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Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
#144 - Confidence Pt 5: Pro Golfer Jocelyn Bruch on Using These Tools On The Course
Today, I’m joined by Jocelyn Bruch: Indiana individual state champion, Division I golfer at Purdue, national championship competitor, and now a professional who just returned from Q-School.
We dig into the real tools she used in competition — not theory — to calm nerves, trust her preparation, and perform when it counts:
- Diaphragmatic Breathing (16+ seconds, not 2!) to lower heart rate and get present
- FMR (Forced Muscular Relaxation) to release tension before swings and putts
- Go-To Statement she repeats before every shot to push out negative thoughts
- Caddie Game-Plan Meetings and a simple “got it” cue to protect her routine
- Earned / Shows / Trained Confidence (and why “fake it till you make it” cracks under pressure)
- Using the book out of order to solve immediate problems, then spot-checking before rounds
If this helps you, please share it with a teammate, parent, or coach who could use a practical confidence framework.
Resources:
- My book: Confidence: Build It, Trust It, Show It — https://amzn.to/3LqECEB (includes FREE athlete workbook)
Are you an ATHLETE looking to take your training to the next level? Check out our website to learn more about 1-on-1 training opportunities:
mentaltrainingplan.com/athletes
Are you a COACH looking for an affordable year-round mental performance training program? Check out the MTP Academy available through our website:
mentaltrainingplan.com/teams
Hey, welcome back to the Coaching Minds podcast. Before we dive in, I want to say thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing the show. Thank you for coming back week after week. It truly means the world to me. My wife and I were talking the other day when we started this just before COVID. Isaac and I had this harebrain idea to start recording a podcast about some of the things that we were doing to train the mental side of the game. She said, Yeah, I figured you'd do it for like a month or two and it would sort of fizzle out. And here we are. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. Today's episode is one that I have been excited about for a long time. If you've been following our confidence series, you know we've been walking through the key principles from my brand new book. And as much as I love teaching this material, I really wanted you today to hear from someone who's actually lived it, used it day in, day out at some of the highest levels of competition. Today we're joined by a special guest, Jocelyn Brook. She was an elite high school golfer, uh, actually won some individual accolades, including an individual state championship in Indiana. Uh, I was fortunate enough to do some work with her team uh while she was in high school. She went on to play Division I golf, competed for a national championship at Purdue University. During her college career, I had the privilege of working with her one-on-one and she kind of developed some specific tools to address some areas that she'll talk about here in a little bit on the mental side of her game. And now as she's taking this next big step, launching her professional golf career. Over the the past six months or so, as she's graduated from college and really started preparing to head off for Q school, I've I've been blown away, not just not just with the actual plan itself that we've developed together, but her commitment to it. And just like anyone who's doing something for the first time, we had some doubts, doubts about preparation, whether she was good enough, whether she had what it takes, but she didn't run from that. We learned how to work through those doubts. She put in the time, the reps, the reflection, and the discipline required to build true confidence. Confidence that we can trust under pressure. After she got back from round one of Q school, we were talking on the phone and she said something that honestly kind of stopped me in my tracks. Said, Ben, it felt like you wrote this book for me. And you know, that that hit me because you know what she meant, the concepts, the bricks, the tools, we used them. Like not in theory, in competition, in airports, in hotels, at qualifiers, the night before big rounds, the morning of high pressure tea times. And today you're gonna hear exactly how she did that. Now, I know we're gonna have probably a decent number of first-time listeners joining us for this episode. If you enjoy what you hear, if you want to learn more about the science and the system behind developing confidence, we're walking through the entire book right now on the podcast. You can go back and listen to the previous four episodes for a little bit more context. Obviously, if you want to buy the book, the link to do that on Amazon is in the show notes. Keep in mind that does come with a free athlete workbook that you can use as an individual or as a coach in a team setting. Really, I just I wanted this book to be the ultimate resource for athletes, for coaches, parents, leaders, people in the business world. JB's story really just shows how flexible it is, how she read the whole thing, but how she also spot checked specific chapters based on what she needed either that week or, you know, even sections that she went back to the night before a tournament. And also, if you're a coach or someone in a leadership role, you can also just start at the beginning and work your way straight through to get a complete picture of how to really build confidence from the ground up. Again, thank you for being here. If this episode helps you or maybe makes you think of someone who could really benefit from a resource like this, someone who needs confidence, resilience, the ability to perform under pressure, please share this episode with them. And without further ado, let's dive into my conversation with Jocelyn Brook. Hey, welcome to the Coaching Minds Podcast, the official podcast of Metal Training Plan. Today, joined by a very special guest who actually has been on the show before quite a while ago now. Uh, Jocelyn Brooke. Jocelyn, thank you so much for being here today.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. So to start off, would love to just for anyone who doesn't know you, hasn't heard your story, maybe just kind of you know, catch us up. Obviously, you had success as a high school golfer, um, playing golf professionally now. Fill us in a little bit a little bit on uh your story.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I started playing golf when I was like four years old. Um, so I'd been playing for a really long time. Um, grew up playing some other sports as well. Um, but golf has always been my favorite. My favorite part about golf has always been that like nothing's ever the same, like it's always different. That really just it kept like I could never get bored with golf because it was always changing. Um, so I've been playing golf for a really long time, but it was around, I think at age seven was my first tournament. Um, around like I want to say 11 or 12 is when I started just focusing on only golf. And ever since I want to say I was seven years old, I decided I wanted to play professional golf. Um, so I've it's just kind of been a journey of mine since then. Um getting ready for high school golf, going through college recruiting, um, playing in college, and now I'm a professional golfer. But it's always just kind of been a part of my story that I wanted to play professional as the end goal. And back when I was in high school, um they hadn't changed the recruiting rules yet. I was in eighth grade when I started going through college recruiting, which is really wild to think of now because I think you have to be a junior in high school to start talking to coaches and start going on visits. I started in eighth grade, like my first visit was in eighth grade.
SPEAKER_00:Which that in and of itself starts applying quite a bit of pressure pretty early in your career.
SPEAKER_01:No, for sure. It it's really wild to look back on, to be honest. Luckily, I had I started building like a really great support system around, I'd say, eighth grade. Um, and then going into high school, um, having a great system, having a great support system was really like what helped me get through recruiting. My high school golf coach, um Josh Bryant, uh, was kind of the main person that helps me talk to coaches. It was a big weight, take a big weight lifted off of me once I um committed to Purdue. And I committed my junior year. So like I still had half of my junior year of high school left and then my entire senior year, but like I felt a weight lifted off. I could just focus on my own game at that point. When I was in high school, I set the IHSAA record for the lowest round um of 62, 11 under my sophomore year. I believe that's still a standing record, um, but I haven't checked. And then my junior year of high school, I won the IHSAA individual state championship. And I also won the Indiana Girls Junior Championship as well in high school.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. So talk to us just a little bit about the the recruiting process and maybe some advice you have for high schoolers that are going through that right now. Because that's certainly something that, you know, while you're out on the course, you don't want to be thinking about a bunch of other junk. But at the same time, it's it's hard to look over and you realize, oh, there's that coach who may or may not be offering me a scholarship. Like what talk talk us through that process a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:So I actually have a story from my freshman year at high school state. Um, it was on the 18th hole. I think I was aware that we we were coming back that day and we were pretty close to potentially winning a state title, but I was like still like very much like trying to stay in in my individual game. So we got to hole 18. And keep in mind, like I've played in a lot of big junior I've played in a lot of big junior golf tournaments before this, but I've never really seen like crowds before. Like it's very unusual to see a crowd at a junior golf tournament. Um, so I'm walking up the fairway on 18, and I look over and see the biggest crowd I've ever seen on a golf course. Like we're talking like hundreds of people, and it made me really nervous. And I remember I walked up to my ball and it it was already like a weird lie, like, ball was way below my feet, and then I'm nervous and ended up like chunking it. It long story short, I made double on the hole. And I just was really stressed and had never really been in that situation, and my team ended up losing by one. Um, so I was super upset. Like my team just had a chance to win state championship. We lost by one. I just doubled the last hole. Of course, I'm blaming myself. And it was really hard. Um, but it was a really good learning experience for me, to be honest. If I wouldn't have had that moment, I think if I wouldn't have had that moment, I'm not sure if I would have been able to handle the pressure of winning an individual state championship a couple years later. I think that was like a big turning point for me to figure out how to handle my nerves and how to deal with crowds. So kind of going into dealing with playing in front of college coaches, um, after that moment, I kind of a strategy that came up, I came up with was not to look at people that were watching me. So I would get really into the zone where I would not watch anyone on the sidewalk or on the court path watching me. I wouldn't look up at crowds. Um, like for example, even if like my family was watching, I wasn't like looking over at them. One, I think this is really good advice for um junior and amateur players because sometimes people that watch you have bad reactions and they don't mean to do it, but it happens and like you don't want to see those reactions. It's also like good to not be scanning a giant crowd that's watching you. Like I just don't think in golf, like you can avoid it until you get to the professional stage. And so I just would never look at who was watching me, and that helps me a lot. So when it came to college recruiting and there would be coaches watching me, I just wouldn't look over at them. Um, it made me stay in my own zone a little better and I was able to just focus on my game because at the end of the day, like I know it's really hard, but you just have to kind of believe like everything's gonna work out. Let's just play my own game, let's work on my own process. Um, it's a really long process going through college recruiting. So, like, you have time. Like, I think people freak out and they think like I have to play well this one particular summer, I have to play well in this one particular event when like it's really not the case. College coaches look at a lot more than just results. They look at work ethic, they look at grades, they look at your personality. Um, so yeah, but my advice to you is if college coaches are watching, don't look over at them because it's probably just gonna add pressure. Sure. And you can always go up to them after the round and say, like, thank you for watching. You can always text them after the round, but like don't let them into your bubble like when you're on the course.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I love that. So we we had you on the podcast before, and you know, at that point it was like, hey, you're this golfer who won a state championship and you're doing all these individual things, and you're going to play golf at Purdue, you want to come be on the podcast. And then at some point while you were, you know, in in your college career, you actually reached out to me and started, we started working together individually. Tell me just a a little bit about, because I know that you know, in the in the past, you've been intentional about the mental side of your game. What made you maybe reach out and say, hey, I need a little bit of help with this?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I've been like very into the mental side of golf. I think all throughout high school. Um, I started working with a one-on-one mental coach. I want to say it was going into my sophomore year of high school. Um, the summer going into my sophomore year was like probably the worst summer I've had today, golf-wise.
SPEAKER_00:And would you say that was because of some of the failure that you experienced as a freshman? Or was it other things?
SPEAKER_01:I think it was like the college recruiting started getting to me.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And I didn't have like a mental plan in place. And yeah, no, it's it's actually really funny. Earlier, we talked about how I set the um IHSA like low round record of 62. Well, the funny thing is, eight days before I broke that record, I shot like the highest score in my summer at an AJGA qualifier. And it was like rock bottom, like really bad. And right around there is when I started working with a mental coach, and I started going to a trainer full time. Um, and I think somewhere in the summer is when I started working with my current swing coach as well. So I made a lot of changes, knowing that like needed to gain distance off the tee, I needed to get mentally sharper on the course, I needed to sharpen up my swing a little bit too. There was like a lot of changes that I was making, they all ended up being great changes. Um, but I've been involved with the mental side of the game for a long time. And it was the summer going into my fifth year at Purdue, where I kind of realized, hey, I'm really into the mental side of the game, but it's so broad. Like, there's so many ideas about like the mental side of golf or the mental side of sports, like it can be really overwhelming. Sure. And like there was like a lot of times too where like I was trying to help my teammates with the mental side. I'm also trying to help myself, and it just was like too many ideas going on. I really felt like I needed better tools um to get me through the round, and I felt like I needed better like mental tools on the course. So that's when I started working with you. Um, and I did some work with you in high school when you helped out Westfield Girls Golf, and even back in high school, like I remember we had these journals where we would journal out like about our golf rounds, and um, we worked on course management a lot, and I just really wanted to go back to the basics of like I need tools on the course. Like it's one thing to just talk through your round with someone and like kind of find areas that are lacking, but to like have tools to get you through the round was something I really realized I needed. So I started working with you because I was looking for some like tangible tools to use on the course. So the three tools that have helped me the most with you have been finding a breathing pattern that works for me, um, using FMR, and then also having a go-to statement to repeat to myself on the course.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, for sure. So the the diaphragmatic breathing, you know, I know I know when we started working together, you were like, I I am doing my breathing on the course. And it was like, well, can you show me like what you're doing on the course? And you went, and it's like, well, that's not diaphragmatic breathing, JB. Like you just took a deep breath. Like, tell me what was what was the difference that you felt physically as you started these breathing cycles that were taking 16 seconds instead of like two.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I feel like I get very tense on the course and I breathe really fast. Like it's funny, like um I wear a whoop and like I'll look at it after the round, and like my heart rate gets really high. And I never really had a tool to like stop that. Like, people would always tell me take deep breaths, but it's almost like I was breathing faster because I'd be like in for a second, out for a second, which is still really fast. Once we started talking through the breathing techniques, I was able to lower my heart rate a lot more and be a lot calmer and like present on the course. Um, kind of what I found for me is like if I have a shot coming up that I know is like a little uncomfortable for me, or I find that my heart is racing, or like I know that I'm in contention, I'm very aware of when my heart rate gets high now. And like it might be every hole I'm doing my breathing technique, it might be every nine holes, it might be every shot. Like it kind of depends on the day, and like I'm aware of that, but it's very helpful now that I know to do it. Um, and it just makes me calm down a lot.
SPEAKER_00:I I love that you brought up that example of using it when you need it because that was something I noticed about watching game seven of the World Series was like the I mean, these guys are literally taking these big, giant, deep breaths and holding on to and before between like every single pitch. And and it's it's true. Like that there are moments where we have we have this physical reaction and we need some sort of physical tool to take that control. Um, and the the second one that you mentioned as you were talking there was you had a tendency to tense up. And so, you know, whether that's you're trying to shoot a free throw and you want to have that same muscle memory, or you're trying to hit a driver or sink a punt, like all of a sudden, if your muscles start doing this, that's not helpful. So talk us through that that FMR or the the forced muscular relaxation of, you know, maybe maybe when did you use it and how was it helpful on the course?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I've heard about techniques like this before, but I never knew like the science behind it. I never really knew why it worked. I've had like coaches in the past tell me to like make a fist and squeeze really hard and then like let it go. But I think I didn't fully buy in until like you talked me through it and like told me why it works. For me, if I know like I'm in contention in a tournament or I'm in a playoff, I start to get really tense. And one thing that can like lead to that on the golf course is like if I'm really tense in a playoff, um, I might hit a putt like way farther by the hole than I'm into, or like I might being really tense in the course might cause me to like not turn enough in my backswing. And like those are like not good situations that we want when you're trying to like compete under pressure. So, like kind of being aware of the tension and like letting it go has helped me a lot. Another thing that I like to do is I kind of feel like my fingers like wiggling a little bit, like I that kind of goes into the FMR, I guess. But just like being aware of like where I feel the tension is helpful. Um, I really like combining the FMR with the breathing techniques, um, because it they both just kind of make me loosen up and just calm my whole body down, which is like so important when you're under pressure, and whether it's in college or at the professional level. Um yeah, I wish I had started at Signor because I just have seen how helpful it is.
SPEAKER_00:And I I love that. And I think there's really two takeaways for for coaches listening to this. It's like we talk about the Goldilocks principle. If you don't have enough science, it just sounds fluffy and fake. Yeah, take a deep breath. What do you think? I'm three years old and I like I'm throwing a temper tantrum like shut up. Give me something that's gonna help. But on the other side, if we take it too far and we turn it into a neuropsychology textbook, all of a sudden you've got too much stuff going on inside of your head. So it's like, what's what's enough science to help you realize this is real, not fluff? But not so much that we cloud your mind. And I think that's also important on the athlete side because there have been times in one-on-one sessions where we've come up with a plan, we've come up with a tool, and I'm like, all right, you feel good about this, and you've got this look like, I don't know about this one. And it's and so that that's a kind of a red flag that it's important as athletes that we don't just say, all right, yeah, I got it, let's move on. If you don't got it and you you don't believe it and you haven't bought into it, ask questions, like, why are we doing this? This doesn't, I don't I don't know if I'm I don't know if I'm all in on this because once that switch is flipped and you're like, oh, this this actually works, then you start seeing results. And then once you see those results on the course, it's like, oh man, this actually works really well. Let's let's keep doing this.
SPEAKER_01:I really liked what you just said of like it's nice to get an explanation and ask a lot of questions. Like, I think it's important to like own your own game and not just blindly follow something that someone's telling you. I think like we grow up thinking we just have to listen to everything that a coach is telling us and like obviously be respectful, but it's not bad to be like, hey, like coach, what is what is this tool doing for me? Or um, like there's other ways to phrase it, but I think asking questions can help you understand it better and can help you buy into it more. And whether it's a swing coach, a mental coach, um or like your high school or college coach, I think it really just helps you understand more. Because I have heard of like FMR before, or I had heard to take deep breaths before, but it took like you explaining it to me for me to really buy in and think, okay, this makes sense now. I'm getting a little bit of the science. I'm hearing who this has helped. You're telling me about people in the NFL, people in the MLB, people on the LPGA that have done this, and that's what really made me buy in. Sure. Um, so I think that was a huge part of it too. Asking you questions, okay, when do I do this on the course? Like, how is this gonna help me? Um more thing I wanted to mention was I think coaches can really benefit from this as well. Um, and this kind of goes a little bit into body language, but coaches can look out for their players, they can see if they if they're slouching, they can see if they're breathing really fast, they can see if they're walking really fast. Um, those were a few things that like my college coaches have seen for me, um, or my high school coaches, or even your caddy. If you're breathing really heavy and they notice, they can kind of remind you, like, hey, like let's take a few deep breaths. Or if your shoulders are slouching, hey, let's have good body language. If you look if you're tense, they can tell you just a reminder. I know FMR helps you. Like, I think that's really important too. Sometimes when you're like really in the zone, you are sometimes it's hard to realize if you're really tense or if you're really stressed. And like, I've got, I feel like that's something you learn to get better at. But maybe in early high school or early college, you're not quite there yet. It's really nice to have reminders from coaches, and that's something really important.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. And I don't let me forget to come back to that caddy conversation because you're actually the person that I use as my example when I'm talking to athletes. And I'm like, she literally has this card and she can hand it to the caddy and be like, when this happens, remind me of this. If if you see me starting to do this, remember that I we want to use this tool. So I I definitely want to come back to that, but I don't want to skip that third tool that you were talking about, the go-to statement. Yeah, and this this is another one where I work with so many athletes who hear positive self-talk, and it's like, ah, this is unicorns and rainbows, and this is fake and flowery. And what do you mean I'm supposed to be? How am I gonna be positive? I just got a double bogey and I'm trying to get on this professional tour. What do you mean, be positive? Tell talk us through maybe not specifically what your go-to statement is, but the benefit that you've gained from having that and how you use it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I will say, like, coming from like a mental coming from um knowing a lot about like the mental side of sports already, I was a little like, okay, like I'm gonna tell myself a statement. Like because like I feel like the world of positivity is like a really, really broad in sports where it's like people just tell you, oh, just think I got this or like I can do it. And it's like, I mean, all for positivity on the course, but it only sometimes like can be hard to believe when it almost sounds like gimmicky, if it makes sense. So, like, for example, when we made my go-to statement, we started off by me telling it to myself, I think it was was it 50 times a day? And it seems kind of weird at first. You're like, okay, I have to tell myself my go-to statement 50 times a day. Like, when am I gonna do this? So maybe it's like 10 times, five different times throughout the day. And it seemed a little weird, but like the more and more I kept doing it, I like was starting to believe it because I was hearing it so many times. And I remember you introduced it to me before um a specific tournament I had in the summer last year. And I was really new to it. So I was kind of like, when am I gonna say this? It took a little time to figure out, but basically, I say it in my pre-shot routine as I'm walking into the ball. So it's like one of my last thoughts that I'm thinking, other than like starting, finishing line for like a golfer or another sport, like maybe if you're on the free throw line, you think it before you get ready to shoot. So it's like one of your last thoughts. And by this time, I had already said it, you know, 50 times a day for multiple days leading up to it. So I feel like I had already bought into it. My advice would be it might sound silly if you've never tried it before, but it really does work because to this day, so it's been probably a year and a half since we implemented that. I still say it before every single shot. Like if I'm just playing for fun, like it's literally ingrained into my brain that I still say it before every single shot. And I don't even have to think about it anymore. It's like automatic. Yeah, but it's just like a good reminder on every shot. Um, I feel like it it for me, it clears out the negative thoughts. Like maybe you're thinking, oh, this some uh couple of examples of negative thoughts on the golf course. Maybe you're like, oh, there's a bunker over there, or I don't want to miss it right. This is a good way for me to kind of push those on my brain and only focus on like my intention. Um, so yeah, my advice would be buy into it and start it at home. Start doing it every single day before you get to your sport.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm I'm so glad. I'm so glad to hear that. If you're listening to this and it's the first time you've ever heard this go-to statement thing, go back and listen to episode number 119. It's about my book, Focus Cycle, um, where we kind of go through that a little bit more in depth, the science behind why it works. We can't just say I'm the best player in the world, but when we remind ourselves of the time we've put in, the work we've put in, why we've earned the right to be confident on the course and then who we're gonna be in that moment, it becomes pretty powerful, not only as a reminder of the things that we do want to be focusing on, but also helps clear your mind of the things you don't want to be focusing on. Which, you know, I I want to come back now to this caddy idea. And I think, you know, obviously, obviously this applies in different ways. In high school golf, you know, in the state of Indiana, you can have two coaches that can talk that are kind of running back and forth between all five players. Yeah, you know, when I used this on the football field, I wanted to know my position group's go-to statement because if they screwed up on the field as they were walking off, I want to be able to grab them and remind them of that and get that going in their head. Um, in your situation as a professional golfer now, and you do have a caddy, which you know, sometimes you get to pick, other times it's sort of just assigned to you. Um, so you know, you need to be able to what we call it kind of like a game plan meeting ahead of time, you know, like like coaches in football would say, here's our plan in the red zone, we're gonna do this on third down, we're gonna do that. You know, you had to kind of come up with what is my plan of attack going to be on the course. Talk to us a little bit about maybe coming up with that plan, but then also how do you communicate that to somebody else? Whether that's a high schooler listening to this that wants to, you know, maybe inform their coach or you know, a a different sport or a professional golfer with a caddy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:How do you do that?
SPEAKER_01:I think every single person that has a caddy should have a game plan meeting with their caddy before the round, preferably before every round. And I think you might be listening to this, you might be thinking, oh, my dad has caddied for me so many times, or my swim coach has caddied for me so many times. I don't need a game plan meeting. No, I think it's more important to have a game plan meeting with somebody that has cadied for you a bunch. Yeah. Because they'll probably fall into habits that I don't even they might fall into bad habits. Maybe things bother you on the course and you're scared to bring this up to them. I think it's even more important to have game plan meetings with people that you know. But for a general consensus, I think you should have game plan meetings with everyone that caddies for you. And I just started doing it once I turned professional. I had I didn't have a lot of caddies in amateur golf. I definitely had some go. And some bad, but now that like I'm a professional, it's on a regular basis that I'm gonna have a caddy. Most of my events I will have one, and it has been kind of a challenge for me in the past to have random caddies. I've like known that like I really am not a fan of random caddies because I think quite frankly, I didn't have a plan going into it and I knew things that bothered me on the course and I was scared to speak up. But at the end of the game, at the end of the day, it's it's your game, it's your tournament. The caddy is there to help you. So it's important to like get on the same, get on the same page with your caddy. Um, so like what this has looked like for me. Um at the first and second stage of Q school, I have my swing coach as my caddy, and he's cadied for me a ton of times. Um, so like he knows my game, he like knows a lot about how like I want him to talk to me, or he knows like how I pick my shots and everything. But it was important for me to have a game plan meeting with him before both stages because you know, sometimes things change round to round or tournament to tournament. And even though I'm very comfortable with him as a caddy, I wanted to just reiterate like things that I like. I wanted us to be on the same page. More importantly, like I wanted us to have like a set like plan of how to attack each shot. So, what I do is like I pick my number, I calculate my number on every shot, he calculates the number, and then we regroup and we find a final number together. And I like this because I still have ownership in the number versus like blindly trusting a number that someone else is giving me. And like I will do this with every caddy I ever had. Even if they're the best caddy in the world, it makes me feel better if I am picking a number and agreeing with someone. It gives you a lot more ownership over your game, and I think that's really big for me. Maybe this isn't what everyone wants to do, but like it helps me feel better. So, like, we talked through that. We talked through um my pre-shot routine when I was gonna talk to him. And then once we have a keyword too. So this was kind of a huge deal for us at Key School, where we'd pick our number, I'd grab my club, I'd start walking in, I'd say, all right, got it. And then like he'd kind of give me a nod or a thumbs up, and that's like our final conversation for the shot. He's not gonna interrupt like while I'm walking in. Um, that's like our agreement of like perfect. We have the number, our game plan is perfect. I take my practice swing and I go. Yeah. Um, so I think that's really important too to have a keyword because I watch a lot of girls like this, it could be in any sport, but like specifically in golf. I've watched a lot of girls that I play with. Um, they're in their pre-shot routine and their cat is still talking to them. Yeah. And I don't feel like you can be fully focused if that's happening. I mean, again, like that could totally be a part of your routine and that's fine. But I think it's important to like basically have boundaries of like, okay, this is how we're gonna do it, and this is when we're gonna decide. Um again, like this could be totally different for every person, but having a game plan meeting and talking through like how you want things to go is so important. Yeah. And like for me, we talked about we really decided to do the game plan meeting because we know in a couple weeks and a couple months, I'm gonna have random caddies that don't know me very well. So I practiced doing these game plan meetings with my swing coach that knows me really well. So then when I get to a random caddy, it'll be a lot easier. So, like for me, like I'm talking through everything that I can think of that happens on the course. I'm talking through what do I want to discuss with my caddy on putts? What do I want to discuss with my caddies on chips, on approach shots, on drives, because they can all be different. And all golfers know that like we all have our routines, we all have our own little systems. And sometimes like a little comment here and there can like make a big difference, good or bad. So I think it's really important to communicate that with your caddy.
SPEAKER_00:Uh and I I love the application to literally every sport. And even within a fast-paced game like basketball, soccer, even football, like in a two-minute situation, yeah, there's a break between plays, but you know, two-minute drill where you're just you're going, having some way to be able to communicate what needs to be communicated. Sometimes it's as simple as just you know, a simple gesture to you know your your player, to your coach that says, Oh yeah, we were gonna, we were gonna do this in this situation, or in a game like golf where you have a longer period of time, which sometimes is good because you can prepare a little more. Sometimes it's also challenging because you get a whole lot more time that you have to manage your thoughts and you have things running around in your head. Yeah. Um, but just I I love that idea of having a plan going in. So the I I see that you brought the confidence book with you, and I love the the post-its that I see in there. Um, you know, there was there was one point, I don't remember if it was before Q school or after, where you said, I feel like you wrote this book for me, which is which is great. Um, you know, obviously I will whether it's a a coach who's wants to pick this up and figure out how do I build the confidence of an entire program, or it's an individual, how do I build my own confidence? Um, you know, obviously there's a there's a lot that goes into it. And again, you're it's not like the mental side of sports was new for you. You've been doing this and you've been intentional about this for a long time. And I mean, before you read this book, we'd been working together for over a year and there were still things that you were pulling out of it. Talk to me just a little bit about um, I I think maybe one of the biggest challenges is when you don't have that confidence yet because you'd never played professional golf. You you'd never prepared on your own. You always had a coach who was sort of guiding you, who was coming up with your practices, coming up with your, you know, what what was the plan? And now it's like, well, what am I doing? How much do I do? How much time do I spend? Am I gonna be ready? How do I know if I'm ready? And so kind of wrestling with those things. Talk us through what did you need from a confidence standpoint, and how did you use some of these tools to to be intentional about building that that confidence on the course?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so for me, I feel like I never really had a great grasp of what confidence really was, if I'm being honest. And people have like kind of like brought it up to me in the past, and I didn't really think it was a big deal. But like, for example, I remember my swing coach saying to me, like, hey, like, so I remember telling my swing coach, like, hey, I'm leaving for a tournament tomorrow, like, I'm gonna go out on the course and hit some tea shops that make me uncomfortable. And I remember him saying to me, like, you've hit hundreds and thousands, you've hit thousands of drives in your life. Like, why do you need to go out there and like prove to yourself that you can hit those shots? And I was really confused because I was like, What do you mean? I'm going out and practicing these. What's wrong with that? And he was kind of being devil's advocate advocate. And he was like, You've hit those shots before. Why do you need to prove to yourself that you can hit them? And I think it was that false sense of confidence to me where I felt like if I went out and hit those shots really well in practice, that I was gonna feel more confident because I was watching myself do it. And it's still hard for me to understand because it sounds like a like a good practice, I think, to a lot of people. But his whole idea was that confidence comes from the thousands of reps that you've put in. It comes from like all the practice and all the training you've done. It doesn't come from one day of you hitting three good drives in the fairway. Yeah. I think that was his point, is that like I've put in the hours, I've put in the work. Obviously, you have to put in the work first to get the confidence. That was a big game changer for me reading this book was I started to get pretty nervous before the first stage of Q-School because it was my first tournament as a professional. And I remember there was like a week before I left where like I had a few bad practices where I just was hitting bad shots, I was freaking out. And I went back to the book and I'm literally just reading the definition of confidence. And I'm like, wait a minute, like I can still feel confident if I hit a bad shot. Like I can still feel confident if I have a bad round. Like I have to think of like all of the work I've put in instead of the negative.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, instead of basing it off of that performance where when I play well, I feel confident, which feels natural and feels normal and even feels right. But in reality, if it's tied to our performance and it's tied to an outcome, then when we don't perform so well, now all of a sudden we don't feel confident. Yeah. And so, you know, realizing, hey, this doesn't have to be tied in to the result that I have on any one specific day. Like if I'm not doing something well, there there's been there have been countless times in your golf career where maybe your driver wasn't doing what you wanted it to do, or you weren't chipping the right way, or the Bermuda grass was giving you some fits, or you weren't confident, you know, you were leaving putts on the short side, whatever it was, when something wasn't good enough in your game, you went back and you fixed it. And so just because you know something's not going great right now, that doesn't mean failure. That means that's a little bit of feedback of what do we need to do next. What what were maybe some of the specific tools in the book that that stood out to you the most or were maybe the most helpful in really kind of building that wall, like we talk about in the book, that that you can stand on that's gonna hold up to that pressure?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I wanted to find the page in my book that I read pre-round. Um, so there's a couple of pages I like to read the night before or the day of a round. And this this page is my favorite because it's like these are things that can like help you to feel confident. For whereas in the past, I used to think it was, oh, a good shot makes me feel confident. I never, it's like I'm I've known that I work hard, but it was never really a reminder of like, oh, I'm confident because of that. So, like, for example, on this page, this lists a few of the things that should make you feel confident. It's the wins, which we talked about that people that's usually the only category I think people talk about with with confidence. Survival, that's a huge one for me, where like maybe you don't have the best round, but you really fight through it. And you like it might not have been a pretty day, it might have been a struggle, but like you fought through it and you finished. And like sometimes that's more important than playing your best. And kind of going back to the recruiting thing as well, so many college coaches have told me this. It's not just about the great rounds, it's about the rounds that you've like salvaged, about the rounds where they can really see the fight in you. Yeah, and that should give you a lot of confidence as well. Um, a struggle is also another thing it talks about in the book where like I know it sounds weird to be like, oh, I'm confident because of my struggles, but like thinking about your struggles in a different way of like you overcame those. Like for me, turning professional, I'm like thinking back, like there was a lot of like highs and lows of college golf, but reminding myself, like, hey, I got through those struggles, and that's that gives me a lot of confidence. Um, the last two things were feedback and patterns are both big. And I think the feedback one's really important. Like, you can get feedback on your own, you can get feedback from coaches, but just reminding yourself of like your growth essentially and like how much better you are than like you used to be, I think that that gives a lot of confidence because it all kind of comes back to like the work that you've put in. Um, the last part I really liked from from that page was the patterns. And I think when I think of the patterns, I think of like the everyday practice that I was putting in leading up to Q school, reminding myself, like I'm putting in this many hours of putting every day, I'm putting this many hours of short game every day. And so by the time I got to Q school, I was like reminding myself of like if I put in this many hours, like I'm confident because of all that hard work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And that was something too that we started documenting in the summertime because I remember we were we were having a conversation as we were kind of coming up with your plan to prepare for Q school. And it was like, Well, is do you feel like if you do this, this, and this every day that you're gonna be able to go out and perform at your best? And you were like, Oh, yeah, absolutely. And so it was like on the front end coming up with the plan, you believed in the plan, but I think there, I think it's fair to say there was power in documenting that so that a month, two months, three months down the road, you could look back at this just laundry list of stuff that you had done where it was like, I made a plan, yeah, I put it to work, I am stinking ready for this. Is that fair to say?
SPEAKER_01:I yeah. So I will share like kind of a struggle that I've had since I've been pro. Is I honestly I think I've struggled with this like my whole golf career. It's like I know that I work hard, but sometimes it's like where working hard, there's no like there's no definition. Like anyone can say I work hard. There's no way to like measure, oh well, what is being a hard worker? So I think for me, like I've been in the past, I've been like, well, I know I'm working hard, but am I working hard enough? And I never felt like I was, even though I was at the highest level in high school and I played in college and now I'm professional. I mean, there was no way to really measure, am I working hard enough? And once I started documenting the hours, that was when I was like finally convincing myself, hey, you put in this many hours a day and this many hours a week of putting, like you are working hard. Yeah, so that's why I would really recommend like documenting the hours because it's evidence that you're putting in the time. Yeah. And like only like you are gonna know if you're putting in the effort. But I think the time is a good, um, is a good step in the right direction of measuring if you're working hard or not.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. We used to talk about that with the football players. It's like, let's, you know, let's say you're gonna commit to 15 minutes of film every single day. If you show up and on Friday night, you're not able to immediately recognize, you know, where these guys were lined up or what the formation or the coverage show was, like, that's a signal. Okay, 15 minutes a day is nowhere near enough. Now I know if I want to compete at this level, I need let's let's do an hour a night, let's do a half hour, whatever that looks like. Coming up with that plan, putting it to work, knowing how much time you put in, and then looking at the feedback. Yeah, I'm not gonna call it the result, looking at the feedback of did I feel confident in that moment? Was I prepared enough in that moment? Informs you either yes, what what we're doing is adequate, or maybe I need to turn it up a little bit. Talk to us maybe uh were there were there any other tools from the the book that you found that you found helpful when it came to performance at Q school?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so one big thing that comes um to mind is like learning that like there's different types of confidence. Like I never knew that. I thought it was just honestly, I feel like a lot of people say this statement too of like fake it till you make it. And I think that statement's really controversial because like I think I did that for a lot of my golf career, and I don't think it's very helpful when you get under pressure, and I think that's when you start to doubt yourself. So learning like the three different type types of confidence earned confidence, chosen confidence, and trained confidence. And the trained confidence was was a really big one. I think the earned confidence was the one that I try to focus on the most because that's like through the the hard work, that's through the preparation. And I don't really feel like I did that in the past, and it's made me feel way, way more confident because I just try to focus my energy on on your I just try to focus my energy on like the hard work. Yeah. And that gives me confidence from that. The chosen confidence, I think, is really big because that's more of like your body language and your self-talk. And um, this is kind of, I think, when coaches can come in and they can help their players a lot too, of like helping remind them about the body language. Because sometimes we have bad body language and we don't even mean to. I think that's a really big learning opportunity. Um, especially like, I mean, in any sport, like imagine I know like at the beginning of the book, it was talking about the Westfield football team and how like if they threw an interception or had like a bad play, they would hype themselves up and not slouch their shoulders and they would like almost get excited, which sounds crazy. But if they're not slumping their shoulders, then they're gonna be ready to go out on the next play and like get the ball back. And like I think that's really important in golf. Like, you hit a bad shot, like, no, keep good posture, walk with your head up, don't let your head drop. Like, because I think the bad body language, it can lead to like another bad shot, another two bad shots, and like that can really like catapult an okay round to not a good round. So I think the chosen confidence was really big. And I had never really thought the bad body language was a confidence thing, but I really think it is because think about it. If you if you had a bad drive like in the hazard or something, it's like you should have the earned confidence to know, like, hey, it's okay. Like, I know I can hit the next drive in the fairway. This shouldn't affect my next shot. Um, the train confidence we talked a lot about at the beginning of the podcast about the breathing, the FMR. And that's another thing where like I never really thought to myself, like, this is confidence. I more thought I was just calming myself down. But I think a lot of this, a lot of the mental game, it all kind of comes back to confidence. And that's like how important it is. And I really saw how important confidence was when I got to the first stage. And I like for the first time in a long time, like really felt ready because I read the whole book front to back before. I did the activities in it. I before every round, even now that I've read the whole book, I go back and skim the pages that really helped me out because they're good reminders. Um, so like I don't like say it lightly when I say like this book really was a game changer for me. Because it a lot of people don't even teach you what confidence is, it's almost just expected. And like I'm 23 years old, I've already played high school, college golf, and now I'm a professional and just now learning what confidence is. It's cool to think kids in high school can read this now and learn about confidence at a young age. Like that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And not only you played high school and college golf, like you played high-level, won a state championship, high school golf, played division one, competed in national championship, collegiate golf, and there's still things and there's still aspects of your game that even after being intentional with the mental side of your game, since you were what, a 14-year-old, 15-year-old? I mean, there's still there's still pieces that you can that you can learn. And I think I what I tried to do in that book was make like a complete resource where I could hand that to one of the mental performance coaches that go through our MTP certification and be like, look, every single athlete that I've ever worked with who struggled in confidence, the answer is somewhere in this book. And you don't you don't maybe need all of it all the time, but as you're going through and you're fine-tuning the mental side of your game and you're saying, All right, where am I not as strong as I would like to be? And then what am I going to do to intentionally improve in that area? I think is powerful. Were there were there any sections of the book that as you read through, you were like, oh yeah, I I got this, and I'm already doing this really well. And I and maybe, you know, not something that you needed to work on, but something that it was like, oh yeah, a good reminder. I I do already have this that helps me feel even more confident.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, um, I remember when I first started reading it, you had me skip ahead to a chapter at the end. I'm trying to wasn't built the wall, was it? Oh I think it was the trust brick.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so I remember I was at the I was at the beginning of the book, but we had a session and you told me to flip to the back and read the chapter about the trust brick. So like that was a um trust was something that I was struggling with like a week or two before Q school. I was starting to get nervous. I was starting to kind of have a little bit of a freak out in practice. So I skipped ahead and read the trust brick, which I think is really cool because you can read like any chapter out of order depending on like what you need to work on. So, for example, in this moment, like I really needed to trust my practice and trust the work that I was putting in. So I skipped ahead and run this chapter. Um, whereas like there were some chapter, there were a few chapters.
SPEAKER_00:Cause by because by that point, as you flip back and find the other one that you're talking about, like by that point, you had already come up with a solid plan and you had executed that plan, but there was still this little voice in the back of your mind that was like, but is it good enough? And it's like, yeah, it is. Yeah. And if it's not good enough, then we're gonna evaluate where do we come up short, and we're gonna attack that with the the same intensity that you've attacked every other weakness in your golf game, your entire golf career since you were four years old, and we'll fix it. So just trust this process that you that you've got going on that that we've committed to, and and just allow yourself to go play freely because you had done the work.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So that's actually exactly what I was telling myself at the first stage. I told my caddy, I was like, hey, like if you see me stressing out, can you just remind me of this statement? And it was, I put in the work, so now I get to relax. And I just kept telling myself that over and over again because I was like, I was it was going back to that chapter about trust. Yeah. I was like trying to tell myself, hey, you worked hard, and because you worked hard, now you get to relax and you get to just play. And I think that was like such a game changer for me because I know that I get tense on the course when I'm stressed, and telling myself I can just relax and have fun was really cool. Um, because like at the end of the day, I think most people play their best when they're relaxed. Yeah. And especially on the golf course. Yeah. Um so yeah, that was a huge that was like the probably the biggest thing. Like it was really cool because I I read the whole book and there's a lot that I took away from it. But like I kind of like spun it into my own statement of like, hey, I worked hard, now I get to relax. And that's what's cool about the book is that every person's probably gonna find different tidbits in it that they like, yeah, or that help them.
SPEAKER_00:That was uh when I was coaching Nick Ferrera, that was something we tried to be real intentional about was like, we're gonna make seven on seven so unbelievably difficult and challenging for you that by the time you get to the game, it's like, oh, thank goodness I can relax. All I have to do is play football now. Because, you know, and we would we would squirt them, squirt the football with a with a water bottle so it was wet, we would chuck giant tackling dummies at his head, we would give him a 15-second play clock instead of a 40-second play clock so he could never relax or get comfortable. We would yell or scream, we would just grab one of his receivers and not let him go out for a route, like pretending you know something tragic happened. And it was like, if we can make the preparation so uncomfortable and so intense and so, you know, just like you said, uncomfortable. Then by the time the game rolls around, it's like oh, thank goodness. All right, I I've prepared for this, I'm ready, I'm good. Let's just let's go play and let's have fun. And I'm glad to hear you use that F word, that that fun, because I think it gets left out unfortunately so much. You know, even in I'm starting to see it as my daughter's playing, you know, club sports and my my son's, you know, making an all-star team. And it's like, let's not forget that at the end of the day, we are playing a competitive sport that is fun. And when you're enjoying it, there's gonna be, there's gonna be so such a much better level of performance. Talk to us, talk to us as we kind of wrap up here, just about the that experience, you know, because I know leaving for Q school, you were that that first stage, you were you were pretty nervous and you were still you were still doubting a little bit, but you were like, but I no, we get we got a plan. Like, so there was a kind of like almost like two voices in your mind, like one pulling you on this side that's like, have I really done enough? And the other one pulling on this side. It's like, shut up, yes, we're ready. Let's trust it. And then you got there. Talk to us maybe just about that experience out there, the way you were able to play, like what what impact did your preparation, your plan, your trust, your being intentional about your confidence, like what what role did that play? And you know, I know we don't we don't focus a lot on outcomes and we try not to use the words good and bad, but like when it comes to that that performance of that stage, what did what did that look like?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I think I I wasn't quite done with the book when I traveled to first stage. And my main goal was I need to finish the book before the first round. So it was like little by little, and I was there like four or five days early. I was like, all right, just gotta keep reading, I just gotta keep reading. And it was like, I just had convinced myself that if I read every page, I'm gonna feel better about myself and I'm gonna be more confident. And whether or not you believe that, I think it it really helped me because it kind of jam-packed. I'm trying to think of how to explain this. Um when I got to first stage, I was nervous, but I had just finished reading the book. So I had all of the fresh reminders in my head of why I deserve to be confident, all the work that I put in to be confident, and all of this. But there definitely still were like some struggles when I first got there. I remember like I got there four or five days early. I had some struggles with putting when I first got there, hitting, still hitting some like weird shots here and there. But it's kind of like I had to keep reminding myself of like, hey, I don't have to be ready until I tee off on the first day. Like I still have three days of practice, I still have two practice rounds left. Like I'm still working each day to prepare. Like, I still have preparation to do, like, I don't have to be ready yet. And that was a good reminder for me because I was pretty nervous leading up to the first couple days. But then once I got to the first round, I felt way more relaxed because I read the whole book. I had skimmed through it at night, I had skimmed through it in the morning. I'm trying to remind myself why I should be confident. Then I kind of came up with the statement of to tell myself of like, hey, I worked hard so that now I can relax on the course. And I just like what I'm trying to reiterate is that like it took a lot of preparation. It wasn't like one day I just woke up and felt more confident. Like it took like multiple, multiple days of like building this in and like weeks of preparation. And there's definitely like stumbles in there, definitely were shots that I wish I could have back on the course. So definitely like nothing was perfect, but I felt like my mindset was so much better because if I hit a shot, if I missed the fairway, I was confident that I was gonna be able to hit the next shot on the green. And like if I hit a shot, if I hit a drive offline, it was like, okay, well, let's go find the next one. Like I was able to like move on a lot easier and a lot faster than I usually would have been able to. And it's actually kind of funny because I had a moment um during one of my practice rounds where um I saw a couple people I knew, and people just kept telling me they're like, I'm so nervous. And that's when I kind of realized I was like, you know what? I don't think I'm as nervous as them. I'm finally like trusting the work that I put in. I'm not really freaking out anymore. And maybe the day before I was, but I hit a certain moment where I was like, I'm not freaking out anymore. Like, I really trust all this work that I put in because I know that we made a good plan. And I remember before we left, we kind of discussed uh we were trying hard to not make it outcome-based, which is hard when it comes to like qualifying school because it is you either make it or you don't. Right. And if you don't make it past first age, you get nothing.
SPEAKER_00:And every single shot, you have to write down a number after after every single hole. There's there's an outcome that you then also have to not focus on.
SPEAKER_01:But and that's part that's really hard is like it is a big deal. But like I try to tell myself like, this isn't life or death, this is not the end of the world. If I try to take all the outcome away from It and just have fun and trust myself, it'll work out. And I mean, luckily it did work out, and I got to advance to the second stage. But I think there was basically what I'm trying to say is it's never perfect. There's always gonna be, you know, shots that you wish would have gone a different way or puts that you missed. Or but I think the important thing for me was like I stayed in it mentally and I trusted the process and I trusted the plan. And like we discussed, like, no matter what happens, we're gonna have a meeting afterwards to talk about what went like what I need to improve on, what went well. Like, no matter if I play amazing or I don't play my best. Right. So it was like I knew that was coming anyway. So it wasn't like anything to have feelings towards, it was just stick to the plan. And the plan was really built around like, how can I become as confident as I can before I get to the first stage?
SPEAKER_00:I love that. And so it's like by the by the time, you know, whether it's game day rolls around, round one rolls around, like whenever that point hits where it's like the preparation is now done, it's you are you are always going to play better if you are you can look back and you can say, you know what, we had a good plan, we executed the plan, I'm gonna trust the plan. And it's easier said than done because it takes a lot of hard work and it takes a lot of intentionality. But if you prepare the right way, and then you can get to that competition and know it doesn't matter what happens, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna, we're gonna debrief with Ben, I'm gonna talk through this with Max. We're gonna figure out what went well, what didn't go well, how do I keep improving? Like that, it's just it's when you when you have the right process in place, it's a lot easier to say, trust the process. Yeah, it's a lot easier to say, yeah, you know, I've I've had these, I've had these moments where I didn't play at my best. And here's what I was able to do to overcome that. And I had these moments where I thought it was terrible and this part of my game was awful, and we fixed it. And we keep moving forward. So as we as we kind of wrap up, one of the one of the things that I always love to ask guests is knowing what you know now, if you could go back and talk to that freshman JB, who just played in front of that huge crowd, didn't play maybe so great in in that low moment for you, what would you go back and tell yourself knowing what you know now?
SPEAKER_01:I think I would go back and tell freshman year me that like every moment is a part of the process. And whether you deem things a success or a failure, it's all a part of your journey. And it's all they're all learning moments, no matter if they're good or bad. I know we don't like to use the words good or bad and label it, but like looking back on it now, like everything that happens is a power is a part of the journey. Um and luckily, like now I'm able to look back on that disappointing moment and know that I learned probably more a lot more from that than I would have learned from if I would have played well. Yeah. And it really was a huge um moment in my junior and amateur golf career because it taught me how to play in front of crowds. It taught me so many different things. So just know, like if you're feeling down about a game or a tournament, um, try to learn as much from that situation as you can because that might have a bigger impact on you than if you succeeded.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. Well, Jocelyn, thank you so much for joining us today, talking through just you know part of part of your journey, some of the tools that you've used to find success um along the way. Really appreciate your time and and love hearing your story.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much, Ben. It was so fun to be on your podcast.