every shot, right? We can go over it with a fine-tuned tooth comb and then feel like we're not satisfied with the round, which is so interesting when you think about it. It's like, why the heck do we play the game if every time we walk off of 18, we're like not fully satisfied? Like it was fun and it was pretty good, but I still left some out there. Even in the PGA, Shane Lowry, who went on to shoot, he was on his way to shoot 61, he bogeyed the last hole for 62. The first words out of his mouth was just like, I'm disappointed with bogeying 18. It's like, dude, you shot 62. Like it was for 17 holes, it was incredible golf. But then we walk away just feeling a little flat, a little disappointed, a little not satisfied, a little bit unfulfilled, which is really interesting because we keep going back to this game that we're never satisfied with. It's like, are we all like a little touched?
unknown
I don't know.
SPEAKER_00
So I was prompted to look up the word satisfaction in the dictionary, and I want to share them with you. One was the fulfillment of one's wishes, expectations, or needs. And I think the word expectation in there with golf is probably where we get tripped up, right? Because our expectations relative to golf are pretty high. Even when we know rationally that we're gonna miss shots, we just think we should play 18 holes and that not happen. It only happens on the range, right? We don't think we should ever miss a shot or a green and or a putt, really, ever, even though it's in our wheelhouse and our talent level and our capability. So it's so interesting. The word sat expectation in the definition of satisfaction. I think relative to golfers, that one kind of trips it up a little bit. The other definition I saw was a pleasant feeling that you get when you receive something you wanted or when you have done something you wanted to do. I kind of like that one a little bit better for us just to be able to walk off the golf course and feel a little bit more satisfied. It's when you have done something you wanted to do. So, with those two definitions, which one do you think for you you put more emphasis on? Are you the type of golfer who's just happy to go out there and play and do something that you wanted to do? And I'm gonna say there's millions and millions of golfers who are like that, who are just happy to be outside, having a couple beers, kicking the ball around, doing their thing with their buddies, having a big time. And that's awesome. They're likely not listening to this podcast. So, you, because you're listening to this podcast, I'm gonna say that your definition of satisfaction probably has the word expectation in it, that you're meeting your expectations in some way. So, what are your expectations when you go out and play? What would be your expectation of your golf and your golf experience for you to be satisfied? Right? So, I want you to work backwards. Like, what would it have to look like for me to walk off of 18 and feel satisfied with my round? What would have to happen? What would you need to experience? Right? Because when I looked up the opposite, the antonym to satisfaction, it was of course unsatisfied, not satisfied, unhappy, or unfulfilled. So how many times you walk off 18 and you're not fulfilled? And for you to be fulfilled, would it require that you didn't make any mistakes? Would it require that you didn't have a three-put? Would it require you didn't have a really embarrassing shot or miss? What would it require for you to walk off of 18 and be fulfilled? Or could you decide that you're going to be satisfied with your golf and your experience, no matter what your score, because you got to go out there and you know spend four to five hours playing a game that you love with people maybe you like or don't like, and regardless of the results, it was gonna be a satisfying and fulfilling day. Or does it need to be a number for you to be satisfied? And if that is the case, think about the number of rounds you play not satisfied, not fulfilled. I'm gonna tell you for me, it's the vast majority of them over the course of all the rounds of my life that I have played golf up until the last decade, I will tell you that probably 90% of the rounds that I played, I was not fulfilled or satisfied. And if we do that enough, it doesn't make sense that we keep going back and playing again. Right at some point, if you keep doing something that you're not satisfied or filled, fulfilled with, you now you're in the definition of insanity, right? We keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And maybe we're looking for satisfaction and fulfillment in the wrong area. I'm just offering this up for something for you to think about. This is kind of like a deep little podcast episode. What is going to make you satisfied when you go play golf? And wouldn't that be a great intention to start out with? I gotta be quite honest. I think satisfied just feels meh. Like it's kind of like M-E-H, right? Meh. Kind of neutral. It's not it's not awesome, it's not horrible. It's just like I walked out off four hours or five hours of playing golf and it was like, eh, it was alright. I don't know. I think I want to walk off of 18 more often and feel more positive about my experience. I want to feel uplifted. I want to be excited about doing it again. Because if I had a positive experience, then I wasn't gonna want to do it again. What would have to happen or not happen for you to be satisfied walking off of 18 with your experience out there? And I'm gonna offer for you the first place to look is in the things that you can control. Okay, because some of the things that you can't control, which people end up complaining about and are disgruntled about, which ends up making golf not satisfying, is like pace of play, people you play with, course conditions, the weather, your ball getting in a divot, too much sand in the bunkers, not enough sand in the bunkers. Things that you cannot control ends up affecting and impacting our satisfaction on the golf course. I would tell you if that's gonna be the case because you can't control them, like just leave, like right, just walk off the course. You you're complaining about reality. So focus on the things that you can control and how much of your golf swing can you control? Right? How do you control your golf swing so that you hit decent shots? Right? I'm gonna start with based on your skill set, it starts with managing your mind and your emotions while you're standing over the golf ball, for sure. Starts with managing your expectations when you're on the golf course. It includes course management. You can control that. You can control how quickly you get past or over a bad shot or a shot that turned didn't turn out the way that you wanted to. You can control how you show up for the people in your group and you connect with the people in your group, or you don't connect with the people in your group. Right? And if you did that to a level of your fulfillment or satisfaction, could you walk off 18 and regardless of your score, still be fulfilled and satisfied with the way that the day went?
unknown
Right?
SPEAKER_00
This is just an interesting question. It's just something that I want you to think about because I'm gonna do a part two to this about a different way for you to look at walking off of 18. But I want you to start with feeling and recognizing and noticing what it takes for you to be satisfied. Because just like Justin Thomas, who I think shot 62, maybe he shot 64, says we're just never satisfied. Wouldn't it feel so much better if you walked off 18 and said, I played 17 amazing holes and I bogeied 18, but I shot 62, and that was super cool. Was the expectation to not make a mistake or not have a bogey when our standards change when we're having some of those amazing rounds? Then we become not satisfied because oh my gosh, it could have been my record best round ever. If I didn't get to 18, I could have broken a record. Now I'm not satisfied. It's just so interesting because our brain has a way of going to the negative first, which is one of the reasons I tell you and all my clients that after a round, you want to do an evaluation and think about all the things that went well. Recognize and point out for the sake of your brain all the things that you did well before you go to the negative. And the more often you do that, the more often you're gonna find satisfaction in your round. Right? Because once we start with the negative and all the things that we did wrong, right? We topped a ball, we hit a ball out of bounds, we made a six, we three-putted, right? We don't recognize all the things that we feel happy about and fulfilled about that we did on the golf course. And the number of things that we did well or that we were satisfied with or even happy about might be more than the ones that weren't so great. But we walk away feeling crappy and not satisfied and not fulfilled. Right? I want you to take a look at what would it take for you to be satisfied with your round of golf? What do you need to see happen? And then I challenge you after a round to focus first and give yourself credit and point out, write down, do whatever you need to do about all the things that you did well. Start there before you go to the things that you didn't do so well. And see if that shifts the way that you think about your golf game. If golf starts to be more fulfilling and more satisfying and more enjoyable. All right, my friends, make sure you get on my email list because I have lots of programs coming up at KathyHartwood.com forward slash join. I'd love to help you more with this. All right, have a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you next Wednesday.
