“I never learned anything from a match that I won.” – Bobby Jones
Golf is an inconsistent game by nature and scores will always fluctuate, but what’s guaranteed is that every round will be a learning opportunity for long-term improvement. Too many golfers don’t spend enough time reflecting on their rounds, to highlight the things that they did well, or to look at situations and shots in the round that exposed their weaknesses. This often comes back to mindset – an ego oriented “fixed” mindset is more concerned about results, placings and how that result made them look. Mastery or “Growth” mindset golfers look deeper into the performance to find out what was learned and what can be improved. A good post round review process can help you nurture a growth mindset, increase your self-esteem as a player and learn from every round.
Using A Performance Journal
Studies show that writing things down in a journal is a highly effective way to reflect and learn from an experience. It gives you the opportunity to make sense of what happened during your rounds and what you were thinking and feeling in different situations. This can help you identify what about your process is working, what areas of your game needs work, and it will allow you to reconcile with the round so you can move on.
Even though writing on paper is most effective, most of my students use an online performance journal that shares their entries with me. Entries can be written down on paper and uploaded as a photo or typed directly into the app. But most importantly, it’s what you write down after a round. In this module, I’d like to share the template that my students use.
A Simple Post Round Review
“There’s no such thing as failure, you either succeed or you learn.”
Ask yourself these simple questions:
What was good about the round?
What could have been better?
How are you going to do it better?
What was good?
Whenever I ask a golfer how they played, unless they played exceptionally well, the typical response is negative, such as: “not great”, “my driving was awful”, “I couldn’t hole a putt today!”, or “It would have been great if I hadn’t double bogeyed the last hole!”. The positives are buried deep under all the negatives.
Why do we tend to look at things through a negative lens?
Throughout human evolution, we’ve been conditioned to remember (and be alert to) the things that are a threat to our survival, and the brain prioritizes that over remembering the rewards i.e. we have a better chance of survival by avoiding something that would kill us than we do finding food. Unfortunately, our brain still works in the same way, even though our modern world is relatively safe. In other words, being “negative” or having self-doubt is part of being human. Psychologists call this the “negativity bias”. However, thinking negatively is rarely going to be helpful, so we need be aware of it and switch out of it, whenever it occurs.
As we discussed in the previous module, optimism, neutral thinking and seeking out the positives in any situation is an essential part of being mentally tough.
To help with this, the first step of a post round review, is to highlight the positives and determine what in your process helped you achieve them. i.e. areas of your game, such as putting, aspects of your mental game, such as commitment to shots or moving on from misses, or specific shots you were happy with. Let’s anchor those highlights. Then I’d like you to think about what aspects of your process (which could be deliberate practice before the tournament or actions you took on the course) that helped you achieve those results. Celebrate your successes and remind yourself of all the things you are doing well. This will get you seeking more positives in the future and help build your self-esteem as a player.
What could have been better?
What were 2 things that held you back?
Again, this could be areas of your game, mental game or specific situations you were faced with that you could have handled better. Were there situations that caused you fear and doubt?
How will you make those things better?
What are you going to do to improve those things? It is mental work, performance work, technical work? Write out a plan for your practice to work on these areas.
Here’s a post round review example:
Good
- Driving was great – 75% of fairways – swing thought for tempo really helped
- Hit 14 greens – strategy was solid and I had a really clear picture of each shot
- My attitude and acceptance of bad shots very good – I focused on breathing and smiling after a miss
Better
Scrambling could have been better today. I only got up and down twice out of 6 missed greens. I had too much fear and tension over my chip shots and found it hard to see the shot I wanted to play.
How?
This week I plan to do 3 hours of short game practice, with lots of pressure drills from 30-50 yards from different lies. I will be working on feeling confident as I prepare to play the shot and having a clear picture of the shot in my mind.
By doing this simple post round review, you’ll be rewarding the positive behaviors and actions, which will encourage you to do more of them in the future. It will also train you to seek positives and be optimistic, instead of defaulting to the brain’s negative bias. You’ll also be looking at your areas of improvement more objectively (less emotionally) and know what you need to train during your upcoming practice sessions.
Mental Game Scorecard Results
Your Mental Game Scorecard is an effective way to measure your mental game, reflect on what’s working and what needs improving. What was your process score? How well did you do at your mental goals for the round? Did you achieve your 4 process goals on each hole? Out of 72 possible points, how many did you get?
Scoring Your Mental Game
Step 1: Calculate your percentage process score using the Mental Game Scorecard
Step 2: Grade your overall mental performance: (i.e. A, B, C, etc.)
Step 3: Score yourself (out of 10) on these performance factors:
- Focus and commitment during your Shot Routines
- Arousal level management
- Staying present
- Self-talk
- Body language
- Acceptance of misses
- Awareness of thinking, feelings and emotions
- Course strategy
- Pre round preparation
- Nutrition and hydration
What makes a good score for these factors? [DM1]
“Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” – Tony Robbins
To evaluate your mental game in each of the categories, answer the following questions:
Focus and Commitment During Pre Shot Routines
- How good was my focus on what I needed to do during my Pre Shot Routine?
- How committed was I to each shot?
- How good was my visualization and clarity of my intention for my shots?
- Was I happy with my rehearsal for shots, or was I getting technical with my swing?
Arousal Level Management
- How well did I control my heart rate?
- How well did I manage any tension?
- What of my mental game tools were effective in controlling my arousal level?
Staying present
- Was I in the moment? Did I use my breathing, focus on my senses, and my environment to keep me present?
Self-talk
- How well did I use my Self-talk to motivate me and guide me to success?
- Did I voice anything negative in my head or out loud?
Body Language
- Was I aware of my body language?
- Did I walk like a champion and use my facial expressions to help diffuse difficult situations?
Course strategy
- How good was my course strategy?
- Did I choose the right target and the right shot? When did I not?
Awareness of my thinking, feelings, and emotions
- Was I aware of any negative thinking? I.e. self-doubt, thinking about score, comparing myself to other players, what others will think, etc.
- How good a job did I do of refocusing to the present or on something positive?
- Were there specific situations that caused fear and self-doubt?
- What emotions surfaced during the round and why did they?
- How good was my attitude? Did I stay strong or give up when I started to play poorly?
Acceptance
- How well did I accept misses (Post Shot Routine)?
- Did I respond calmly or react with high emotion?
Preparation
- How prepared was I to play this golf course?
Nutrition and hydration
- Did I eat and drink properly before the round?
- Did I feel tired at any point in the round?
- Did I remember to eat snacks and sip water?
By going through the exercise of scoring your mental game, you’ll increase your self-awareness on the golf course and be able to choose which mental skills you need to improve to get into and remain in your optimal performance state.
Further Questions:
Putting
How good was my green reading?
Were my misses due to line or speed?
Was I fully committed to every putt?
Where was my focus over the ball?
Was there any negative chatter?
Short game
Did I choose the right shots around the greens and was I confident in my execution?
Was I connected to my landing zone, the trajectory and release and did I see it in my mind?
Did I have a sense of the look, feel and sound of the shots?
Stats to Record
If you really want to become as good as you can be, you’ll need to track data for your rounds. You need to know what your strengths and weaknesses are by looking at your stats. By spending 30 mins after each round (not during) and entering them into a stat tracking system is well worth the time. Without stats, your practice won’t be as effective and you won’t be able to set the right goals. There are plenty of good stat tracking apps/tools available today that will help you analyze your game and give you your “Shots Gained” numbers for all shots and distances. Your most negative Shots Gained numbers (i.e. your biggest weaknesses) are the areas of your game you will need to prioritize.
Although most stat tracking tools will calculate this for you, here are some metrics that are important:
- Number of Fairways hit (how good is my driving?)
- If fairway missed, which side was it? (notice patterns)
- Greens In Regulation from different yardage ranges and where your misses were
- Scrambling (how many up and downs for par did I make?)
- Putts per green in regulation (how good is my putting?)
- Number of Bogies or worse on a par 5 (how good is my strategy?)
As you will have gathered from this post round review module, your reflection and evaluation of your performance is how we learn, build confidence, and refine our plan to improve performance.
Self-reflection is about being honest and not shying away from looking at your weaknesses.
In the next module, we’ll take a look at how you can use this information to set goals and take your game to the next level.
Module 6 Additional Reading
Every Shot Counts by Mark Brodie
Module 6 Exercises
What is the purpose of the performance journal?
Why start a round review with all the positives?
Why should we look at those times in the round that we struggled?