Success leaves clues! One of the biggest mistakes golfers make when they’re searching for improvement is assuming the answer must be something new. A new swing thought, a new drill, anew grip, new training aid, maybe even a complete rebuild. But if you’ve played good golf before, there’s a much more valuable place to look… your own history! Think about the rounds where you played your best. How did you prepare? What were you focusing on? How did you manage the course? What was your tempo like? How were you thinking over the ball? More often than not, the blueprint for your next good round is hidden in your last great one. Success leaves clues. Your best golf wasn’t an accident. It came from a combination of habits, routines, attitudes, and decisions that worked for you. Revisiting those things is usually more productive than constantly chasing the latest tip or reinventing your swing. Golf has a way of convincing us that every poor round requires a major change. In reality, most players don’t need more information, they need to reconnect with what already brings out their best. Before trying something new, ask yourself: - What was I doing when I played my best golf? - What did I trust? - What routines gave me confidence? - What have I drifted away from? Progress in golf isn’t always about discovering something different. Sometimes, it’s about remembering who you are, or rather were, as a player and returning to the things that have already proven they work. The quickest route back to success is often not forward into the unknown… it’s backward to the evidence you’ve already created.

Until recently, Scottie Scheffler had been happily telling the world that golf was only the third most important thing to him in life. behind his wife and his religion. But after the birth of two childern, we can confidently bump golf down to number four. This is not to say golf is unimportant to Scheffler; but by placing the game in its proper context, he is giving himself the perfect mindset to perform. Whether we are the best player in the world or the 200th best player in our club, we know about golf - how it tests our mettle, our patience, our fortitude. Because of this, we can easily start to identify ourselves in terms of how we cope with the game. We start to tie our self-worth, our sense of wellbeing, into how well we play. Golf becomes something we are, not something we do. Performance-wise, this is so dangerous. If you go out with everything riding on what a golf shot does, the golf course becomes a place of threat. Your physiological response to creating golf swings changes; you become anxious, agitated, tight. Organising your body and club becomes harder at best, impossible at worst.. and performance suffers. Even though he is playing for his wife and family, Scheffler's sense of perspective allows him to avoid this trap. It enables him to play with a rare sense of freedom, one we see every time he tees it up. It allows him express himself, to use his talent to capitalise on good swings and save bad ones. If you want to play this freer, more enjoyable and more effective game, find some perspective. Get your head around the fact that your golf does not define you, and develop your sense of acceptance. Above all, work on the idea that whatever happens out on the golf course, you will be OK. You can deal with it. The more you feel this, the less you will have to deal with.

There’s a quiet gap in how most golfers try to improve. They spend hours on the driving range, working on swing mechanics. They take lessons, film their technique, and chase that perfect motion. They might even practice putting drills or track stats. Yet when they step onto the course, something changes. Decisions feel rushed. Confidence wavers. Execution slips. This gap isn’t about talent. It’s about context. And it’s exactly why regular on-course performance coaching is one of the most powerful, and underused, tools for improvement. The Course Is Where Golf Actually Happens Golf is not a range sport. It’s a decision-making sport played under pressure, variability, and consequence. On the range: Lies are perfect, Targets are static, There’s no scorecard, There’s no emotional consequence On the course: Every lie is different, Every shot has risk, Every decision matters, Every mistake has a cost You don’t just execute on the course, you think, feel, choose, and adapt. That’s why practicing in isolation, without regularly transferring those skills into the playing environment, leads to frustration. You may own a skill technically, but not access it when it counts. On-course coaching bridges that gap. It Integrates Skill, Not Just Technique Traditional coaching often isolates mechanics: “Fix your takeaway.” “Shallow the club.” “Start the ball on this line.” But performance coaching on the course asks a different question: Can you apply your skills in real situations? This includes: Club selection under pressure, Shot selection based on dispersion… not hope, Adapting to wind, lie, and terrain and Managing misses instead of chasing perfection A technically “correct” swing is irrelevant if the player consistently makes poor decisions or chooses unrealistic targets. On-course sessions bring skill and context together… where they belong. The Mental Game Becomes Visible Most golfers talk about the “mental game,” but very few actually train it. Why? Because it doesn’t show up clearly on the range.

Something a little different, but equally powerful for better golf in today’s post… The golf course is not your enemy.. but its creator certainly is. The course itself is essentially a series of puzzles, created by the architect, for you to solve. So what are those puzzles? What traps have been set? And how might you overcome them? When you become fascinated by course design, you see the game in a much more rounded and deeper context. Instead of hating that deep bunker in front of the sixth green, you start to understand its positioning, its depth, and that respect translates into smarter play. But moreover, because you are now trying to outwit the designer, golf becomes a game again, something to absorb your mind, get you thinking appropriately about playing the game and, more importantly, stopping interference from your mind taking you back to swing mechanics or the past/present of a round! One way you can view a course differently is to walk/look at it from back to front, so either walk the course from the 18th Green all the way back to the 1st tee (or view this way online or in a yardage book) This will give you a different perspective as to how the course looks, plays and where you could potentially strategise your game differently to help you score better. You might just notice those landing areas are a little wider than they look from the tee box!

So how do golfers benefit from learning how to breathe? The first way breathing can help us is by keeping us present. Golfers are notorious time-travellers, projecting forward to the hope and fear of shots to come, or back to things we wish we'd done differently. Of course neither is any help when it comes to focusing on the shot at hand. 'Stay in the present' may be one of golf's most hackneyed performance tenets, but the very phrase contradicts itself by promising future gains if you manage to do it. But breathing is something that can only happen in the here and now. When we place our attention on the breath, we Create a resting place for our mind in the present moment, one where you can check in and catch yourself projecting back into the past or forward into thefuture. Breathing brings us back to the present. Relating to this, the second huge advantage we can give ourselves by taking control of our breathing is improved focus. Everyone reading this article has a level of golfing skill. Of course we want to develop those skills, and improving our game is one of its biggest thrills. But when we go out to play, our only job is to access the skills we possess here and now. Most of us do not have the ability to do that because our minds are way too busy, grinding away, trying to process competing thoughts and ideas. When we get like this, the dialogue between brain and body is impaired and our ability to access our skills is compromised. When we bring our attention to the breath our mind calms down, the brain gets quieter, the mind-body connection becomes stronger and our ability to create the movements we want is enhanced. Thirdly, and more generally, better breathing between our shots quite simply puts us in a much calmer and more relaxed state. When we see the time between the shots as an opportunity to practise what is in effect walking meditation, we can take full advantage of the game's ability to chill us out. This means that, at the very worst, you'll enjoy the experience of playing golf more. But with its ability to improve performance through improved focus, better breathing is unquestionably a win-win.