The win was still fresh. He was on the road, still coming down from it. And I asked him the question I ask every player after a round with many life lessons…

“What gave you the belief and the calm that you could pull it off?”

Kailer was down three in the championship match with seven holes to play. And prior to this match, he had a streak from winning from behind.

What He Did Not Do

Kailer told me, “I really didn’t focus on it.”

Then he said the part I keep replaying. “Normally, I would push, get more aggressive, and force things to happen. But I told myself, I got a lot of golf to play. And I simply focused on what I needed to do in the moment and just get it done.”

Read that again.

He did not chase the deficit. He did not force it. He did not tighten his grip and try to will three holes back at once.

He shrank his whole world down to one shot. The one in front of him. And then the next one after that... And the next.

I have watched grown men lose championships from three shots up. I have watched juniors melt from three shots down. The score was never the enemy. The response to the score was.

And Kailer’s response never changed.

I Flipped the Script

Here is where it got good in our debrief.

I wanted to test him. So I flipped his own story back on him.

I said, what if you were leading? Three up with seven to play. Same championship. Same pressure. What changes?

His answer was gold.

He said it would not change a bit. “I would get it done and advance step by step and get one more.”

Most players own two completely different minds. There is the chaser mind, loose and free, nothing to lose. And there is the protector mind, tight and scared, everything to lose. The chaser attacks. The protector defends.

Kailer only had one mind.

Down three, he competed against himself. Up three, he competed against himself. The scoreboard changed. But he did not.

The Upper Limit He Never Hit

There is a pattern I see in talented juniors, and it has a name to it. Your kid has lived it or probably experienced it too.

We call it the upper limit problem.

A player starts winning. Starts leading. Starts performing above what they thought they deserved. And something inside them flinches. They get uncomfortable with the success. So they self-correct back down to where they feel safe.

They stop attacking. They start protecting. They protect the lead, the result, the goal, the ranking, the story they were about to write. And protection is a threat state wearing a helpful mask.

When your body reads a lead as something to defend, it does the same thing it does under attack. Muscles tighten. Vision narrows. Breathing goes shallow. Decisions get small and safe. The very things that built the lead disappear.

Kailer never flinched at his own success. He never treated the lead as fragile or the deficit as fatal. He kept pushing forward, past the ceiling most players quietly install in themselves.

He broke the success threshold because he refused to protect it.

The Spiritual Layer

I keep coming back to a quiet truth here.

Belief is not the same as certainty. Kailer did not know he would win. He had no guarantee. What he had was a settledness that did not depend on the outcome.

Scripture tells us to run the race set before us. Not the race behind us. Not the race we wish we had. The one in front of us, right now, one step at a time.

There is peace available to a person who stops carrying the whole scoreboard and only carries the next shot. That peace is not passive. It is the most competitive state a human can play from.

In the final few holes of the championship match, Kailer was calm because he trusted the process more than he feared the result.

What This Means For Your Junior

Let me get practical, because this is why you probably read our newsletter.

Watch how your child talks about a lead. If they say “I just have to not mess up,” they have already switched into protection. Your job is not to fix the swing. It is to catch the language. Help them turn “don’t lose it” back into “go get the next one.”

Praise the response, not the result. When your kid comes back from down three, do not only celebrate the comeback. Ask them what they told themselves on the tee. The comeback fades. The internal script stays with them for life.

Normalize being ahead. Many juniors have practiced being behind far more than being ahead. If they only feel comfortable as the underdog, they will unconsciously give leads away to get back to comfort. Talk about leading. Rehearse it. Make winning feel as familiar as chasing.

Teach one shot at a time as a skill, not a slogan. Everyone says it. Few train it. Have your child name out loud the one thing they need to do on this shot, then let the last shot and the next hole disappear. That narrowing is the muscle Kailer flexed under the brightest lights of his life.

The Confession

In writing this, I came to my own realization. If I am honest with myself, I have coached from a protector mind. I have held a lead in my own life, my work, my walk, and squeezed it so tight I nearly strangled it. I have flinched at my own success and quietly pulled myself back to where I felt I belonged.

On the phone with Kailer, I did not only hear a champion. I heard a teacher. A teenager driving home from the biggest win of his life, reminding a sport psychologist that belief is a decision you make before you know the ending.

He competed against himself the whole way. And that is the whole thing.

Here is your reflection for the week.

Where in your child’s game, and maybe in your own life, are you protecting a lead instead of competing for the next one?

See you next Wednesday.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

mpgagolf.com Author of ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf

The first mistake is never the one that wrecks your round. The second one is.

Eli had a two-stroke lead and a swing he trusted.

Then came the seventh. A pulled drive, a chunked wedge, three putts from twelve feet. Triple bogey. I wasn’t there, but I didn’t need to be — he told me the rest over the screen two days later, shoulders up around his ears.

“After that hole I was done,” he said. “I just kept bleeding. Bogey, bogey, double. I couldn’t stop it.” He looked away. “I lost the whole thing on one hole.”

Here’s what I told him. You didn’t lose it on one hole. You lost it on the hole after the hole.

The triple didn’t cost him the tournament. The triple was just golf. What cost him were the six holes he spent dragging that triple around with him like a bag he refused to set down.

Golf doesn’t punish the mistake. It punishes the story you tell about the mistake.

I’ve coached junior and competitive golfers for years, and the scorecards almost never come apart the way players think. It’s rarely one catastrophic swing. It’s the quiet snowball after it — the tightening grip, the faster walk, the swing that’s suddenly trying to make up for something. One bad hole becomes a referendum. And a player who was present and free three minutes ago is now playing a different game entirely: the game of proving the last hole wrong.

That’s the trap. The mistake is already in the past. But you keep paying interest on it.

Why one hole becomes six

There’s a reason this happens. When something feels like a threat to who we are, the mind does what it was built to do — it chews. Psychologists call it rumination, and the research says that athletes who recover fastest aren’t the ones who never make mistakes. They’re the ones who spend the least time ruminating on them. Carol Dweck’s work on mindset points at the same thing from another angle. When a setback means I’m not good enough, you brace and protect. When a setback means here’s information, adjust, you stay in the game.

This is the main difference between a player who shoots 76 with three doubles and a player who shoots 84 with one. Same number of mistakes. Wildly different rounds. One of them refused to skip twice.

Where the phrase comes from

I give every athlete I work with one rule, and it started somewhere simpler than golf. Don’t skip twice. If you miss one day in the gym, one quiet time, one promise to yourself — fine. You’re human. But don’t let the one miss become two. The first skip is a moment. The second skip is a pattern. And patterns are where you actually lose yourself.

There’s grace built into that. You’re allowed to fail a shot. You’re allowed to triple a hole. What you’re invited to do — every single time — is begin again. You don’t have to earn your way back. You just have to step up and play the next one.

What to do when you’re still ‘seeing red’

So what does this look like when you’re standing on the eighth tee, still burning from the seventh? A few things I walked Eli through.

First, give the mistake a hard ending. Pick a spot — the next tee marker, a tree, the edge of the green, 14 steps — and decide that’s where the last hole stays. Be where your feet are. The hole behind you isn’t on the next tee with you unless you carry it there.

Second, get back to FACE — Focus, Attitude, Commitment, Effort. Notice that none of those four is score. After a blow-up, your job isn’t to fix the round. It’s to win the next decision. Commit fully to one shot you control. That’s all.

Third, change your body before you try to change your mind. Slow the walk. Drop the shoulders. Take one real breath before the next swing. Your nervous system doesn’t read pep talks. It reads posture and pace.

And fourth, talk to yourself like your own coach, not your own critic. The voice that says you always do this is lying to you, and it’s making the second skip almost certain. The voice you want is simpler: next shot.

One reflection before you go

Here’s the question I’d leave you with this week — whether you’re the one playing or the one in the cart watching your kid play.

When the bad hole comes, and it will… trust me… how long do you stay there?

Because the number at the end isn’t written by your best swing or your worst one. It’s written in the space between the mistake and the next shot. That space is yours. It always has been. Make it short.

If your junior keeps unraveling after one bad hole, find out exactly where their mental game is leaking. Take the free Mental Game Handicap Assessment — it scores all 5 mental pillars in a few minutes and shows you what’s quietly costing strokes: https://mpga.typeform.com/mentalgame

Don’t skip twice.

Your Mental Coach,
–Dr. Mat

My daughter is ten. She loves tennis. Last week I watched her walk onto a court where she was the only girl in the group, and she did not flinch.

But I almost did.

I sat in the bleachers and felt that old parent knot in my chest. The one that shows up when you watch your kid step into a room that was not built with her in mind. She picked up her racket. She found her spot. She started hitting. Nobody handed her permission. She took it.

That is the thing about sport. It teaches our girls to lean in before the world tells them they should hang back.

The round will test her, and that is the point.

I coach junior golfers for a living. I have watched hundreds of kids stand over a shot with their whole sense of worth riding on where the ball lands. Boys do it. Girls do it. But I notice something specific with the girls I work with. They carry an extra weight. A quiet question underneath the swing. Do I belong here?

The answer is yes. And the game itself is one of the best places to prove it.

Golf does not care about gender. The ball does not know who hit it. The hole does not move because you are the only girl in your flight. What golf gives a young woman is a clean mirror. She sets a goal. She works. She fails. She adjusts. She gets a little better. That loop builds something no pep talk ever will. It builds earned confidence.

Here is what I am teaching tonight. We have an acronym at our academy. FACE: Focus, Attitude, Commitment, Effort.

When a young player stands over a shot, she has a choice. She can fixate on the result, the score, the people watching, the story she is writing about whether she is good enough. Or she can lock onto one element she controls. Her focus. Her attitude. Her commitment to the shot. Her effort.

The research on this is clear enough to bet a season on. Players who anchor to process goals instead of outcome goals perform better under pressure and stay in the game longer. They recover faster from mistakes. They report more enjoyment. When you let go of the result and own the moment in front of you, you free yourself to play.

For a young girl learning to trust herself, this is the whole ballgame. She is not waiting on an outcome to tell her she has value. She decides her worth at the start of the shot, not the end. The scoreboard becomes information, not a verdict.

This evening at 7 PM Eastern, MPGA will host our second webinar with Girls Golf. This one matters to me more than I expected it to.

I get to stand in front of a room of young female golfers and their parents and say the thing I want my own daughter to hear. You belong here. The game is yours. Your effort counts. Your attitude is a choice. Your focus is power.

I feel honored to partner with a foundation that believes what I believe. That a girl with a club in her hand is learning more than a swing. She is learning to lean in.

One final thought before you go

If you parent a daughter who plays anything, ask her one question this week. Not how did you do. Ask, what did you focus on out there?

Watch what happens when the conversation moves off the result and onto the things she controls. That small shift is where confidence starts.

The event is free. Come learn FACE with us. Bring your daughter. Bring your questions.

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/8dN4h_nqS7qtqzzfa7cz6w

Today is the last day to register since the event is tonight at 7 PM Eastern.

See you soon.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

Dr. Mat Park is a mental performance coach, sport psychologist, author, and founder of the Mental Performance Golf Academy. Learn more at mpgagolf.com.

I used to think the round ended on the 18th green. It does not. For your kid, it ends in the car.

My daughter and I played in a father-daughter match (nothing serious) but as competitive as she is, she posted a number she hated. I watched her walk off the green with her shoulders down. I had a whole speech ready. Three things she could fix, and I meant well. I started talking before she had the door closed.

By the time we hit the highway, she was crying and I was frustrated. We both lost that ride. Without even realizing it, I was the dad who made it worse.

“Many young golfers feel more anxious getting into the car with their parents after a tournament than they feel at the start of one.”

What psychology says.

Two things are happening in that car, and both work against the talk you want to have.

First, ego depletion. Dr. Roy Baumeister’s research shows self-control runs on a limited tank. Four or five hours of competition drains it. Your kid has nothing left to process feedback. You are coaching an empty battery.

Second, threat response. A question like “Why did you three-putt 14?” lands as a threat, not curiosity. The brain shifts into defense. Learning shuts off. You cannot teach a kid whose system is bracing for impact.

This is where self-compassion changes the outcome. Dr. Kristin Neff’s work shows that athletes who treat themselves with kindness after failure recover faster and perform better next time than those who pile on criticism. Your kid learns that tone from you. The car ride is where they learn whether mistakes are safe.

You do not need to fix anything in that car. You need to keep it safe.

The faith layer

My daughter needs to know my love does not move with her score. That is the whole thing. Grace does not check the leaderboard. If I only light up when they play well, I teach them they are worth what they shoot. That is a lie I never want them to believe.

The car ride is a small place to practice a larger truth. You are loved on your worst day, not because of the round, but in spite of it.

The Playbook for the Car Ride Home:

Try this the next time the round goes sideways. It takes about four minutes.

Step 1: Stay silent first. Say nothing for the first few minutes. No questions. No fixes. Let the round settle. Your silence tells them the car is safe.

Step 2: Hand over food and water. Blood sugar drives mood after a long round. A snack and a drink do more for the conversation than any advice you have.

Step 3: Ask one open question, then stop. Try “What do you want to work on next?” Let them lead. If they want to talk, follow. If they do not, let it go.

Step 4: Affirm the person, not the score. “I loved watching you compete today.” Praise effort and attitude, never the number. Process praise builds kids who keep trying. Outcome praise builds kids who fear failing.

Notice what is missing. Avoid starting your sentence with “Why did you...?” or “You should have...” And no swing breakdown. The lesson can wait for the range. The car is for the relationship.

One reflection before you drive

Picture your kid five years from now. What do you want them to remember about these car rides? The corrections you gave, or the safety you built? You get to choose that today, one ride at a time.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

P.S. In this episode on Mind Your Game, we went deep on parent and athlete dynamics. If the car ride hits home, that one is worth a listen.

Dr. Mat | mpgagolf.com | ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf

Cydney recounts caddying for a 16-year-old in a US Girls qualifier who played calmly and effectively for 17 holes, then panicked on the 18th after learning she had a four-shot cushion; her pace, speech, and thinking sped up into catastrophic “what if” threat mode, leading to poor decisions and a double bogey despite winning by two.

They explain this “success threshold” with a balance-beam analogy and emphasize using specific, step-by-step instructions to narrow focus. Dr. Mat recommends body-awareness tools like progressive muscle relaxation and the WIN cue (“What’s important now?”) to interrupt spiraling thoughts.

They close by stressing mental training must be practiced consistently and mention sponsor Caddy Snacks and their MPGA coaching services.

Visit www.mpgagolf.com

At NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab sits a mural depicting an astronaut posed as Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The artwork doesn’t celebrate what the astronaut looks like. It celebrates what the astronaut embodies: human excellence through deliberate, integrated preparation.

An astronaut doesn’t become high-performing by accident. Neither does a competitive golfer.

The astronauts preparing for space missions spend years in training that most athletes never experience. The consequences of these performers are absolute. One miscalculation. One moment of distraction, or one deviation from process and everything fails.

Yet within that pressure, astronauts perform with precision. They execute complex procedures. They adapt to emergencies and train themselves to remain calm when systems fail.

This is not natural. This is trained. And the training methods used by NASA reveal exactly what junior golfers need to perform at their highest level.

Why Astronauts Matter to Your Golf

Golf and space training share one critical element: the outcome depends entirely on what happens between your ears and how you execute one step at a time.

A golfer stands over a four-foot putt. The ball is stationary. The hole doesn’t move. The physics doesn’t change. Yet golfers miss makeable putts under pressure while making the same putt casually during practice.

An astronaut executes a spacewalk. The procedure is planned. The movements are rehearsed. The suit works the same way every time. Yet astronauts undergo 1,400 hours of underwater training to prepare for one seven-hour spacewalk.

Why? Because the human mind, under pressure, abandons process. It panics. It rushes. It attaches outcome to identity.

Astronauts train to prevent this. They train to own the moment, no matter the stakes.

This is the performance advantage every junior golfer needs.

Principle 1:

Rigor in Preparation Equals Freedom in Performance.

Astronauts spend the vast majority of their time preparing for moments that last seconds. A spacewalk procedure that lasts seven hours in space has been practiced for over 1,400 hours on Earth.

That’s a 200-to-1 preparation ratio.

Most junior golfers practice the opposite. They hit balls casually. They play casually. Then they expect to perform under pressure.

Astronauts know the truth: preparation buys freedom. The more rigorous your preparation, the calmer you become in high-pressure moments because your body knows the procedure.

Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between real pressure and simulated pressure. When you rehearse with the same intensity as competition, your body learns: “This is normal. I’ve done this thousands of times.”

Casual practice trains casual performance. Rigorous practice trains competitive performance.

What this looks like for you:

Your practice must have standards. Not just reps. Standards.

If you’re working on your short game, establish a protocol. Before each shot: read the break, visualize the line, commit to a speed, execute without hesitation. Do this for 50 shots. The 50th shot is performed with the same precision as the first.

If you’re working on your full swing, practice specific targets under specific conditions. Not: “I’ll hit some drivers.” Instead: “I’ll hit 15 drivers to targets 200-205 yards, with a specific shape, from specific stances.”

Track your performance in practice. Astronauts track every rehearsal. So should you.

Your goal is to reach a point where your body executes procedures without conscious thought because those procedures have been embedded through repetition and rigor.

Principle 2:

Process Over Outcome, Moment by Moment.

NASA’s Mission Control doesn’t ask astronauts, “Win the spacewalk.” Instead, they direct the astronaut through a precise sequence of movements. Step by step. Hand by hand.

The flight director might say: “We’re moving to depressurization protocol. Disconnect the primary umbilical first. Verify the secondary is engaged. Now rotate your body 47 degrees to the left. Move your right foot forward two feet. Stop and verify foot placement.”

This isn’t micromanagement. This is excellence.

The astronaut isn’t thinking about the spacewalk. The astronaut is thinking about the next step. The next movement. The next decision point.

This is why astronauts own catastrophic pressure. They’re not managing the entire mission in their mind. They’re managing the next 30 seconds.

When consequence is high, narrow your focus. Not on the outcome. On the process.

A junior golfer walking to the first tee in a tournament often mentally plays the entire back nine before hitting the opening drive. Anxiety explodes. Performance crumbles.

An astronaut in a spacewalk when a system fails doesn’t think, “This could kill me.” The astronaut thinks, “Okay. What’s the next step in the emergency protocol?”

Same nervous system. Different training.

What this looks like for you:

Develop a pre-shot routine that narrows your focus to the moment. Not the score. Not the outcome. The process.

Walk to your ball. Assess the lie. Choose your target. Choose your shot shape. Choose your club. Take practice swings. Commit. Execute. Step away.

That’s one execution. One moment. That’s all you manage.

In competition, you perform 70+ of these routines. You can’t control 70 outcomes. You can control one routine. Then the next one.

During practice, train this skill. When you hit a shot, don’t evaluate it immediately. Reset. Perform the next routine with full attention. This trains your mind to stay in process mode instead of outcome mode.

Astronauts train this same skill. They rehearse procedures knowing that once in space, their thoughts must remain on the current step, not the larger mission.

Principle 3:

Communication Creates Clarity and Corrects in Real Time.

Mission Control doesn’t send astronauts into space with vague instructions. Every procedure is documented. Every step is communicated. Every decision point has been discussed.

But communication doesn’t end at launch. Throughout the mission, the flight director remains in constant dialogue with the astronaut. The director provides information. The astronaut provides status updates. Together, they stay synchronized.

If the astronaut deviates from procedure by even a small margin, Mission Control recognizes it immediately and communicates a correction. Not months later. In real time.

Most junior golfers train in isolation. They hit balls at a range without feedback. They play rounds without analysis. Then they wonder why they don’t improve.

Improvement requires feedback. It requires communication between coach and player about what’s actually happening versus what should be happening.

What this looks like for you:

If you’re working with a coach, use that relationship fully. Don’t just hit balls. Discuss your tendencies. Discuss your competitive patterns. Discuss what you’re working on in specific situations.

Ask your coach: “What happens to my swing when I’m anxious?” “What’s my pattern when I miss fairways?” “How does my short game change under pressure?”

Video analysis works here. Film yourself during competitions. Film yourself during practice. Compare them. Where do you deviate?

If you’re training independently, communicate with yourself. Keep a journal. Track patterns. Write down: “I rushed this putt.” “I didn’t commit to this shot.” “I hit 8 fairways today and 6 of them came when I slowed my routine.”

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about recognition. You can’t correct what you don’t see.

For parents: ask your junior golfer about their round in specific terms. Not: “How did you play?” Instead: “Tell me about how you stayed committed to your routine. Were there moments you rushed? What happened with your short game?”

This creates feedback loops. Feedback loops create awareness. Awareness creates change.

Principle 4:

Precision in Execution, Down to the Degree.

Here’s what the astronaut hears from Mission Control during a spacewalk: “Rotate your body 37 degrees counterclockwise. Move your left foot forward precisely 2.5 feet. Now pivot on your right foot and face the service panel.”

Not: “Turn around and work on the panel.”

Precise. Measured. Intentional.

The astronaut doesn’t approximate. The astronaut executes exactly.

Why? Because in space, approximation can be fatal. And this culture of precision transfers to every step of training, not just the dangerous ones.

Junior golfers often practice with approximation. They aim at a general area instead of a specific target. They swing with approximate tempo instead of deliberate tempo. They commit to shots with approximate commitment instead of full commitment.

This trains approximation. And approximation is what shows up on the course.

What this looks like for you:

When you practice, eliminate generalities. Not: “I’ll work on my irons.” Instead: “I’ll hit 5-irons to the 160-yard marker with a specific shape. I’ll draw 5, fade 3, keep 2 straight.”

Know your actual distances. Not your estimated distances. Know them by testing and tracking. Know that your 7-iron goes 153 yards on average with your swing, in calm conditions.

When you practice a short game shot, don’t just chip the ball to “somewhere near the hole.” Chip to specific feet. Every chip has a target of 3 feet.

When you set up to a golf shot, commit fully. Not 80% sure. 100% committed. If you’re not fully committed, step away and reset.

This precision transfers to competition because you’ve trained precision. Your nervous system knows what committed execution looks like.

Principle 5:

High Involvement, Low Attachment.

This is the astronaut’s mental posture in moments of extreme consequence.

The astronaut is fully engaged. Every system is being monitored. Every movement is deliberate. Every step is important. This is high involvement.

Simultaneously, the astronaut is not attached to controlling the outcome. The astronaut is attached to controlling the process. The astronaut executes the procedure exactly and then trusts the procedure. This is low attachment to outcome.

High involvement in the process. Low attachment to controlling what happens next.

When a system fails during a spacewalk, the astronaut doesn’t panic or freeze. The astronaut is fully involved in responding to the immediate problem while remaining unattached to whether the overall mission succeeds. The astronaut’s job is to follow protocol. Mission Control’s job is to manage outcomes.

This mental separation is powerful.

Most junior golfers do the opposite. They have low involvement (they’re distracted or rushing) and high attachment (they’re obsessing over the score, over what others think, over the outcome).

This creates anxiety. Anxiety creates mistakes. Mistakes create worse scores. And the cycle continues.

What this looks like for you:

Before you execute a golf shot, be fully involved. Full focus. Full commitment. Full presence. This is high involvement.

During execution, you are 100% about the routine. Nothing else exists. The score doesn’t exist. The leaderboard doesn’t exist. The spectators don’t exist. The consequence doesn’t exist.

After you execute the shot, let it go. Immediately. You’ve done your job. The ball now follows physics. You’ve already moved to the next moment.

This mental shift changes everything. You’re not trying to control the outcome. You’re controlling your process. The outcome follows.

For parents: help your junior golfer understand this distinction. After a round, don’t ask about the score first. Ask about their process. “How did your routine hold up?” “Did you stay committed to your pre-shot routine?” “What moments did you rush? What moments did you own?”

This teaches your golfer that you value process over outcome. Your golfer’s nervous system learns to prioritize what matters: the execution.

Principle 6:

Owning The Moment, Regardless of Stakes.

An astronaut training for a spacewalk knows the risks. System failure. Equipment malfunction. Loss of oxygen. These are real. These are catastrophic.

Yet the astronaut’s training creates a psychological state where the astronaut thinks: “Okay. Here’s what happens next. I’ve trained for this. I own this moment.”

This isn’t arrogance. This is earned confidence. The astronaut has rehearsed the procedure thousands of times. Has trained emergency responses. Has studied every variable. The astronaut walks into that moment with preparation that exceeds the challenge.

This is what competitive golfers need. Not false confidence. Earned confidence.

You earn confidence by doing the work. By practicing with rigor. By rehearsing your routines under pressure conditions. By analyzing your patterns. By building mental tools through deliberate practice.

When you stand on the first tee in a tournament, you should think: “I’ve trained for this. I own this moment. I’m going to execute my routine and let the score follow.”

This isn’t visualization. This is preparation meeting moment.

What this looks like for you:

Before your next competition, ask yourself: “Have I done the work?” If the answer is yes, then you own that moment. You’ve earned the right to be confident.

If the answer is no, then your job isn’t to fake confidence. Your job is to return to preparation. Close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

The astronauts with the highest performance records aren’t the ones with the most natural talent. They’re the ones with the most rigorous preparation. The ones who refuse to step into high-stakes moments unless they’ve done the work.

Your path is the same.

Principle 7:

Build Your Complete Performance Plan (Craft, Body, Mind).

The Vitruvian Man represents integrated human excellence. Not just physical. Not just mental. All systems working together.

Your performance as a golfer requires the same integration.

Your body must be trained. Your swing mechanics must be developed. Your fitness must support your game. This is the technical foundation.

Your mind must be trained. Your routines must be rehearsed. Your decision-making must be practiced under pressure. Your emotional responses must be managed through deliberate skill-building. This is the performance foundation.

And everything must be integrated. Your mind executing your body’s procedures. Your body supporting your mind’s focus. One system.

Astronauts train this integration for years before stepping into a spacecraft. You can train this integration in your golf development.

Your Next Step

You now understand the principles. The question is implementation.

Start with one. Choose the principle that speaks to your current challenge.

If you’re struggling with inconsistency, focus on Principle 1: Rigor in Preparation. Audit your practice. Raise your standards. Train with the intensity of competition.

If you’re struggling with pressure, focus on Principle 2: Process Over Outcome. Develop a solid pre-shot routine. Practice it relentlessly. During competition, trust the routine and let outcomes follow.

If you’re struggling with feedback and improvement, focus on Principle 3: Communication. Find a coach or analyst who can identify your patterns. Journal your rounds. Track what’s actually happening.

If you’re struggling with execution, focus on Principle 4: Precision. Stop approximating. Train specific targets. Develop commitment skills.

If you’re struggling with mental pressure, focus on Principle 5: High Involvement, Low Attachment. Train the ability to be fully present and fully committed while remaining unattached to controlling the outcome.

Pick one. Work that principle for 30 days. Then add the next.

This is how astronauts build excellence. Not all at once. Layer by layer. System by system. Until they’re ready for the moment.

You’re building the same way.

A Question for Reflection

What principle above identified your biggest gap between where you are and where you want to be? More importantly, what specific action will you take this week to close that gap?

The astronauts are already training. They’re already owning their moments. The question is: will you?

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

About Dr. Mat Park

Dr. Mat Park is a mental performance coach, sport psychologist, and author dedicated to helping junior golfers, collegiate players, and serious amateurs build championship-level mindsets. His work bridges golf psychology, high-performance leadership, and faith-based personal development.

As founder of the Mental Performance Golf Academy (MPGA), Dr. Mat works with golfers who want to close the gap between their technical skill and their competitive performance. He’s the author of ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf, a framework that thousands of golfers use to strengthen their mental game. He also co-hosts the Mind Your Game podcast with LPGA Tour winner Cydney Clanton, where they discuss real performance challenges from competitive golfers.

Dr. Mat’s approach is grounded in research and built on lived experience. He draws on frameworks from Kristin Neff’s self-compassion work, Roy Baumeister’s performance psychology, and sport psychology research. He’s direct. He’s honest about his own struggles with consistency. And he’s committed to helping golfers and parents understand that mental performance is a skill that can be trained, just like your swing.

When he’s not coaching golfers, Dr. Mat supports leadership development and contracts with NASA in engineering and operations.

About the Mental Performance Golf Academy (MPGA)

MPGA is a platform for athletes, parents, and coaches who understand that mental performance is the difference between talent and results. The academy serves junior golfers, collegiate players, and serious amateurs who want to develop the mental skills that close the gap between practice performance and competitive performance.

MPGA offers direct coaching, online courses, and resources grounded in sport psychology research. The academy teaches golfers how to build routines that work under pressure, manage emotions during competition, recover quickly from mistakes, and maintain focus when stakes are highest. The focus is always on skills you can train, not qualities you’re born with.

MPGA also produces the Mind Your Game podcast, featuring real conversations with competitive golfers about the mental challenges they face. The podcast connects research to practical performance problems, giving golfers insight into how others navigate pressure and overcome mental barriers.

The academy’s philosophy is simple: your mental game is a skill. Like your swing, it improves through deliberate practice, honest feedback, and commitment to process over outcome.

Connect with Dr. Mat and MPGA

MPGA website and coaching: mpgagolf.com

ONE Daily Devotional app: www.playforoneapp.com

Mind Your Game podcast: Available on all major podcast platforms

MPGA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mpga.golf/

18 Holes Weekly Mindset Newsletter: https://www.drmatpark.com/s/18-holes-newsletter

She truly loved golf the way kids love things before anyone tells them they should be better at it. She showed up early to practice and stayed late. She played until the sprinklers chased her off the course.

Then one of her parents started showing up to rounds with their own scorecard.

Every shot got tracked. Every missed putt got logged. Every decision got reviewed, and every car ride home turned into a debrief. Then one day… she had enough. She stopped wanting to play, and eventually quit the game she once loved.

I will be the first to admit, that as a parent… I have been there. Maybe not with a clipboard or my own scorecard, but with my words to my daughter.

The Loneliest Sport a Child Plays

Think about what your kid just walked through.

Four and a half hours on a course. No timeout. No substitution. No teammate to pass to when it got hard. They kept their own score. They called penalties on themselves. They managed their own nerves with nobody to lean on.

Golf is the truly a lonely sport.

And then it ends. They turn in their scorecard and walk to the car. More often than not, the first voice they hear after a round is yours.

The Voice They Inherit

Dr. Kristin Neff has spent her career studying self-compassion, and her research lands hard for any parent.

Now here is the part that should truly make us think and reflect…

Kids do not invent their inner voice. They inherit it. The way you respond to a double bogey becomes the way they respond to a double bogey. When you go silent and tense, they learn that mistakes are shameful. You might not be saying anything, but they know… they feel it. And at the end of a round, when you lead a conversation with the score or result, they learn that their worth is tied to performance.

Research on praise says the same thing but from another angle. When parents praise the outcome, the score, or the trophy, they unintentionally increase anxiety within the child. Deep down, kids intuitively know that outcomes are not fully within their control so they feel a lack of agency around it.

When parents, however, learn to praise process, the effort, the routine, or a specific time their child recovered after a bad hole, they build something that lasts. Praising something within their control (e.g., like effort or attitude), builds the foundation of an athlete who can fail and bounce back.

So for parents, I would like to offer a reframe on the questions you ask your child at the end of a round. Instead of: “Did you play well?” Try asking this instead, “What did you learn?”

Loving the Child, Not the Performance

I want to go deeper for a moment, because this is bigger than golf.

Somewhere along the way, it gets easy to love the performance instead of the child. We never mean to or intent to do it, but our kids feel the difference when it happens. They can feel your mood rise and fall with their score. They learn to read your face on the 18th green before they read their own scorecard.

Here is what I believe. Your child’s worth was settled long before they ever picked up a club. It is not earned on a leaderboard and it is not lost in a missed cut. They are fully loved and accepted even on the worst golf day of their life.

And if that is true for you, then the car ride home is not a performance review. It’s a chance to remind them who they are when the scoring stops.

Golf will hand your kid a thousand bad days. That’s the game we play. So at the end of a tough day, they don’t need a swing fix or a lecture on what they did wrong. They first need a place to land, to feel seen, loved, and validated for what they just went through. I know it can get frustrating at times when you watch your child unravel out there. Trust me… they are frustrated too.

The Playbook

Here is something to try as you prepare for your child’s next competitive round:

The pre-round trap. Before the round, resist the temptation to say “I think you’ll win today.” I know you mean it as confidence, but it lands as a weight they now have to carry. And if they don’t achieve it, they feel like a failure. Instead, aim them at what they control for the day. Say something like, “Go out there and commit to every shot,” or “I love watching you compete.”

Three things to say after a round.

1. “I love watching you play.” Full stop. Don’t add a “but” to this sentence. Just stop after play. The pause separates your love from their performance, regardless of what it is, and that separation is everything.

2. “What were you proud of out there today?” This hands the round back to them and teaches self-evaluation that does not start with self-attack. Just understand your timing on when you ask this question. Ask for permission to invite you into the conversation. And if you sense they are not ready to talk on the car ride home. Just give them a hug and move to number 3 below.

3. “I am here when you want to talk about it.” That is permission, not pressure. Let them choose when they want to walk through the door.

RESET when they get in the car already melting down. Recognize what they feel and help them name it out loud and move to #3. Ease the pressure by taking any sort of analysis off the table for now. Steady your breathing first, because your calm is contagious and so is your tension. Encourage the effort, not the result. And lastly, talk later…because the teaching moment is real but it is not in the parking lot or the car ride home.

These are the same principles I write about in ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf. The mental game does not start on the first tee. For your kid, a lot of it starts in your passenger seat on the car ride home.

Before You Pull Out of the Parking Lot

Here is your challenge this week.

Before the next round ends, decide what your kid is going to hear in the first five minutes. Don’t decide what you are going to say in the moment when it comes. Prepare for it and decide now.

Sit with this one question now as you reflect: what does your child hear from you in the first five minutes after a round?

They are listening more closely than you think. And they will carry that voice a lot longer than they carry any score.

Good luck. I’m rooting for you.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

P.S. I went deeper on this in the latest episode of the Mind Your Game podcast, “The Car Ride Home.” If this newsletter hit home, the episode is the conversation that goes with it. Give it a listen, then share it with a parent who needs it. Access the full episode below:

Dr. Mat | Mental Performance Golf Academy | mpgagolf.com

I’ll be the first to admit this.

For two weeks, I’ve been avoiding a conversation with myself.

Fourteen days ago, my team sat me down and told me they were confused. They wanted to know where MPGA was going. Who we were talking to. Who the ideal student was. And if we were going to grow our social media presence, they needed to know who we were building it for.

Fair questions. Every single one of them.

Here’s the part that stings: I wanted them to figure it out with me. I wanted the direction to come from the group, from the conversation, from some collaborative process that would let me off the hook. But they pushed back, and they were right to push back.

“Dr. Mat, you have to set the direction for us and we’ll support you. You are the brand and there is no one else in this entire world that can make that decision for you. Just tell us who it is you want to reach, and we will build it out from there.”

I went quiet after that. I’ve been quiet about it ever since.

Then this morning, I hopped off an executive coaching call and shared an illustration with my client about skyscrapers. The foundation of any high-rise goes down before it goes up. You don’t see that work when you walk past the building. It’s invisible. But the depth of what’s below determines the height of what’s above.

I gave that coaching, and then I sat with my own words.

I’ve been putting off the foundational work. I’ve been walking past my own building and admiring what’s already up, while ignoring what still needs to go down.

So here it is. The answer I’ve been sitting on.

My heart always comes back to junior golfers. Not because I don’t believe mental training matters for every golfer, because I do. But when I’m most honest with myself, I know exactly the kind of kid I was built to serve.

I borrow this from Patrick Lencioni’s model of the Ideal Team Player. He describes three traits that define someone who is truly coachable and ready to contribute: Hungry, Humble, and People Smart. I’ve been thinking about what those traits look like in a junior golfer, and here’s how I see it:

Hungry is the kid who practices when no one is watching. They don’t need to be told to work. They show up early. They stay late. They think about their game when they’re not on the course. Hunger isn’t about talent. It’s about a relentless desire to improve that lives inside them, not around them. A hungry junior golfer doesn’t wait for someone to hand them motivation. They bring it.

Humble is the kid who knows they don’t have it all figured out yet, and they’re okay with that. They take feedback without getting defensive. They don’t crumble after a bad round, and they don’t inflate after a good one. A humble junior golfer understands that the game will always be bigger than their ego, and they lean into that reality rather than fighting it. They listen more than they argue. They’re more interested in getting better than being right.

People Smart is the kid who reads the room. They understand that golf is played alongside others even when it’s individual. They know how to compete without tearing someone else down. They treat the range attendant the same way they treat the tournament director. People Smart junior golfers are self-aware. They understand how their attitude and their energy affect their playing partners, their team, their parents, and their coaches.

When I picture a junior golfer with all three of these traits, I know exactly who I want to be in the room with. That’s the student I want to build MPGA around.

I don’t have the full picture mapped out yet. The foundation still needs more work. But I’m finally digging.

That’s where I am today.

Thanks for being part of this.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat Mental Performance Golf Academy mpgagolf.com

Author of ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf

Don’t skip twice.

I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m not great at ironing clothes.

That’s not easy to say as someone who coaches mental performance for a living. But here I am, standing in front of an ironing board, MPGA polo laid out flat, iron in hand, making things worse.

More creases. Not fewer.

I knew I was doing something wrong. That’s the whole point of ironing, right? Remove the wrinkles. But the faster I moved, the more I pressed and rushed, the worse it got. I caught myself pushing harder, moving quicker, as if sheer force and speed would fix what I was getting wrong.

And then it hit me.

I do the exact same thing on the golf course.

Speed Is Not the Answer

When I make a mistake on the course, I notice a pattern. I speed up. My pre-shot routine gets shorter. My breathing gets shallower. My grip tightens. I start rushing to the next shot as if moving faster will erase what just happened.

Psychologists call this behavioral acceleration. It’s what happens when anxiety spikes and your nervous system pushes you toward action. You feel the need to do something fast to regain control. But that urgency usually creates the opposite effect. You dig the hole deeper.

Research by Dr. Roy Baumeister and his colleagues on ego depletion tells us that after a perceived failure, self-regulation weakens. You’re more prone to impulsive responses. That’s when patience becomes a skill, not just a personality trait.

The Research on Slowing Down

The field of sport psychology has studied post-error responses for decades. One of the most consistent findings is this:

Elite performers slow down after mistakes.

They don’t rush the next play.

They reset.

Researchers Kuchar, Neff, and Mosewich developed the RESET intervention specifically for athletes dealing with mistakes mid-performance. The protocol is straightforward. Recognize what happened, extract the lesson, and start fresh.

Each step requires a deliberate pause. You won’t do any of them well if you’re racing to the next shot.

Dr. Kristin Neff’s self-compassion research adds another layer. She found that people who respond to their mistakes with harsh self-criticism tend to overthink and over-correct. Self-compassion, on the other hand, leads to faster recovery because it eliminates the mental spiral that follows a bad shot (something we focus on and teach at www.mpgagolf.com).

The golfer who shanks one into the trees and says “I’m the worst” is already fighting two battles. The shot that went wrong. The story they’re now telling about themselves.

One Stroke at a Time

Back at the ironing board, I stopped.

I took a breath. I slowed my stroke. I focused on one section of fabric at a time. I stopped trying to fix everything at once.

The wrinkles started to come out.

That’s the lesson. Patience on the golf course works the same way. After a bad shot, you do not need speed. You need presence. One breath. One target. One swing.

Your brain is not designed to perform well under urgency you create yourself. When you manufacture that pressure, you activate your threat response. Your motor control narrows, and your decision-making suffers. The research on attentional focus by Dr. Gabriele Wulf shows that external focus (thinking about where the ball needs to go) beats internal focus (thinking about your swing mechanics). But you won’t access external focus if your mind is racing.

Slow down. You give yourself the best chance when you reset your nervous system between shots, not when you punish yourself into action.

A Simple Patience Protocol for the Course

The next time you make a mistake on the golf course, try this:

• Walk slowly to your next shot. Not dramatically. Just slower than your instinct tells you.

• Take one full breath before you pull a club. Breathe in for four counts. Out for six.

• Pick one external target. A spot on the fairway. The top of the flag. The entry point on the green. One thing.

• Commit to the shot, not the outcome.

That’s it. No complex mental overhaul. No sport psychology jargon to memorize between holes. Just the same principle I learned ironing a polo shirt at 10:30pm, the night before my big day at the Baltursol Golf Club in New Jersey.

Slow is smooth. Smooth produces results.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat Mental Performance Golf Academy mpgagolf.com ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf

“I watched a sermon recently, in which the pastor explained that God places huge ambitions into our hearts, but he does not tell us how we will achieve them. He does, however, always show us the next step… Here’s to the people who made me, me. Not Rachel the golfer. Just Rachel. I do not know what the future holds. However, I am grateful to God for showing me the next step, and I am grateful to the game that gave me the world.”

Rachel Heck (via https://nolayingup.com/blog/why-im-remaining-an-amateur)

When Rachel Heck was four years old, someone asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.

She said: professional golfer.

Everyone laughed. They thought it was cute.

Nobody was laughing by the time she was 15, competing in the U.S. Women’s Open. Or when she became the first Stanford woman in history to win an NCAA individual title. Or when she swept the conference, regional, and national championships in a single freshman season. Or when she signed Nike Golf’s first-ever NIL deal.

The golf world had already written her story. She was going to be the Next Big Thing on the LPGA Tour. The resume was perfect, and the trajectory was undeniable.

And then Rachel Heck walked away from all of it.

The Decision Nobody Saw Coming

Here is what most people do not know about Rachel Heck.

While she was winning national championships and collecting sponsor deals, she was also waking up before sunrise for Air Force ROTC training. She was in uniform. She was learning crisis management, communications strategy, and what it means to lead under pressure.

The pivot did not happen overnight. It started her senior year of high school when she had a back injury and some rare, unstructured time to think. She had friends in ROTC. She was curious. And then, at a team gathering during her freshman year at Stanford, everything shifted.

A guest speaker took the stage: Nora Tyson, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and the first woman to command a Navy ship fleet. Heck’s teammates rushed to meet their favorite golf stars. Heck was rooted to her seat, jaw open.

“She spoke about what it means to represent your country,” Heck said. “It just revived me.”

After the speech, Heck walked straight to Tyson, not to any of the touring professionals in the room. Tyson looked her in the eye and said: “If you’re looking for a sign, this is it.”

That was the sign.

In June 2024, after helping Stanford win their second NCAA team title in three years by securing the clinching point, Rachel Heck was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. Her father, who had caddied for her since she was a child, pinned her at the ceremony.

She is now a public affairs officer in the Air Force Reserve, traveling the world, leading with purpose, and playing golf because she loves it, not because the world told her to.

The Psychology Behind the Choice

I want to talk about what Rachel Heck actually did, because it is not what most people think… She did not give up. She did not fail, and she did not run from the pressure.

She listened to herself.

That is one of the hardest things a high-performing athlete learns to do, and the research backs this up.

Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory tells us that humans have three core psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When all three are met, motivation is sustainable, performance improves, and well-being deepens.

When athletes operate primarily from external pressure, the scholarship, the contract, the expectation, the motivation becomes fragile. Research consistently shows that athletes driven by intrinsic motivation show significantly greater resilience and sustained performance compared to those driven primarily by external rewards.

Rachel Heck played some of the best golf of her career after she made the decision not to go pro.

• She helped Stanford win a national championship.

• She played Augusta.

• She described feeling no pressure for the first time in years. “I have another full life that has absolutely nothing to do with this game.”

That is not someone who quit. That is someone who finally had full access to herself.

The Comparison Trap

Here is what I see constantly with the golfers I work with, junior players especially.

They are measuring their success against someone else’s ruler.

• Your teammate got a Division I scholarship.

• Your competitor turned pro at 18.

• Someone you grew up playing with is on tour.

• And suddenly, your own progress, your own path, your own deep sense of whether you are moving in the right direction, gets drowned out by comparison.

Research on social comparison, going back to Leon Festinger’s foundational work, tells us that athletes who orient toward external comparison experience higher anxiety and lower performance stability than those who measure progress against personal standards.

Nobody can tell you what success looks like in your life. Not your coach. Not your parents. Not the leaderboard. Not the rankings.

Rachel Heck had one of the most decorated amateur careers in the history of women’s golf. And the day she was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, she said she had never felt more like herself.

That is the internal compass. And it only points in one direction: yours.

You Are Responsible for Your Own Happiness

I will be the first to admit this is something I have had to learn the hard way too.

We talk a lot in sport psychology about performance. About results. About the mental tools that help you shoot lower scores and handle pressure better. But none of that matters if you are pursuing a life someone else designed for you.

Here is what I know after years of working with golfers at every level:

Rachel Heck put it simply: “I realized that [being the best golfer ever] was so not enough.”

She was brave enough to say that out loud. She was brave enough to act on it. You are ultimately responsible for your own happiness. Nobody else holds that.

An Invitation Worth Accepting

The ANNIKA Foundation is hosting a very special conversation tomorrow, and if you are a young female golfer… I want you to be there.

“More Than Golf” Virtual Series: Purpose Beyond Performance: A Conversation with Rachel Heck

Thursday, May 14th at 7:00 PM ET

Register here: taylorb69.wixforms.com/f/7447292706591605801

This session is designed for female junior, collegiate, and professional golfers. It is not a highlights reel. It is an honest, open conversation about golf, life, and how to pursue excellence without losing sight of who you are beyond the game.

This is exactly the conversation I wish more young golfers had access to. Rachel Heck will not tell you to quit golf or follow her exact path. She will tell you something more important: how she found her own, and what it felt like to actually follow it.

One more thing… Here is what I want you to sit with after you register.

Ask yourself: whose definition of success am I chasing right now?

Write it down. Be honest. You do not have to share it with anyone.

Then ask: what would it feel like to replace that with my own?

That question is where everything starts.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

Sources:

Rachel Heck Story

1. Local Memphis / ABC24 News https://www.localmemphis.com/article/sports/local-sports/rachel-heck-chooses-a-career-away-from-pro-golf/522-2b2923d9-ca93-411e-ae45-1e53c69db250

2. Golf Digest https://www.golfdigest.com/story/rachel-heck-stanford-not-turning-pro-ncaa-champion

3. Golf.com (most detailed profile) https://golf.com/news/rachel-heck-golf-dream-content/

4. Global Golf Post (Annika Foundation connection and Nora Tyson story) https://www.globalgolfpost.com/featured/flying-high-beyond-golf/

5. St. Agnes Academy / Daily Memphian (Hall of Fame induction, most recent reporting from March 2026) https://www.saa-sds.org/newsdetails/1727/rachel-heck-inducted-into-amateur-sports-hall-of-fame

6. Newsweek https://www.newsweek.com/sports/golf/augusta-national-womens-amateur-rachel-heck-air-force-2054093

7. Wikipedia (career stats and timeline) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Heck

Performance Psychology Research

8. Deci & Ryan, Self-Determination Theory (foundational 2000 paper) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11392867/

9. SDT in Sport (applied research overview) https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/intrinsic-motivation-self-determination-exercise-sport/

10. SDT and Athletic Performance (applied sport research) https://www.drpaulmccarthy.com/post/self-determination-theory-in-sport-new-evidence-for-athletic-performance-enhancement

I am a performance psychologist. I study elite athletes. I teach mental performance for a living. And for years, I was terrible at sleep.

Not because I didn’t know better. I knew exactly what the research said. I knew what it cost me. I did it anyway.

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Here’s what it looked like. My wife Julie and I would end up in bed with our phones. Me, still working. Still thinking about the next thing. Still convinced I had to squeeze one more hour out of the day before I earned the right to rest.

The problem is that rest doesn’t work that way.

A bad night leaves me operating at 37% capacity. I’ve told clients this. I’ve felt it in my body. It’s like driving a Tesla that never gets a full charge. You know the car works. You know what it’s capable of. But you’re constantly managing how far you push it because the battery never recovered.

That’s not performance. That’s survival.

So Julie and I made a decision. No electronics in the bedroom. Full stop. No phones. No tablets. No “just one more email.” The bedroom became the one place where work doesn’t follow us.

It felt uncomfortable at first. The pull to keep working is real. When you love what you do and you’re building something, stopping feels like losing ground. But I had to be honest with myself. A drained version of me serves no one. Not my clients. Not my family. Not the work itself.

Here’s what the data shows about elite performers:

• Roger Federer and LeBron James both prioritize 10-12 hours of sleep, including naps

• Elite athletes track sleep the way they track training

• High performers protect their sleep environment with the same intentionality they bring to competition prep

• The average person fits sleep into whatever time is left; elite performers build everything else around it

Sleep is not passive. It is a performance variable. The best in the world treat it that way.

Your challenge this week:

Pick one thing to remove from your bedroom tonight. Phone. Tablet. Laptop. One thing. Do it for seven days and track how you feel on day seven compared to day one.

Your performance starts the night before.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat Park

So many people these days don’t have time or the patience to listen to an entire podcast episode. Instead, if you would like to capture the key nuggets from our latest Mind Your Game episode, here it is below.

After the Masters, Cameron Young sat down for a post-round interview. The question was straightforward: how do you meet the moment under that kind of pressure? His answer was not what most people expected.

No mention of talent. No mention of grinding out a win. It was about the accumulation of resources, skills, and deliberate practice over time. That one sentence became the foundation of Episode 12 of the Mind Your Game podcast with Dr. Mat Park and LPGA Tour veteran Cydney Clanton.

The Upper Limit Problem

Here is something most people do not talk about. Mental training is not only for slumps. It is equally necessary when you are playing your best golf.

Author Gay Hendricks identified what he calls the “upper limit problem,” in his book The Big Leap. When players hit a level of success that exceeds their internal expectations, they unconsciously self-sabotage. They start playing tight. They play defensive. They protect what they have instead of extending it.

You see it all the time in junior golf. A player goes four under on the front nine, then gives it all back on the back. It is not a swing problem. It is an invisible ceiling they have placed on themselves.

Scotty Scheffler breaks through that ceiling constantly. He goes six under and keeps pushing for nine. His internal ceiling does not exist because he has trained his mind to stay process-focused regardless of the score.

The Balance Beam Principal

Rory McIlroy admitted something after his Masters win: he was grateful he had a two-shot lead instead of one. A one-shot cushion might have been too uncomfortable to manage.

Think about a balance beam placed on the floor. You walk it without a second thought. Raise that same beam nine feet off the ground and your entire mental focus shifts from the task to the consequences. Same width. Same beam. Completely different performance.

Perspective changes how you play. Rory’s mantra that week was simple: “As long as I have a swing and a window.” He committed to that process. He made an aggressive swing on 18 and won the Masters.

Victory Goes to the Vulnerable

At MPGA, the framework is clear. Vulnerability requires three things: risk, uncertainty, and emotional exposure. Something important has to be on the line.

The goal is not to get comfortable. Cydney put it plainly: every time she was comfortable, she was not where she wanted to be. The players who look calm on Sunday are not comfortable. They have learned tools to manage the discomfort.

Tommy Fleetwood spent a year putting himself in contention without winning. Each time he walked away without the trophy, he said the same thing: this is exactly where I want to be. That is not a natural response. That is a trained one.

The 5:1 rule

For every one negative thought or piece of self-talk, it takes five positive ones to neutralize it. That ratio shapes how you practice, how you debrief, and how you talk to your players after a round.

Cydney stopped tracking what her players did wrong. Instead, she tracks improvements. Not “I made a bad swing on two,” but “I want to be more committed off the tee tomorrow.” The word choice changes the entire direction of the next practice session.

One of her caddies taught her the same lesson years ago. She told him she did not want to three-putt. He pushed back: “We want two putts or better on every hole.” Same goal. Completely different mental frame.

What this means for junior golfers and parents

Golf loses more than any other sport. Tiger Woods won 33% of his events at his absolute peak. That rate is historically unprecedented. Every other player on tour loses 99% of the time.

That means redefining what a win looks like. For Cameron Young, winning was not the trophy at the Players Championship. It was the slow accumulation of trust in his process. For Tommy Fleetwood, it was staying in contention long enough to learn what tools he needed.

The mental game is not a switch you flip when things go wrong. It is a daily practice. The players who handle Sunday pressure with grace built that capacity one uncomfortable moment at a time.

Start building now.

Train Your Mind and Mind Your Game…

Listen and watch to the full episode here:

I owe you an honest update.

Four Wednesdays went by. No newsletter. Every single one of them, the guilt showed up right on time, even when I did not.

I teach self-compassion. I know Kristin Neff’s framework by heart. And still, I had to sit with the weight of a broken commitment and remind myself: acknowledge what happened, recognize you are not the only one who gets buried, and move forward. Easier to teach than to live.

So here is where I have been. Not a highlight reel. Just the truth.

NASA called again.

I was brought back as a contractor for a special three-month project. I am humbled every time I get the call to serve in that environment. It has taken more cognitive bandwidth than I anticipated. Gratitude and exhaustion can coexist. I am learning that again.

I launched an app, then stopped using it.

The ONE Daily Devotional app is live. Three daily prompts. Five to seven minutes. It is built for busy people who need to pause. A faith-based devotional and a gratitude journal, side by side, because I believe stillness matters regardless of where you are spiritually.

Here is the honest part: I had a streak going. Then life picked up. I stopped using my own app. The person who built a tool for stillness was not practicing stillness. That is the kind of gap that forces you to look in the mirror. I am starting my 7-day streak again today. If you want to join me: www.playforoneapp.com

The book is almost done.

ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf is in final edits with my publishing team. Release later this year. This one has been years in the making and I am not going to rush the finish.

I run a car wash.

I’ve been operating an express car wash in Huntsville. Nine employees. Real operations. Real accountability. Real problems that do not wait for a convenient moment.

I will be honest with you: nothing has taught me more about leadership, communication, and showing up than managing a brick and mortar business. All the frameworks and research I have studied in sport psychology? Running a team of nine people who depend on you makes those frameworks real in a way no textbook does. I am a better coach because of this experience. I did not expect that.

I have been building something quietly with a partner for almost a year.

Ryan Easter is an executive coach and leadership expert. He founded The Allied Advantage, and for the past eleven months we have been building the Leadership Academy together. Every week, new content. Targeted specifically at managers and supervisors who want to lead better and communicate more clearly.

I kept this quiet on purpose. I wanted to build it right before I talked about it. We are close. Learn more at thealliedadvantage.com/la

The podcast found its next chapter.

Mind Your Game is stronger than it has ever been. Dustin Donner handed the baton, and LPGA Tour winner Cydney Clanton stepped in as my partner. We have a real sponsor now in Caddy Snacks. And there are things coming down the pipe I am not ready to announce yet, but I am genuinely excited about what we are building.

You can catch previous episodes here: Mind Your Game on Apple Podcasts

Cydney and I are running a summer workshop for junior golfers.

This summer we are launching a Mental Edge Workshop for junior golfers and their parents. Foundations of the mental game. The stuff that actually matters and lasts. More details coming soon. If you have a junior golfer in your life, stay tuned.

The thing I am most proud of is not on any resume.

Through all of it. NASA. The app. The book. The car wash. The podcast. The Leadership Academy. The workshop. Through every early morning and late night and full calendar and missed Wednesday...

When I walk through my front door, I am a husband and a dad. Not Dr. Mat. Not a consultant or a coach or a contractor. Present. Fully there.

That is the hardest commitment to keep. And it is the one I refuse to break.

I think about this a lot with golfers. We talk about performance and focus and resilience on the course. But the mental game does not start on the first tee. It starts with what you protect, what you guard, what you refuse to let the noise drown out. For me, that is my family.

Here is a picture my 10-year old drew of me :)

Something to sit with this week

Where is the gap between what you teach, what you preach, and what you actually practice?

And when you walk through your front door tonight, who needs all of you?

I am glad to be back in your inbox.

Don’t skip twice.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

mpgagolf.com | ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf

P.S. If you haven’t tried the new Caddy Snacks “peanut butter” flavor… this one is no joke… “out of this world!” good.

www.eatcaddysnacks.com

I built a room I’ve never built before.

On closing the gap between what you’ve built and how you actually feel — and what I’m opening for a very small group of people I’ve worked with.

There’s a question I hear underneath a lot of my best conversations — usually not said directly, often carried quietly by the people who’ve done the most inner work:

“I’ve built something real. I perform. I lead. So why doesn’t it feel like I thought it would?”

That’s not a performance problem. It’s not a mindset deficiency. It’s a gap — between achievement and fulfillment — and it doesn’t get talked about much because it’s almost impossible to explain to someone who isn’t operating at that level.

I’ve spent 20 years in rooms with high performers. Athletes, executives, coaches, operators. The pattern is consistent: the people who have the most figured out on the outside are often carrying the quietest questions on the inside.

I built something for those questions.

The Allied Advantage Mastermind

I partnered with Ryan Easter — an executive coach who spent 15 years inside some of the most demanding leadership environments in business. He built frameworks around clarity, accountability, and freedom that have changed the leaders he works with. He now runs his practice from a sailboat in the Caribbean. That’s not a story about success. It’s proof that the frameworks produce what they promise.

Together, we built a monthly mastermind. Here’s what it is:

• One hour on Zoom, first Thursday of every month

• Both of us on every single call — no phone-it-in sessions

• Small group, intentional, built for depth not scale

• Exclusively for people who have done serious work with me or Ryan

• First call: May 7, 2026 at 12pm EST

• Registration closes April 30

This is not open enrollment. You were never going to find this through a landing page.

This room is for former coaching clients, MPGA members, course alumni, workshop participants — anyone whose path has crossed mine or Ryan’s in a meaningful way. You’ve already done the inner work to qualify. This is the room where it compounds.

Why now?

Because I’ve watched too many of my best clients walk away from our work together ready to perform — and still missing the peer group and sustained accountability that would have made all of it compound over time.

Because Ryan and I both believe the right room with the right people changes more than any single coaching engagement.

And because the people I want in this room tend to wait until the door is almost closed before they walk through it.

The door is almost closed.

If this is for you, reach out directly.

This room is exclusively for people who have worked with me or Ryan Easter — in any capacity. If that’s you, email me directly and I’ll follow up personally. No form, no funnel. Just a reply.

admin@drmatpark.com

As always, grateful you’re here.

Your Mental Coach

— Dr. Mat

There’s a number that keeps showing up in the research on human behavior.

21.

It started with Dr. Maxwell Maltz in the 1960s, a plastic surgeon who noticed something unusual. His patients needed a minimum of 21 days to mentally adjust to their new appearance after surgery. He began tracking it. The pattern held and he published his findings. 21 days.

Neuroscience has since built on that foundation in remarkable ways. Consistent, repeated behavior practiced daily over roughly 21 days begins to carve new neural pathways, what researchers call neuroplasticity in action. Your brain is literally rewiring itself around the habits you choose to repeat. The practice you do every day isn’t just a ritual. It’s a renovation.

Which means what you choose to do, and what you choose not to do, for 21 consecutive days matters far more than we typically give it credit for.

The Performance Tool Nobody Talks About

I’ve spent 20 years studying what separates elite performers from everyone else.

As a sport and performance psychologist, I’ve worked alongside NASA mission teams navigating life-or-death pressure, LPGA Tour players trying to hold their game together on the back nine of a major, and executives whose decisions ripple through entire organizations. I’ve held certifications in emotional intelligence assessment, organizational dynamics, and behavioral frameworks that most people have never heard of.

And here’s what I keep coming back to after two decades:

The highest performers in the world aren’t just doing more. They’ve learned how to be still.

Not passive. Not checked out. Not scrolling or sleeping through life.

Intentionally still.

There’s a concept in cognitive neuroscience called response inhibition, the brain’s ability to create space between a stimulus and your reaction to it. It’s the pause before you respond to the critical email. The breath before the putt. The moment of quiet before you walk into a difficult conversation. That space… that single, intentional pause, is where elite performance lives.

And the most effective way to train it?

Daily stillness. Practiced consistently. For 21 days.

Here’s What the Research Actually Says

Before you dismiss this as soft advice, let me give you the hard data.

Studies on mindfulness and brief contemplative practices consistently show that even three to five minutes of intentional stillness per day produces measurable physiological and psychological changes. We’re talking about reduced cortisol levels. Improved prefrontal cortex activity, the part of your brain responsible for decision-making and emotional regulation. Enhanced working memory. Lower baseline anxiety.

Dr. Herbert Benson at Harvard, identified what he called the relaxation response, a physiological state that is the direct counterpart to the stress response. You can activate it intentionally. And the doorway into it doesn’t require an hour of meditation or a weekend retreat.

It requires five minutes of choosing to be present.

Five minutes.

That’s less time than it takes to check your Instagram feed in the morning. Less time than a commercial break. Less time than the average person spends deciding what to have for lunch.

And across 21 days, those five minutes compound into something that’s difficult to fully explain until you’ve experienced it yourself.

I’ve Seen It Change People

I’ve seen stillness change golfers mid-round. The one who decides whether a bad hole becomes a bad round or just a number on a scorecard.

I’ve seen it change leaders. A senior NASA advisor once told me the most important skill he developed wasn’t technical expertise, it was the ability to remain regulated when everything around him was in chaos. That regulation started with five minutes every morning before anyone else was awake.

I’ve seen it change the way I show up as a husband and a father. There are days when the noise of building multiple businesses, speaking, coaching, and creating content could swallow me whole. On the days I protect five minutes of stillness, I am a different person, more present, more patient, more me.

That’s not anecdote. That’s the compound effect of a daily practice.

This Challenge is for Everyone.

Starting March 16 and running all the way through Easter Sunday, April 5 — I will post every single day on my personal social media account @dr.matpark going through the daily devotional ONE App and you can follow along and/or join me on this journey of 21 days.

The ONE app was built for exactly this, a quiet space in a loud world where performance and purpose meet. And this challenge is our invitation to prove what’s possible when a community commits together.

I built the ONE app with two tracks — because stillness doesn’t care what you call it. It just works.

Track #1: The Daily Devotional. For those who share my faith, this is five minutes rooted in scripture, reflection, and the ancient wisdom that “Be still and know” is not poetic suggestion. It is performance instruction. It is the most direct path to the kind of clarity that changes how you move through the world.

Track #2: The Daily Gratitude Practice. For those who don’t share my faith, or who are simply in a different season, this track is built on the neuroscience of gratitude. Research from UC Davis, Harvard, and Penn consistently shows that a daily gratitude practice reduces depressive symptoms, improves sleep quality, increases prosocial behavior, and rewires the brain toward positive pattern recognition. The secular and the sacred agree on this one: gratitude creates stillness. Stillness creates capacity. Capacity creates performance.

Same five minutes. Same 21 days. Same transformation.

Your belief system, your choice.

The Timing Isn’t a Coincidence

My personal 21 day challenge will begin on March 16 and run through Easter Sunday, April 5.

There is something intentional about that arc. We move from the ordinary noise of a Monday in March through Holy Week, through the darkness of Good Friday, and arrive on Easter morning, which is the most powerful story of transformation in human history.

If you don’t share my faith, the arc still holds significant value and truth: 21 days of a daily practice, finishing on a Sunday morning in early spring. New season. New neural pathways. New version of how you show up.

Here’s How to Join the #ONE21 Challenge

The ask is small. The return is significant.

Step 1: Download the ONE app — it’s completely free.

• 🍎 Apple App Store

• 🤖 Google Play Store

• 🌐 Or visit playforoneapp.com

Step 2: Choose your track — Devotional or Gratitude.

Step 3: Start your 21 days. They begin whenever you begin. March 16 is when I start mine. But this challenge is open. Your 21 days start the moment you say yes.

Step 4: Share it. When you complete a day, post about it. Use #ONE21. Tag someone who needs this and nominate three people by name and tell them they have 48 hours to download the app and begin. Give the gift of stillness and gratitude.

Who in your life is carrying too much noise right now? Who do you know that could use five minutes of peace? Tag them. Call them out. Invite them in.

"I'm on Day [X] of the #ONE21 Challenge — just 5 minutes a day and I'm already noticing a difference in how I think, feel, and respond. I'm calling out [NAME], [NAME], and [NAME]. Download the ONE app free at playforoneapp.com — choose the Daily Devotional or the Daily Gratitude track, whatever fits your life. 21 days. 5 minutes. No excuses. Are you in? #ONE21 #ChooseStillness"

A Final Word Before You Go

I want to close with something that has stayed with me from my years of working with performers at every level.

The most dangerous belief in high performance isn’t “I’m not talented enough.”

It’s “I don’t have time for this.”

The leader who says they’re too busy to be still is the same leader whose decisions are being made from a dysregulated nervous system. The athlete who says they don’t need a mental practice is the same athlete who falls apart under pressure and can’t explain why. The parent who says there’s no margin in their day is the same parent who snaps at dinner and lies awake at 2am replaying it.

You have five minutes.

You’ve had five minutes this whole time.

The question has never been whether you have the time. The question is whether you believe the practice is worth it.

21 days is your answer.

I’ll see you in the app.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

Sport & Performance Psychologist | Founder, Mental Performance Golf Academy | Creator of the ONE Daily Devotional App | Author of ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf

Download the ONE app free at playforoneapp.com

#ONE21 · #ChooseStillness · #DailyDevotion · #DailyGratitude

Welcome back to the Mind Your Game Podcast.

In this powerful episode, co-hosts Dustin Donner and Dr. Matt sit down with “Lefty Sophia” — former performer, licensed clinical dietician, late-life left-handed golfer, and now LPGA sports agent — for a raw, behind-the-scenes look at the mental and financial realities of professional golf.

Sophia shares her unconventional journey:

• Switching from righty to lefty in golf during COVID

• Starting a brand-new career later in life

• Navigating fear, rejection, and performance pressure

• Supporting LPGA players who are grinding week-to-week just to break even

This conversation goes far beyond golf.

We dive into:
The financial pressure of life on tour
How money stress impacts performance
The emotional weight of representing athletes
Performing under pressure (on stage and on the course)
The “Mama Bear” mindset of being an agent
Fear, rejection, and learning to accept both

Sophia opens up about what it’s really like for professional golfers who:

• Prepay travel, caddies, and tournament fees

• Must make the cut just to break even

• Risk losing their card if they don’t earn enough points

• Carry family sacrifices on their shoulders

This episode is about pressure — financial, mental, emotional — and what it takes to stay in the game when nothing is guaranteed.

If you’re an athlete, parent, coach, entrepreneur, or anyone chasing something uncertain… this one will hit home.

My daughter asked me something this morning that stopped me in my tracks.

“Dad, why don’t you ever get mad?”

I smiled. Because the honest answer is — I do. I get frustrated. I feel everything. But somewhere between 11 years working with astronauts and leaders at NASA, and four months of the most personally meaningful work of my life, I learned something that changed how I move through the world.

There is a space between what happens to you and how you respond.

That space is everything.

Psychology calls it response inhibition. High performers call it composure. Scripture calls it being slow to anger. And for the past four months, I’ve been building a daily practice around it — one devotion, one breath, one rep at a time.

Today, I get to share it with you.

The ONE App — a daily devotional for high performers — has officially been approved by Apple and is live today.

This isn’t a productivity app. It isn’t a meditation app. It’s a training ground for the one skill that separates elite performers from everyone else: the ability to create stillness and space under pressure, on demand.

I built this for the golfer who performs beautifully in practice but falls apart on the back nine. For the busy parent who snaps before they mean to. For the driven professional who knows their mind is the ceiling — and wants to raise it. For anyone who has ever wished they could respond instead of react.

This is the same mental framework I developed at NASA. The same principles I’ve brought to elite junior golfers, collegiate athletes, and LPGA Tour players through MPGA. Distilled into a daily practice you can begin right now.

A book is also coming — integrating high-performance psychology, golf performance, and the spiritual foundation that holds all of it together. This is a journey I’ve been on for years, and I can’t wait to bring you into it fully.

But it starts today. With one moment of stillness.

Stillness isn’t a personality trait. It’s a practice. And you can start building it right now.

👉 Visit playforoneapp.com and start training the space between what happens to you and how you respond.

If you do download the app and play around with it. I have one favor to ask… could you give us a review on the app store? It would mean the world to me.

Thank you.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

The ONE App is available now on the Apple App Store. Android coming soon.

Redemption stories don’t start when life gets easy.

They start when everything falls apart.

In January 2010, Apple unveiled the iPad. Six months later, Instagram was born. And somewhere in between, a 24-year-old prodigy named Anthony Kim won the Shell Houston Open on the PGA Tour — his third victory in less than three years — and looked every bit like the next face of professional golf.

Then the lights went out.

What followed wasn’t just an injury. It was a disappearance. An Achilles tear in 2012 opened a door that led somewhere dark — years of addiction, depression, and by his own account, thoughts of suicide that haunted him “for almost two decades, even while playing the PGA Tour.” He was ranked sixth in the world at his peak. By 2014, Golf Channel was reporting he no longer even played recreationally. By 2019, he called his game “non-existent.” He became golf’s version of a ghost story — whispered about on message boards, glimpsed briefly at a charity event here, a university fundraiser there, before vanishing again.

5,795 days passed between his last win and his next one.

And then, on a sun-soaked Sunday morning in Adelaide, Australia, Anthony Kim — 40 years old, nearly three years sober, and ranked 847th in the world — went out and fired a bogey-free, 9-under 63 to win the LIV Golf Adelaide event by three shots. Over Jon Rahm. Over Bryson DeChambeau. With a 0.1% win probability on the broadcast.

He stood on the 18th green, champagne swapped for sparkling water in honor of his sobriety, and held his four-year-old daughter Bella while the crowd roared.

“Best moment of my life so far,” he said. “For her to be able to run on the green and see her dad isn’t a loser was one of the most special moments of my life.”

What the Highlight Reel Misses

When we watch a comeback like this, we instinctively want to package it neatly. He overcame adversity. He found his way back. Inspirational.

But here’s what the highlight reel always skips: the years when nothing was working and no one was watching.

Kim didn’t just fight his way back to the leaderboard. He fought his way back to being a father. A husband. A human being who could look in the mirror. Before entering rehab, doctors told him he potentially had two weeks to live. That’s not a golf story. That’s a life-or-death story that happened to have a golf course at the beginning and end of it.

As a sport psychologist, this is where I need you to slow down with me for a moment — because what Anthony Kim’s comeback reveals about the human mind is far more profound than any swing stat or putting average.

The Psychology of Surviving the Dark Season

Research in performance psychology consistently shows that the athletes who sustain through catastrophic setbacks share a common thread: purpose that is bigger than performance.

When your identity is built entirely on outcomes — wins, rankings, validation from others — a single catastrophic injury doesn’t just end a season. It ends you. Because if you are what you do, then when you can’t do it anymore, who are you?

This is what Kim described when he said, “I got so good at hiding it that I lost who I was.”

That’s not just an addiction story. That’s an identity crisis wrapped in one.

The psychological concept here is ego depletion — the idea that when we are constantly performing for external approval, we drain the very mental energy we need to sustain ourselves through hardship. The mental tank runs dry. And without something anchoring us that isn’t dependent on a scoreboard, the fall is catastrophic.

What ultimately pulled Kim out wasn’t a better swing coach. It was God. Family. Sobriety. In his own words: “With God, my family, my sobriety being the key things to my life, I can go as far as I want.”

He found his audience of ONE.

Three Choices That Sustain Redemption

Here’s what I want every junior golfer, every struggling athlete, every parent reading this to understand: Anthony Kim’s story isn’t just about coming back to golf. It’s a blueprint for what the mind does when it’s finally free from the weight of needing to prove something.

Own the Moment. Kim stopped negotiating with the past. The 12 lost years, the surgeries, the lowest days — he didn’t pretend they didn’t happen. He owned them, processed them, and then showed up fully in the present. In that final round, five shots back, he wasn’t thinking about what he’d lost or what he would gain in the future. He was playing today’s round of golf. Four consecutive birdies on 12 through 15. One shot at a time.

Nothing to Prove. In his champion’s press conference, Kim didn’t talk about proving doubters wrong. He talked about his daughter. He talked about gratitude. He said, “Nobody else has to believe in me but me.” That’s not arrogance — that’s a man who finally understood that his worth isn’t expressed through results. It’s expressed through effort, through showing up, through the quiet daily decision to take the next faithful step.

Execute for an Audience of ONE. When your “why” is big enough — a daughter who needs her dad, a God who gave you a talent, a community of people fighting the same fight — the pressure of performance shrinks. Kim wasn’t playing for a LIV trophy on Sunday. He was playing for something he couldn’t even fully put into words. “I knew this was going to happen,” he said. “But for it to actually happen is pretty insane.” That’s the language of a man playing from purpose, not from pressure.

For Anyone in a Hard Season Right Now

I talk with junior golfers every week who are convinced they’re behind. Behind on their ranking. Behind on their development. Behind compared to the girl in the next state who’s already committed to a D-I program.

I talk with parents who are terrified that one bad tournament, one rough semester, one lost year to injury means their kid’s window is closing.

Anthony Kim was written off by everyone. He was relegated from LIV Golf in 2025 — essentially cut from the last tour that would have him — and had to go back to qualifying school just to earn his card back. Six weeks later, he beat the world’s best.

The dark season you’re in right now? It may be the very thing that’s forging something in you that comfort never could.

Don’t wait for motivation. Motivation is a feeling, and feelings are unreliable. Lean on your people. Trust the process. Take the next faithful step.

Redemption isn’t a finish line you cross and then retire. It’s a rhythm. You get tested. You grow. You repeat. This is life.

And the most important thing to understand about Anthony Kim’s comeback — about your comeback — is this:

His win at LIV Adelaide wasn’t the end of his story.

It was the beginning of who he’s becoming.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

Dr. Mat Park is a senior sport psychologist and founder of Mental Performance Golf Academy. He works with elite junior golfers and LPGA Tour players, helping athletes find identity-based confidence rooted in purpose, not pressure. Learn more at mpgagolf.com or follow on Instagram @mpga.golf

“For anybody that’s struggling — you can get through anything.” — Anthony Kim, LIV Golf Adelaide Champion, February 15, 2026

P.S. MPGA is on a Built to Bounce Back tour and has partnered with Girls Golf x LPGA | USGA to host a special event for them on March 10, 2026 at 7:00pm (ET). You are also invited to the program. Join us on learn the foundation of resilience and apply it to your next round on and off the course.

RSVP Here: Built To Bounce Back with MPGA and Girls Golf | March 10, 2026 at 7:00pm (ET)

My student Marcus appeared on my Zoom screen… and it looked like he just walked through a storm.

Shoulders heavy, voice low, hands folded in his lap. He’d come up short in a conference qualifier by several strokes the week before — and the number on his scorecard wasn’t what haunted him. It was how he felt standing over the ball. “I completely froze,” he told me. “Every time I addressed my irons, my hands locked up. The whole round. I couldn’t commit to a single swing.” He paused, staring somewhere past the camera. “I was terrified to pull the trigger.”

This wasn’t a swing issue nor was it about preparation. Marcus had been one of the hardest workers on his squad all season — early mornings on the range, extra reps in the short game area, film study on his own time. He knew his game inside and out. But when it counted — with coaches evaluating, teammates watching, and his position in the lineup hanging in the balance — something inside him shut down. Not because he lacked ability. But because his entire sense of self felt like it was riding on every shot.

What Performance Anxiety Really Is

I’ve sat across from hundreds of athletes who’ve told me some version of this same story. The specifics change — the tournament, the sport, the stakes — but the engine driving the anxiety is always identical. Performance anxiety, at its core, isn’t about a lack of talent or preparation. It’s about identity. It’s about playing to protect something fragile or to prove something you’re not sure is true. It’s the fear of being exposed — of having the curtain pulled back and everyone seeing that maybe you don’t really belong.

When your identity is chained to outcomes, every shot becomes an existential event. Every round becomes a verdict on your value as a person. And your nervous system, detecting a threat to something that feels essential, does exactly what it was designed to do — it protects you. It tightens your grip. It shortens your breath. It makes you tentative, guarded, playing not to lose. And no amount of range sessions can override that kind of internal pressure when you’re asking golf to tell you who you are.

“When your identity is chained to outcomes, every shot becomes an existential event. Every round becomes a verdict on your value as a person.”

The Example That Reveals the Answer

Partway through our conversation, Marcus brought up a player he’d been watching. He’d seen one of the game’s steadiest competitors, Scottie Scheffler, at a PGA Tour event. Scottie is known for his unshakable calm under the brightest lights. “I watched him walk the fairways under all that pressure,” Marcus said. “Thousands of people, cameras everywhere. And he looked like he was strolling through his neighborhood on a Sunday morning. Just completely at peace.” Marcus shook his head, still trying to process it. “How is that even possible? How does someone stay that calm when everything’s on the line?”

I let the question sit. Then I asked him what he thought the answer was.

He didn’t hesitate. “I think it’s because his faith is the foundation of everything. The crowds and the pressure and the leaderboard — none of that touches his core. Because what he’s grounded in is so much bigger and deeper than any tournament could be.”

That’s it. That’s the whole answer. A player can walk like that — calm, steady, fully present — because his identity isn’t on trial. It was settled long before he arrived at the course. Long before the first tee shot, long before the broadcast cameras went live, long before the leaderboard mattered. The verdict was already delivered: He belongs. He’s held. He’s enough. Not because of his ball-striking or his scoring average or his world ranking. But because of whose he is.

David Didn’t Fight Goliath Alone

I shared a story with Marcus that had been sitting on my heart for weeks. The story of David and Goliath. Everyone knows the broad strokes — a shepherd boy with a slingshot facing a giant in armor. The ultimate underdog narrative.

But here’s what most people breeze past: David wasn’t confident because he was self-sufficient. He wasn’t brave because he trusted in his own power. Yes, he had experience — he’d fought bears and lions with his bare hands protecting his flock. He had real preparation and genuine belief in his ability. But his confidence wasn’t sourced from any of that.

It came from who he represented. It came from the deep, settled knowing that God was with him. That he wasn’t fighting alone. That the outcome didn’t rest on his shoulders. David’s confidence was rooted in God’s ability to defeat whatever enemy stood in front of him. And that kind of confidence — the kind born from partnership with something infinitely greater than yourself — cannot be shaken by circumstance.

“That’s where real confidence lives,” I told Marcus. “Not in self-reliance. In partnership.”

He sat with that for a long moment. Then said something that brought it all together: “It’s like — no matter what your swing feels like that day, or what the conditions are, or what anyone says about you — when your belief is anchored in God and the abilities He gave you, nothing can touch that. No score, no ranking, no opinion can break it.”

“When your belief is anchored in God and the abilities He gave you, nothing can touch that. No score, no ranking, no opinion can break it.”

When Identity Is Already Won

The real problem with performance anxiety isn’t that we care too much. It’s that we’re playing for the wrong audience. When you’re performing to impress other people — to earn approval, to secure your spot, to prove you belong in their eyes — your identity becomes impossibly fragile. It shifts with every shot. One good round and you feel worthy. One bad round and you’re spiraling, questioning everything. That’s exhausting. And it’s completely unstable.

But when your identity is already settled — when you know who you are and whose you are before you ever step on the course — everything shifts. Not because the pressure evaporates. But because it no longer has the authority to define you.

Marcus and I kept working through what this actually looks like in practice. How do you take that truth — that your identity is settled, that you’re held before you ever perform — and carry it with you when the pressure peaks on the back nine?

We landed on something simple but transformative. Before every shot, Marcus would ground himself in one truth: God already defeated Goliath. I’m just here to steward the moment. Not to prove his worth. Not to earn his place. Just to be faithful with what’s been given. That shift — from proving to stewarding — changes everything. It lifts the crushing weight of needing every swing to validate your existence. It opens up space to play freely, fully, without the outcome dictating who you are.

The Round That Changed Everything

A couple weeks later, Marcus competed in a conference event. He texted me afterward, and I could feel something different in his words before he even explained what happened. “I played different today,” he wrote. “I wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone. I was just... present.”

He posted one of his lowest rounds of the season. But what mattered more than any number on the card was how he felt walking off the 18th green. Grounded. Quiet inside. Free.

“I kept coming back to David,” he told me when we connected later. “Every time I felt the pressure creeping in, I just reminded myself: God’s got this. I’m here to do my part.“

That’s the shift. That’s the freedom. Not freedom from pressure — but freedom within it. The ability to stand inside moments that matter without needing those moments to tell you who you are. Because the validation was already given. The identity was already won. The battle was already decided.

Your job isn’t to prove you’re enough. It’s to trust that you already are.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

P.S. Our team has been working so hard on something so cool, practical, and transformative for your life. It’s called the ONE Daily Devotional App. We will be launching on the Apple app store next week and this supportive community will be the first to know. Thanks for all your support.

Learn more.