Stop moaning! Top mental coach reveals four tricks to keeping positive on the golf course

In the latest of a series of columns with Golf365, mental performance coach Duncan McCarthy looks at how we can improve our behaviour and performance on the golf course

We all know someone who groans and moans during a round of golf and puts a dampener on what should be the highlight of the week. Almost via osmosis, they are capable of making everyone in the group play badly and, more importantly, have a rubbish time.

Occasionally, though, it’s you or me who are putting a downer on everyone’s fun and are waving our arms around like we’re on the PGA Tour, complaining about the course, the weather but, mainly, our own inadequacies. Here’s a cut-out-and-keep guide to keeping a lid on our outbursts and retaining our golfing circle of friends.

1) Don’t moan about the lie

There is nothing worse than a bad lie in the rough, even worse a bad lie in the fairway. But we are playing a sport that is outdoors, in the elements, on uneven ground and sometimes on a course that has been there for centuries and played by thousands of golfers. Bad lies are going to happen, it’s part of the game.

The reaction by many is to either let their playing partners know this or moan internally that the golfing gods are against them today. But we don’t need to tell our playing partners on the other side of the fairway that our ball is sitting in a divot or we don’t need to say something as soon as we’ve attempted our shot to make sure that everyone is aware of where our ball had ended up.

In perspective it is what it is and the one thing lacking from most golfers is the skill of acceptance. In my mind this is probably one of the greatest skills we can ever learn in golf and also in life – accept the poor lie to allow the mind to focus on the task at hand.

We will go through our process physically but the most important bit, the mind, is sitting in the past, still moaning about the poor lie and, guess what, the result is a poor one.

So next time we reach our ball in a poor lie, don’t blame the golfing gods – accept it, re-focus and execute the best shot we can at that time. The good news is that we will get some good breaks too , just like everyone else who plays the game.

2) Don’t moan about a missed putt

We all miss putts. Players who play for a living, the best players who have ever picked up a putter, we’ve all missed short putts. It’s not ideal, it doesn’t help our scorecard and it can be embarrassing but it does happen.

We did miss that putt but how we missed it is different to just missing it. Did we do all we could to try roll the ball into the cup? If our answer is ‘yes’ then that’s it, we did all we can. We saw the line, we executed the putt with clarity in the mind but it missed. Process and result are two separate things.

If we find ourselves dwelling like this on the course, just ask the question ‘Was my process good?’ If the answer was yes, then great move on. If it was no then we can take action by focusing well on the next shot. We should never try to make up for something because we can’t. We cannot make up for a bogey on the last with a birdie on the next. That birdie is a birdie, that’s it. It does not mean we made up for the last, we didn’t we just birdied it.

So when we find ourselves dwelling on the last putt, ask ourselves if the process was good, and then look forward to the next opportunity to roll the next putt in.

3) Don’t moan about our clubs

We all have our favourite clubs in the bag. Part of this is based on a feeling and part of it might be based on the club not suiting our swing perfectly – the likelihood is probably the former. But we bought the clubs and we have tested them before buying them – and then we become even more frustrated when a club doesn’t perform on the course with a card in our hands.

How can a club do this? Well, it doesn’t. We do though. Our mindset has totally changed from the relaxed state we were naturally in when firing it down the range or into the net on the launch monitor. Now we have expectations, too high or too low, of our new club and therefore we put pressure on ourselves to execute the perfect shots that we were hitting in testing which led to the purchase of the club.

What we want to do is recreate our state. So get away from the outcome and expectations and get back into the process of the shot by choosing our target and executing a committed swing, a swing we were probably repeating in testing.

4) Don’t moan about the game

I’ve heard this said by so many, especially youngsters…. ‘I hate golf!’ However I have never come across anyone who is forced to play the game. It is a decision made by us and us alone to play the game. Yes, we may be having a day that presents challenges due to poor striking or an out-of-sync swing or even some perceived bad breaks but we still have two vital components we need to play golf – mind and body.

Move away from solving our swing issues by making a conscious effort to make excellent smart decisions with every shot.

To play golf with an unsettled mind is not advisable. Yet so many of us play 18 holes fighting so many things; the weather, playing partners and the game. Unfortunately we do not realise we are fighting one thing, ourselves. Find peace out there by enjoying our environment and all that comes with it.

We don’t hate this game, we are just not firing on all cylinders today but how many great rounds a year do any of us have where everything is good? Not many so we better learn the skill to embrace our challenges on any day rather than fight them. The game is to be played not fought against.

About Duncan McCarthy
Duncan works with golfers across all tours including Marcus Armitage, Erik van Rooyen and Women’s British Open winner Ashleigh Buhai

READ MORE: Duncan McCarthy: how to score well when you’re playing badly