Before anything else. Thank you.

Last Wednesday I sent the hardest thing I have ever written, closed my laptop, and did not look at my inbox for several days. When I finally opened it, you were in there. Parents I have never met. Coaches. Players who wrote three sentences and then apologized for not knowing what to say.

You did not need to know what to say.

You showed up in my inbox and my texts during a week when I was not holding myself up well, and you held me up instead. Some of you prayed. Some of you sent a verse, and a few of you wrote to tell me you made the call you had been putting off for a year. Keep making those calls. :)

Grace is a word people throw around. But I got the real version of it from this community last week, and I really appreciate it.

My family is still in the middle of this. My father’s in hospice now with only days remaining and I have not processed any of it quite yet, nor will I try and pretend that I have. What I do have is a week of living inside a feeling I have spent my whole career teaching other people to manage. So let me give you what I know about it.

Your kid feels a smaller version of the same thing every time they stand on a first tee with strangers watching.

Anxiety.

What your body is doing

Laying next to my dad on his hospital bed last Thursday, I noticed my hands were shaking. My chest was tight. My breathing had gone shallow and high up in my throat, and my stomach felt like it had dropped through the floor.

Here is the strange part. I know exactly what all of it is.

Adrenaline moves into your bloodstream. Your heart pushes more blood to your large muscles. Your pupils widen, and your vision narrows onto the thing in front of you while blurring the edges around you. Blood pulls away from your fingers, which is why your hands go cold and why your grip pressure changes without you even being aware of it.

None of this is a malfunction of our body or brain. Our body is doing precisely what it was built to do when something matters. It is getting you ready.

The problem with this is the story we tell ourselves on top of it. Your kid feels the heart rate on the first tee and interprets it as proof they are not ready.

The feeling is normal. The interpretation is what wrecks them.

The research

Jeremy Jamieson at Rochester has run study after study where he tells people, before a stressful task, that a pounding heart is just the body preparing them to perform. And those participants who believe this often do better under pressure. Their blood vessels stay open instead of constricting, which is the difference between a body braced for threat and a body ready for a challenge. Nothing about the physiology changed. Again… it is the meaning we give it that has changed.

Another researcher at Harvard, Alison Wood Brooks, tested something even simpler. She had people say two words out loud before singing in public, giving a speech, or taking a timed math test.

One group said “I am calm.” The other said “I am excited.”

The excited group outperformed the “I am calm” group across all three tasks. Trying to talk yourself into calm asks your nervous system to slam on the brakes at exactly the wrong moment. Excitement, on the other hand, runs on the same fuel as fear. You are steering the arousal instead of fighting it.

And lastly at UCLA, Matthew Lieberman found something very simple around this idea of naming an emotion to tame an emotion. What he found was the power of labeling emotions into words significantly lowers activity in the amygdala (our emotional brain). Naming the feeling turns the volume down. It does not get rid of the emotion… it just lowers the intensity of it.

The Full Circle Moment

Apostle Paul wrote about anxiety while he was in prison… in chains.

He tells the Philippians to be anxious for nothing, to bring everything to God with thanksgiving, and then he makes a promise about what follows.

The verb “to guard” is a military word. A garrison posted at the gate or a solider at his base. Paul does not promise that the enemy will stop coming. Instead, he promises something is standing there when it does. Peter says it another way. He says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” - 1 Peter 5:6

Cast is a physical word. It is a throw or a handoff. You are not asked to stop feeling the weight. You are asked simply to put it somewhere other than your own shoulders.

I have prayed more in the last nine days than in the last nine months. Most of it was not eloquent. Most of it was one sentence in a parking lot or at the dining table with tears steaming down. It still counted.

What to do with it this week

Practice Naming it out loud. Have your player say the specific feeling instead of the vague one. Not “I am nervous.” Say “My hands are shaking and my chest is tight and this shot matters to me.” Specifically naming the emotion and the experience is what lowers the alarm. Vague naming leaves it running the show.

Exhale longer than you inhale. Two quick inhales through the nose, one long slow exhale through the mouth. Do it four to five times. The long exhale is the piece with the actual physiological effect on heart rate. Everything else is decoration. This works on the walk to the tee, not in the middle of the swing.

Trade “calm down” for “I am ready.” Nobody has ever calmed down because someone told them to. Give the arousal a job instead. The heart rate is fuel. Ask your player what the feeling is preparing them for, and let them answer out loud.

Put the attention outside the body. Focus on the club, the ball flight, the target, and your motor performance improves. Focus on your wrists, your shoulders, your hands, and it degrades. Anxiety drags attention inward. Your job is to hand it a target.

Write it down the night before. Studies have shown that just ten minutes of writing about worries before an exam helped anxious students perform better during the day of the exam. Get the loop out of working memory and onto paper. A notes app in a hotel room the night before a regional competition also counts.

One Last Thing

Your child is not broken because they feel anxiety. You are not weak because you have panic attacks. I have a doctorate in this and I still sat in a parking lot with shaking hands.

Anxiety is your body telling you something matters to you. The goal was never to feel nothing. A player who feels nothing on the first tee has stopped caring, and I would rather coach the shaking kid every single time.

Ask your player one question this week. Where do you feel it first?

Hands, stomach, jaw, throat, breath. They will know. Once they know where it shows up, it stops being a mystery and starts being information.

Then ask yourself the same question. You feel it too. You have been feeling it in the cart path and the parking lot and the drive home for years, and you have been calling it something else.

Hope this helps.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

P.S. This Friday at 12:00 pm ET, MPGA Coach Gen Fulton, LMFT is hosting a live conversation with 3-time PGA Tour winner Patton Kizzire. They are talking about a professional’s real view of perfection, the routines that actually hold under pressure, and how goals get set when the scoreboard is watching. If the feeling described above is familiar in your house, this is the conversation worth being in the room for.

This event will be held LIVE on our IG channel.

Follow us here and join the conversation. @mpga.golf

Who am I?
I am Dr. Mat, a sport psychologist and the founder of the Mental Performance Golf Academy (MPGA). I work with elite junior golfers and the parents supporting them on the part of the game the range does not cover. I spend the rest of my working hours as a high performance psychologist at NASA. I’m really excited to release my newest book called ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf. You can get on the waitlist here.

Additionally, I co-host a podcast called Mind Your Game with LPGA Tour winner Cydney Clanton and run the MPGA+ mental training academy along side with her.

What this is newsletter about?
18 Holes with Dr. Mat arrives every Wednesday morning. One story, the research underneath it, the faith running through it, and one thing you use with your player before the weekend. Written for parents who want their kid to compete well and grow up whole.

On Monday, my phone rang three times. It was my mom. Each time, I was working. Each time, I let it go to voicemail.

Then a text came in.

My stomach dropped. Deep down, I already knew. I sat with the phone in my hand for a long moment, the kind of moment where you feel your whole body brace. Then I called.

My mom’s voice was soft and silent, the way parents get when they are holding something heavy.. She told me my dad is dying. He stopped eating last Friday. The cancer spread through his whole body, and he refuses treatment. He wants to stay home. And he wants to see me and my daughter one last time.

“I really think you should come home now.”

I have not seen my dad in over a year.

I meant to visit. I planned to. Work got loud. Life filled up. I found reasons to wait. Some of those reasons were fair. Some were excuses wearing the costume of reasons. Either way, the visits kept sliding to next month, next season, next time.

There is no next time now.

I am writing this to you now on the plane, with tears streaming down my face and my hands not quite steady. I thought about keeping this one to myself, but decided against it. My biggest fear has always been losing someone I love, and now I am watching it happen in real time, in front of my own eyes. If I share it honestly, maybe it reaches you before life forces the same lesson on you the hard way.

What I am learning while I am still standing in it

Grief does not wait for a good time. It does not check your calendar. It arrives, and the whole world keeps spinning while yours goes still. People will send emails. The tee times will fill. The tournaments will run. And you will stand in the middle of it, wondering how everyone keeps moving when you have forgotten how to breathe.

That gap is the hardest part. Your world stops. The world does not. Both things are true at once, and you have to learn to hold them together.

Here is what I want you to hear from me today.

Slow down before life slows you down. I built a life around performance. Metrics, growth, the next goal, the next win. None of it was wrong. But somewhere in the chase, I told myself the people I love would always be there when I finally looked up. Monday taught me a hard truth. Presence is not a thing you schedule later. It is a thing you protect now.

The important and the urgent are not the same. Urgent things scream. Important things wait quietly. My dad was important. Work was urgent. I answered the screaming and let the quiet wait. If you take one thing from this, take this: the quiet things are usually the ones you will grieve.

Make the call. Take the trip. Say the thing. You are not too busy. You are afraid, the same way I was afraid. Fear dresses itself up as a packed schedule. Do it anyway. Face it and go in. I am learning this a year too late for the visits I skipped. You do not have to.

A word for the high performers

I coach parents of elite junior golfers. I work with people who chase excellence for a living. So I know how this crowd thinks, because I think the same way.

We treat our energy like a resource to optimize. We tell ourselves the sacrifice now buys the freedom later. We miss the dinner, skip the visit, cancel the trip, and call it discipline.

Here is the quiet cost no one prices in. The people you love are keeping their own clock, and it does not run on your timeline. Your child grows up whether or not you were present for it. Your parents age whether or not you were there. The scoreboard you were chasing will still be there next week. The people might not be.

For the parents reading this with a junior golfer in the car every weekend: your kid will not remember your swing notes. They will remember whether you were with them or somewhere else in your head. Presence beats performance every time it counts.

Excellence is worth pursuing. I still believe that with everything in me. But excellence with no one to share it with is a trophy in an empty room.

Where I am going from here

By the time you read this, I will be with my dad. I do not know what I will find when I get there. I do not know what I will say, or whether words will come at all. I only know I am going, and I am going now, because “later” already cost me more than I want to admit.

If someone came to mind while you read this, do not finish this email and move on. Call them. Text them. Book the flight. Close the gap while the gap is still yours to close.

Life moves on even when your world stops. So take the moment now, before the moment takes you.

I will see you next Wednesday.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

Do the math on your kid’s last round.

Say they shot 80. Full swing, chip, or putt, the club is in motion for about a second and a half each time. Eighty of those works out to two minutes of actual golf.

The round lasted four and a half hours.

Two minutes swinging. Four hours and twenty-eight minutes walking, waiting, thinking, and talking to themselves.

Now ask which one you have been paying for.

The player who owns the range

I coached a junior I will call Roger. Sixteen years old. Ranked. His swing is the kind other parents watch on the range.

Roger striped it for an hour before a qualifier. Flushed every wedge. Walked to the first tee with a swing in perfect shape.

He shot 82.

His dad asked me what went wrong with the swing. Nothing went wrong with the swing. Roger made a bogey on the third hole, and he walked off the green with one sentence running on a loop in his head.

Here we go again.

He carried the sentence to the fourth tee. He carried it to the seventh. By the twelfth, the sentence had turned into a forecast, and he had started proving it right.

Roger lost that round between shots.

Where a round is decided

Golf gives your kid something no other sport gives them: time.

Basketball moves too fast for rumination. A soccer midfielder has no room to replay the last touch. Golf hands a player four hundred yards of quiet after every mistake and asks them to arrive at the next ball with a clear head.

Most juniors spend the walk rehearsing what went wrong. They relitigate the last shot. They run the scorecard. They calculate what a good finish requires. They arrive at the ball with a mind full of arithmetic and then wonder why the swing feels tight.

Dr. Gabriele Wulf, a kinesiology researcher, has spent decades studying where athletes point their attention. Her work keeps landing on the same finding. When athletes focus on the movement of their own body, performance drops. When they focus outward on the target or the intended effect of the shot, performance improves. Same athlete. Same skill. Different attention.

Here is the part parents miss. Attention at address is decided before address. Whatever your kid rehearses on the walk is what they bring to the ball. A player who spends four hundred yards auditing their swing arrives with an internal focus locked in. A player who spends the walk letting go and choosing a target arrives ready.

The walk is the shot before the shot.

What Roger was truly carrying

Here we go again is a sentence about identity.

Somewhere along the way, Roger learned his worth moved with his scorecard. So a bogey on the third hole stopped being a bogey. It became evidence about who he is.

You will never fix an identity problem with a swing lesson. A kid who believes their value rides on the number will protect the number, and protection is the opposite of freedom. Tight hands. Careful targets. Steering. The scared swing shows up.

This is the whole reason I wrote a book called ONE.

A player performing for an audience of many will feel every set of eyes. Parents. Coaches. Rankings. Teammates. Themselves at their most critical. A player performing for an audience of One walks with a settled question. Their identity got answered before the first tee, and no bogey has the authority to reopen it.

Grace never checks the leaderboard. Your kid’s worth was established before they ever held a club, and a three-putt has no vote.

A player who believes this walks differently. I have watched it change scores. I have also watched it change whether a kid still loves the game at nineteen.

The Walk

Give your junior a plan for the four hundred yards. Here is one simple enough to use tomorrow.

First ten steps. Feel it.

Ten steps of full permission. Frustrated, thrilled, disgusted, relieved, whatever showed up. Feelings honored on a schedule tend to leave on schedule. Feelings stuffed down go underground and come out on the back nine.

Say the feeling out loud if it helps. “I hated that.” Ten steps. Then it is over.

Middle of the walk. Choose the story.

Roger’s default sentence was here we go again. His new sentence became one bogey, still in this.

The middle of the walk is where a player picks the sentence they carry. Untrained, a junior lets the sentence pick itself, and the sentence they inherit usually sounds like the loudest voice they have ever heard about their golf. Often a parent. Sometimes a coach. Sometimes both.

Give them one sentence. One. Rehearsed enough to show up on its own under pressure.

Last ten steps. Get external.

Before they reach the ball, their attention goes outside their body. Wind. Lie. Yardage. The exact spot on the green where the ball should land.

No swing thoughts on the last ten steps. Targets only.

Roger ran this routine for six weeks. His scoring average dropped almost three shots. He took no swing lessons during those six weeks.

For the parents

Two moves are yours, and both happen away from the course.

Ask about the walk, never the number. After the round, try this question: “What did you tell yourself after the worst shot today?” You will learn more from the answer than from any scorecard. You also teach your kid the walk matters enough for you to ask about it.

Watch your own sentence. Your kid is building an inner voice out of spare parts, and most of the parts come from you. The tone you use after a bad hole becomes the tone they use with themselves for the next thirty years. Choose it on purpose.

The reflection

Before the next round, ask your junior one question:

“What sentence do you want to carry to the next tee?”

Let them answer it themselves. Write it on the glove if it helps. Then get out of the way and let them play.

Two minutes of swinging. Four hours of everything else. Practice the four hours.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

ONE is coming

Everything above lives inside a bigger idea, and the bigger idea is the book.

ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf releases soon. It is built for players and parents who want the mental game and the deeper questions handled in the same place, because on a golf course they have never been separate.

Get on the waitlist and you will receive a free chapter now, plus release updates and early access before the public launch.

Join the waitlist here: https://mpga.kit.com/onewaitlist

I just got back from the US Junior Amateur. I watched a lot of golf. But the most valuable thing I brought home did not happen inside the ropes. It happened on the sideline.

I spent the week standing next to college coaches. Men’s programs. Big schools and small ones. And I asked them the same question.

What are you looking for when recruiting for a player?

I expected to hear about scoring average, or numbers, rankings, and results. That is what most parents assume, and that is what most junior golfers believe.

We were wrong.

One coach put it to me in a way and I have not stopped thinking about since. He said, “If you are here playing today, we know you are good. What we are looking for now is how do you handle setbacks, mistakes, challenges, and how work yourself around the course. We look for Golf IQ,” he said.

Read that again.

They are evaluating something beyond whether your kid can play. The invitation and qualification into the tournament already answered that question.

What They Actually Told Me They Watch

Golf IQ. Does the player understand the golf course, or does he/she just hit shots at it?

Strategy. Where does he/she aim on a tucked pin with a one shot lead? Where does he/she aim with a one shot deficit?

Process. Is there a routine, and does it hold up when the round starts going sideways?

Attitude. What happens in the twelve seconds after a bad shot?

Grit. Does the player fight for a bogey when double is easier?

Placement. They watch where the ball ends up relative to the next shot.

Consistency of misses. This one surprised me most. Coaches told me they watch where a player misses. A repeatable miss shows a player who owns their swing. A scattered miss shows a player who is guessing.

Notice what is missing from that list.

Perfection is absent. Low scores are absent. Flawless execution is absent.

The exact things that fill junior golfers with shame are the things coaches care about least.

Why This Matters for Your Family

Your kid walks off the course after a 78 and believes the day was a waste. You know the look. Head down. Clubs slammed in the trunk. Silence in the car.

Meanwhile a coach who watched three holes of that round wrote down that your kid made a smart decision on 14 after a bad tee ball on 13.

Two people watched the same round. One saw failure. The other saw a recruitable trait.

The gap between those two viewpoints is where most junior golf careers get lost.

And this is for the parents… I hope this then changes the questions you ask on the ride home. Instead of asking what they shot, try asking how they handled the hole that got away from them. That question tells your kid what you value. It also happens to match what coaches value at the recruiting stage.

The Faith Layer

Scripture never promises a clean scorecard. It promises presence in the mess.

Romans 5 says suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. That is a development sequence. The struggle itself does the forming. Your junior golfer will hit bad shots this season. That is a guarantee. What remains open is whether those shots build something or break something.

The coaches on that sideline were looking for evidence of character under pressure. God has been in that business a lot longer than any recruiting coordinator or college golf coach.

What To Do This Week

Change one question. On the drive home from the next tournament, ask about one decision instead of one number.

Track the miss. Have your player note where each poor shot ended up for three rounds. Pattern or scatter? That answer shapes practice.

Name the recovery. After every round, identify one moment where your player responded well to something going wrong. Say it out loud.

Separate the score from the self. A number measures a day. A person is measured by something else.

One More Thing

Those sideline conversations confirmed what I have been building toward for the past two months.

The Pressure Playbook uses cognitive behavioral techniques to train the exact skills coaches told me they are recruiting for. Handling setbacks. Managing the twelve seconds after failure. Making clear decisions when the stakes rise.

The pilot cohort is closed. We are building the full system with that group right now. However, when it is complete, we are opening access to junior golfers worldwide.

If you want to be on the list when that door opens, reply to this email or write me a note letting me know you are interested in learning more.

Email: info@mpgagolf.com

Closing Thought

Your player needs to be coachable, strategic, and resilient in front of people who are watching for it. Perfection sits outside that requirement.

That is trainable. That is the whole point.

What is one setback your junior golfer handled well this season that you never mentioned out loud?

Tell them tonight.

Your Mental Coach,

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

P.S. My book ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf is launching soon. It covers the same ground from a different angle. The mental game and the spiritual game run on the same wiring.

Why I stopped building what I planned to build, and started building what my players actually needed.

I’m packing a suitcase this week. One of my students is playing in the U.S. Junior Amateur, and I’ll be there walking the ropes, doing the quietest and most important part of my job: being a steady face on days that feel enormous.

But before I zip the bag, I need to tell you what happened this month, because it changed the direction of my entire business: MPGA+.

The text messages…

Over the past few weeks, my phone filled up with messages from some of the most talented junior golfers I have ever coached, and from their parents. Different families, different states, different swings. But the messages all shared a similar theme. I’m paraphrasing and blending them here to protect my players, but you’ll recognize the voice:

“This week was terrible. I put so much pressure on myself and I honestly don’t even know why. Everyone around me could see it, and it came out in my performance.”

“People keep telling me how much talent I have. I still don’t believe it, no matter how much I want to.”

And from a parent:

“I don’t know what to do or say anymore. Watching from the sideline is the worst feeling in the world.”

These are not struggling players. These are the sought-after kids. Rankings, recruiting letters, trophies. From the outside, they’re living the dream. From the inside, some of them are carrying anxiety that has started to show up as tight swings, blown leads, tears in the car, and in the hardest cases, panic that follows them off the course entirely.

If you’re a parent of a competitive junior, you may know exactly the feeling that mom described. There’s a saying I think about often: we are only as happy as our least-happy child. Standing on a sideline, clapping and smiling while your kid quietly comes apart, is a specific kind of helpless. You’d trade places in a second. But you can’t.

Where is it coming from?

Here’s what two decades in sport psychology has taught me about the root of it, and it’s not what most families think.

It is not the competition. Almost every one of these kids will tell you, in their own words, that competing is a privilege. They want the big stage.

It’s the weight stacked on top of the competition. Somewhere along the way, the score stopped being a number and started being a verdict. On their talent. On the family’s investment. On their future. When a 15-year-old stands over a four-footer and their brain whispers that this putt measures their worth, the body responds exactly the way it was built to: alarm. Heart rate up. Breath shallow. Hands that won’t stay quiet. That alarm system was designed to protect them from danger, and it cannot tell the difference between a lion and a leaderboard.

And here’s the part that surprises parents most: praise doesn’t fix it. Every one of these kids has been told how talented they are, over and over, by people who mean it. It doesn’t land, because other people’s words are not their evidence. Confidence built on compliments collapses under pressure. However, confidence built on a player’s own collected proof holds. The thing is… nobody taught them how to collect it.

So the anxiety grows in the gap between two things: an alarm system nobody explained, and a self-belief that was never trained, only asserted.

The pivot

I’ll be honest about the business side, because many of you reading this are builders too.

This is not the product I planned to launch this season. MPGA had a roadmap. Then my most elite players, the ones already doing everything right, started sending me those messages, and I faced the choice every builder eventually faces: protect the plan, or serve the actual need standing in front of you.

Here’s what I’ve learned about pivoting: a pivot is not abandoning your vision. A pivot is what you do when reality hands you better information about how to reach it. I want every junior athlete to have a trained mind, not just a trained swing, first in golf… then eventually in every sport. This is the vision and that vision is strong enough to pull me forward. The pivot, however, just changed the door I’m walking through. If your vision only pushes you, you’ll quit when it gets hard. If it pulls you, a hard month becomes a redirection instead of a dead end.

So I stopped, and I built the thing my players were asking for without asking.

Why CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or… Training).

When I went looking for the strongest foundation to build on, the answer wasn’t close. Cognitive behavioral training, CBT, is the most researched approach to anxiety in existence. Decades of clinical trials, hundreds of studies, and it consistently comes out as the first-line recommendation for anxiety, including in teenagers. The core insight is simple enough for a 13-year-old and deep enough for a tour pro:

The problem for me has always been about the packaging, not the science. CBT lives in clinics and textbooks, and a 15-year-old who tightens up on the first tee is never going to read a textbook. So I spent these past few months translating it: into golf language, into short videos, into worksheets a teenager will actually fill out, into reps you do on the course, not in a chair.

What I built

It’s called The Pressure Playbook: a 12-week mental performance program for junior golfers who feel pressure, built on CBT, delivered inside our MPGA+ community.

What’s inside The Pressure Playbook:

• One skill, one video, one worksheet, and one check-in a week.

• Catching the automatic negative thoughts before they swing the club.

• Turning nervous into ready.

• Building self-belief from the player’s own evidence.

• Putting fears on trial with real data.

• Routines for the three hours and forty-five minutes of a round when you aren’t swinging.

Parents get their own lane, with a clear role and updates, while the player’s private work stays private. And every player starts by rating themselves on six pressure situations, then re-rates the same six at the end. The before-and-after is theirs, in their own numbers, in their own handwriting. That’s the whole philosophy: proof over pep talks.

One thing it is not: therapy. This is mental performance training, like working on a swing. When a player is carrying something bigger than golf, my job includes helping that family find the right licensed support, and that guardrail is built into the program on purpose.

For the parents reading this

Three things you can do this week, before any program:

Trade the scoreboard question for a process question. On the car ride home, “what did you love out there today?” instead of “what did you shoot?” It sounds small, but it reorders what your kid believes you value.

Praise what they control. Effort, attitude, bounce-backs, guts on a scary shot. Praising talent and their results builds pressure. Praising process, however, builds durability and growth.

And say the sentence they need to hear from you specifically: “Nothing about your score changes anything about us.” They know you love them. They’re less sure the scoreboard agrees.

The founding cohort

Three of my elite players are going through The Pressure Playbook right now as its first pilot. This fall, I’m opening a small founding group behind them, and I’d rather fill it from this newsletter family than anywhere else.

Who it’s for: competitive junior golfers, roughly 12 to 18, who feel the gap between how they play in practice and how they play when it counts. First-tee nerves, short-putt dread, blown leads, tournament-day stomachaches, the kid who’s “fine” until the moment it matters.

It takes three minutes, and I read every single application myself. Founding families get direct access to me through the full 12 weeks and beyond through our MPGA+ platform.

Now I’ve got a suitcase to finish packing and a player to go cheer for, the loudest quiet clap on the property from inside the ropes will be coming from me on their bag. If you see a kid on a first tee this week with a tight chest and a big dream, be gentle. There’s more going on in there than the yardage book shows.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

P.S. If you know a golf family carrying this quietly, forward them this letter. It might be the first time they realize they’re not the only ones.

I could stand over a five-foot putt with a tournament on the line and feel calm. Steady hands. Clear head. I could grind through a five and a half hour round in the Alabama heat and stay locked in on one shot at a time.

But I couldn’t pay a bill on time to save my life.

For years this made no sense to me. One plus one should equal two. How could the same person who stayed sharp when everything was on the line forget to do the simplest things at home? Late fees kept stacking up. I got so good at calling companies to talk my way out of them that it became its own skill. And still I never learned. I thought I just needed to try harder.

I was wrong about the problem the whole time.

The Dinner Table Diagnosis

I spent over a decade at NASA in organizational development, working inside some of the most complex systems you can imagine. Calm in crisis. Trusted under pressure. Sharp when the stakes were high. Then I’d come home and my brain let loose. No system. No priorities getting met. Just utter chaos.

My wife is a therapist. I’m a sport psychologist by training. You can imagine the conversations at our dinner table. For ten years she watched me repeat the same patterns, and one day she said, “Why do you keep doing this to me?”

My defense was always the same. “I swear I’m not doing this on purpose. I don’t know why I keep doing it.”

She started to see something I couldn’t. She told me to go get evaluated. ADHD was not even in my vocabulary. I played golf for hours at a time. I focused in school. I did not look like the stereotype in my head. So I dismissed it.

Then I got tested. And everything clicked.

Here is the part that matters for every parent reading this. I never had ADHD explained to me as a kid because I didn’t fit the picture. That is exactly the trap. The quiet, focused, high-performing junior golfer who somehow forgets their homework, loses their yardage book, and melts down after a bad hole might be running on the same wiring I was. You will miss it if you are only looking for the hyper kid who can’t sit still.

Flip the Script

Once I understood the brain underneath the behavior, none of it felt like a character flaw anymore. And that changes everything for a young athlete.

Your junior golfer is running their game on top of a brain. That brain has four background functions. Everyone has these four. People with ADHD just run them on different settings. Nothing is broken. The dials are set differently.

Here are the four, and here is how they show up on the golf course, in the classroom, and at home.

1. Working memory is the mental whiteboard. It holds what you need while you work through a problem. On the course it holds the yardage, the wind, the target, the last swing thought. For an ADHD brain the whiteboard erases fast. This is the kid who forgets their wedge on the last green, leaves the headcover on the cart, or blanks on the coach’s swing cue two holes later. Not because they don’t care. The board wiped before they could use it.

2. Inhibition is the pause button. It is the half second between an impulse and an action. For an ADHD brain that signal is weaker. On the course this is the rushed tee shot, the club thrown before thinking, the reply to a parent that comes out sharp. Here is the upside though. That same fast wiring is the kid who commits to an aggressive line while everyone else is still deciding. Fearless under pressure.

3. Time perception is the internal clock. It is your gut sense of how long things take. For an ADHD brain the clock is fuzzy. This is the player who thinks they have time for six more range balls before a lesson and shows up sprinting. It is the student who believes the project due in two weeks is not real until the night before.

4. Arousal is the engine’s idle speed. It is your baseline energy. For an ADHD brain the engine idles too low or runs too hot. A boring putting drill is genuinely painful to start. But hand this brain a final round with a trophy on the line and it roars to life with total focus.

Notice something. Every one of these is a double-edged trait, not a deficit. The same wiring that drops the ball on the boring drill is the same wiring that thrives when everything is on fire. My come-to-Jesus moment was realizing my job was never to fix my brain. It was to build systems that work with how it is already tuned.

The Fuel Is Different

Here is the piece that unlocks it. A neurotypical brain runs on an importance-based operating system. It asks, “Does this matter?” It ranks by priority and deadline, and that is enough to turn the engine over. For that brain, willpower actually works.

An ADHD brain runs on an interest-based operating system. It does not ask if something is important. It asks, “Is this interesting? Is this new? Is this urgent enough that the house is about to catch fire?” The reward chemistry means importance stays abstract. The kid knows the putting drill matters. That knowledge just does not register strongly enough to start the engine.

This is why your junior golfer can grind for four hours in a tournament and then refuse to do twenty minutes of putting practice on a Tuesday. They are not lazy on Tuesday and heroic on Sunday. They are running one consistent system tuned for high stimulation. Once you know the fuel, you can engineer it on purpose instead of waiting for pressure to force it.

Dr. William Dodson built a model I love for this. It is called PINCH, and it names the five things that actually start an ADHD engine.

Passion, meaning genuine interest. Intensity, meaning emotional charge. Novelty, meaning something new. Challenge, meaning a game to win. And Hurry, meaning real urgency.

Hurry works. It fires the threat response and produces that night-before-the-deadline magic. But if urgency is the only lever your athlete has, they live on adrenaline and burn out. The goal is to reach for the other four so panic is not the only switch.

The Faith Layer

I judged myself for years. Why can I not do the simple things? What is wrong with me? I carried that quietly, the way a lot of high performers do.

Then I read this brain the way I believe it was made. Fearfully and wonderfully. Not a mistake on a birth certificate, which, funny enough, is how I ended up with one T in my name. The wiring that almost broke me is the exact same wiring people now pay me to borrow as a coach.

Your child was not handed the wrong brain. They were handed the wrong operating manual. Part of a parent’s job, and a coach’s job, is to help them find the right one before they spend years believing they are the problem. Grace does not mean lowering the standard. It means separating the child from the behavior long enough to build something that actually helps.

What To Build

These are not productivity hacks off Instagram. They are engineering solutions for an interest-based nervous system. Pick one and make it real this week.

Externalize everything. The ADHD brain processes brilliantly and stores poorly. Stop asking your athlete to hold it in their head. Move it to the wall. One calendar the whole family can see. Visual timers. Alarms for range time, lessons, and study blocks. A yardage book habit where the next thought gets written down before the moment passes. That messy desk covered in sticky notes is not a defect. It is an external hard drive.

Use the pause script. The reactive yes is an ADHD tax. Your junior golfer overcommits to tournaments, drills, and favors because inhibition fires slow. Dr. Daniel Amen teaches one line that buys the brain time. “I have to think about it.” Six words. Teach your child to say it out loud before they commit to anything, on or off the course.

Build a body double. Working next to another person turns their focus into your focus. This is why practice with a partner beats practice alone for these kids. It is why the study group works when the solo homework does not. I would not have finished my dissertation without a friend beside me in a lab who had nothing in common with me except that his presence kept me on task. Set your athlete up next to a teammate, a sibling, or a parent in the room.

Engineer the PINCH on purpose. Do not wait for motivation. It will not arrive on schedule. Make the boring drill a game. Add a micro deadline. Change the practice green. Turn twenty putts into a competition against yesterday’s number. You are injecting novelty and challenge until the engine catches.

Protect recovery. This brain runs hotter and depletes faster. Sleep, movement, and rest are not nice-to-haves for a young athlete. They lower the engine’s idle speed. And here is the hard part. Rest is not in the ADHD playbook, so you have to schedule it. Put it on the calendar the same way you schedule a lesson.

The Cost Nobody Talks About

Before we finish, I have to be honest about two hidden costs, because if you parent or coach one of these kids you need to see them coming.

The first is rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD). Perceived criticism registers in this brain like physical pain. A flat tone, a short text, a coach’s sigh after a bad hole can flatten a young athlete for a week. They are not being dramatic. Their nervous system is amplifying the signal. Choose your tone after a rough round carefully, because they are not living inside your intentions. They are living inside your patterns.

The second is masking. To fit into a world built for a different brain, these kids build a normal persona, often without knowing it. But the mask burns the exact traits that make them special. The scanning, the fast switching, the creative lines other players never see. If your junior golfer feels exhausted after holding it together all day, the mask may be quietly destroying the very talent you want to protect.

My Confession

I need to own something. For ten years I created chaos at home and hid behind my good intentions. “I swear I’m not doing this on purpose.” That was true. And it did not matter.

ADHD explains behavior. It does not erase impact. My family did not experience my intentions. They experienced my patterns. The sharp reply. The forgotten pickup. The late night when I was painting a bathroom wall because it felt urgent while a real deadline sat ignored.

So when I miss now, and I still miss, I try not to defend it. I repair.

Rapid ownership plus a visible system builds more trust than any explanation. Explanations sound like excuses. A changed system sounds like respect.

If your junior golfer melts down and then rushes to explain why it was not their fault, teach them repair instead. It will serve them longer than any swing.

Your One Rep This Week

Do not try to fix the whole system at once. Pick one externalized tool and install it. A shared calendar. A visual timer for practice. The pause script taped where your athlete will see it. Then do the only thing that matters. Practice it. A system does nothing while it stays in your head.

And if a young player in your life keeps missing the simple things, resist the lecture. Hand them a manual instead. That is what my wife did for me. That is the whole difference.

Interest is what gets you started. Systems are what get you trusted.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

P.S. I recently led a workshop on ADHD and high performance for the IEB entrepreneur group. The room was founders and business owners, not junior golfers, but the wiring is the same and so are the systems. Watch the whole thing here:

Dr. Mat is a mental performance coach and sport psychologist, founder of the Mental Performance Golf Academy at mpgagolf.com, and author of ONE: A Spiritual Playbook for the Mental Game of Golf.

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