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

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.

Subscribe now

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

I owe you an honest update.

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

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

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

NASA called again.

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

I launched an app, then stopped using it.

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

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

The book is almost done.

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

I run a car wash.

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

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

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

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

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

The podcast found its next chapter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something to sit with this week

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

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

I am glad to be back in your inbox.

Don’t skip twice.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

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

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

www.eatcaddysnacks.com

I built a room I’ve never built before.

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

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

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

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

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

I built something for those questions.

The Allied Advantage Mastermind

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

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

• One hour on Zoom, first Thursday of every month

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

• Small group, intentional, built for depth not scale

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

• First call: May 7, 2026 at 12pm EST

• Registration closes April 30

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

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

Why now?

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

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

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

The door is almost closed.

If this is for you, reach out directly.

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

admin@drmatpark.com

As always, grateful you’re here.

Your Mental Coach

— Dr. Mat

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

21.

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

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

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

The Performance Tool Nobody Talks About

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

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

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

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

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

Intentionally still.

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

And the most effective way to train it?

Daily stillness. Practiced consistently. For 21 days.

Here’s What the Research Actually Says

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

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

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

It requires five minutes of choosing to be present.

Five minutes.

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

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

I’ve Seen It Change People

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

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

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

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

This Challenge is for Everyone.

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

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

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

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

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

Same five minutes. Same 21 days. Same transformation.

Your belief system, your choice.

The Timing Isn’t a Coincidence

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

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

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

Here’s How to Join the #ONE21 Challenge

The ask is small. The return is significant.

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

• 🍎 Apple App Store

• 🤖 Google Play Store

• 🌐 Or visit playforoneapp.com

Step 2: Choose your track — Devotional or Gratitude.

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

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

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

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

A Final Word Before You Go

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

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

It’s “I don’t have time for this.”

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

You have five minutes.

You’ve had five minutes this whole time.

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

21 days is your answer.

I’ll see you in the app.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

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

Download the ONE app free at playforoneapp.com

#ONE21 · #ChooseStillness · #DailyDevotion · #DailyGratitude

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

“Dad, why don’t you ever get mad?”

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

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

That space is everything.

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

Today, I get to share it with you.

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

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

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

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

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

But it starts today. With one moment of stillness.

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

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

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

Thank you.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

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

Redemption stories don’t start when life gets easy.

They start when everything falls apart.

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

Then the lights went out.

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

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

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

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

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

What the Highlight Reel Misses

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

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

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

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

The Psychology of Surviving the Dark Season

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

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

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

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

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

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

He found his audience of ONE.

Three Choices That Sustain Redemption

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

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

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

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

For Anyone in a Hard Season Right Now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was the beginning of who he’s becoming.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Performance Anxiety Really Is

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

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

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

The Example That Reveals the Answer

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

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

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

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

David Didn’t Fight Goliath Alone

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Identity Is Already Won

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

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

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

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

The Round That Changed Everything

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

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

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

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

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

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

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

Learn more.

The Watchmaker in the Billionaire

Sprecher bought a failing company for $1,000 in 2000. Today, Intercontinental Exchange generates $12 billion and owns the NYSE. When asked what he’d do if he retired, he said:

“I would like to be a watchmaker. Alone in a room with tiny tools and a microscope. Making something that would stand the test of time.”

This is elite performance—whether running the NYSE or standing over a 6-foot putt. It’s about presence, precision, and creating something that lasts.

Perfection is Made of Small Things

Sunny closed with Michelangelo: “Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things.”

The watchmaker’s focus. Sprecher’s strategy. Your pre-shot routine. Excellence compounds through attention to the smallest details—not obsession, but presence.

Five Lessons from the NYSE Founder

1. Curate Excellence - Sprecher channeled Steve Jobs: “He curated ideas from smart people. He just had good taste.” Surround yourself with the right mentors and systems.

2. Allow Different Approaches - “100% of people work differently than I do. Get over it.” Every athlete has unique tempo and pressure response. Support the journey, not conformity.

3. Quality Matters - “If you’re buying a trophy, pay trophy prices.” Invest in elite coaching and training. Shortcuts delay greatness.

4. Small Commitments Compound - His $1,000 purchase became billions. One committed practice session can seed transformation.

5. Build for Legacy - The watchmaker doesn’t chase quick wins. Build a foundation of stillness and spiritual grounding that lasts.

Your Mindset Is a Bearer Instrument

Sprecher noted stablecoins are “bearer instruments”—lose your wallet, it’s gone. Your mental game is the same. You either own your mindset or you don’t. Once doubt takes hold, you can’t reclaim that round.

This is why presence matters. Why we practice stillness. Why ONE exists.

This Week’s Challenge

1. Find one aspect needing precise attention (breathing, alignment, self-talk)

2. Give it 15 minutes of watchmaker’s focus—no distractions, just reverence

3. Share wisdom with someone who could benefit

Excellence compounds through presence. Not grand gestures, but microscopic focus. Not doing everything, but curating what matters. Building something—one small thing at a time—that stands the test of time.

That’s the watchmaker’s mind. That’s ONE.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

P.S. Special thanks to our partners at Caddy Snacks!

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​Before you read another word, watch this MPGA+ video:
👉

It explains exactly what MPGA+ is, how to join, and why today matters.

Today is your last chance to lock in the founder’s price of $89/month.

Starting tomorrow, February 1st, the monthly price increases to $109/month—and we will never offer this founding rate again.

This isn’t a scarcity tactic. It’s a decision point.

​

Here’s what’s happening in junior golf right now:

Kids are training their swings with precision. Building speed and strength with intention. But most are still learning the mental game by accident.

And under pressure, whatever isn’t trained gets exposed.

Mental skills don’t magically show up on tournament day. They’re built—on purpose—over time.

That’s what MPGA+ exists to do.

​

🎥 Missed the live webinar? Start here:

I’ve pulled three short clips designed for junior golfers to watch and retain—and for parents to understand what really helps:

Clip #1 – Tiger Woods’ 10-Step Post-Shot Routine​
Does your child have a plan after the shot?
👉 https://youtube.com/shorts/ODXgDBYgMY8?si=WJ7I4zo6VFkrMaMR​

Clip #2 – Mistakes Are Inevitable. Recovery Is Trainable.​
The best players aren’t perfect—they recover faster.
👉 https://youtube.com/shorts/ujwotpXNyX4?si=UUodKAicwIbwEk74​

Clip #3 – For Parents: The Car Ride Home​
This moment shapes confidence more than most people realize.
👉 https://youtube.com/shorts/tWZZOxXeGSQ?si=jVBeAeKm90p1DLH5​

🎥 Want the full session?​
Watch the complete Built to Bounce Back webinar here:
👉

​

Mental training isn’t just about golf.

It’s about teaching your child how to:

• Respond instead of react

• Reset after mistakes

• Stay grounded when things don’t go their way

• Carry confidence beyond the scorecard

Those skills don’t expire.

​

If this feels important, trust that instinct.

Tonight is your last opportunity to join MPGA+ at $89/month.

Tomorrow, the door stays open—but the price does not.

I’d love to support your family in this season.

👉 Join MPGA+ at the Founder’s Price (Expires Tonight)​
​ www.skool.com/mpga/plans​

​

​

Your Mental Coach,

— Dr. Mat

It will be determined by how quickly a young golfer can recover from a bad shot and stay present for the next one. Technology can analyze a swing. It cannot teach resilience under pressure.

And that’s the gap that’s quietly destroying junior golfers.

The Moment That Separates Juniors

Every junior golfer eventually meets the same moment.

• A pull hook OB tee shot

• A double bogey that shouldn’t have happened

• Or a round that starts to slip.

What happens next matters more than the swing that caused it.

Elite juniors don’t avoid mistakes. They recover faster from them. That recovery skill, what we call bounce back… is learned. And it’s trainable.

Most families, however, are so focused on swing mechanics and stats that they miss the skill that actually determines who succeeds when pressure shows up. The mental reset. The emotional regulation. The ability to let go and move forward. Ai can’t teach that. Only humans can.

What the Research Tells Us

Psychologist Angela Duckworth has spent years studying why some performers thrive under pressure while others stall. Her research on grit shows that long-term success isn’t driven by talent alone, but by perseverance after setbacks.

In plain language: The winners aren’t tougher. They’re quicker to reset.

This is especially true for junior golfers, whose brains are still learning how to regulate emotion, attention, and identity under stress. When they don’t have a reset skill, frustration compounds. One mistake becomes five strokes. One bad hole becomes a blown tournament.

And here’s what breaks my heart: most of these kids think it’s a character flaw. They think they’re weak. They think they “just can’t handle pressure.”

But here is the truth… It’s not a weakness.

It’s a lack of training… because nobody taught them how to bounce back.

Why AI Can’t Teach This

Ai can give feedback. Ai can track stats. Ai can even simulate decision-making.

But Ai can’t feel the knot in your stomach walking to the next tee. It can’t regulate your breathing after a triple bogey. It can’t help a 14-year-old detach their worth from a scorecard.

That’s a human skill. And it’s exactly why bounce back training matters more, not less, in a high-tech era.

Technology amplifies what’s already there. If a junior golfer has mental resilience, tech helps them optimize. If they don’t? Tech just measures its collapse in higher resolution.

When juniors learn this early, they build confidence that doesn’t depend on outcomes. They stop fearing bad shots because they know they can recover. They compete freely because their worth isn’t on the leaderboard.

Why We’re Teaching This Now

At MPGA, we believe bounce back is the foundational mental skill for junior golfers. Everything else—confidence, focus, consistency—rests on it.

That’s why we’re hosting a free live training for junior golfers and parents:

Built to Bounce Back: The Mental Skill Every Junior Golfer Needs
📅 January 29th, 2026
⏰ 7:30 PM ET
🤝 In partnership with the NY METRO PGA Section

In this session, families will learn:

• A simple reset routine juniors can use immediately after mistakes. Not theory. Not fluff. A step-by-step process they can apply on the next round.

• How to stop emotional spirals before they cost multiple strokes. The psychological pattern behind meltdowns—and how to interrupt it.

• A parent framework that supports resilience instead of adding pressure. Because sometimes the best thing you can do for your junior is get out of the way.

This isn’t just about golf. This is about building young people who know how to handle adversity, recover from failure, and keep moving forward. Those skills translate far beyond the course.

SAVE YOUR SEAT

One Question to Leave With

What if your junior didn’t need to play perfectly to play free?

Bounce back skills don’t just help golfers play better. They help them grow stronger—on the course and beyond it.

We’d love to see you on January 29th. Register for FREE by clicking the button above or visit us at www.mpgagolf.com

Your Mental Coach,
-Dr. Mat

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Stillness isn’t the absence of effort. It’s the presence of clarity.

High performers don’t struggle because they care too little. They struggle because they care so much. High performers care about outcomes, rankings, expectations, and the noise that comes with competing at a high level. In golf, that noise rarely shows up as chaos. It shows up as speed. Rushed routines. Busy minds. A body that’s technically ready, but mentally scattered.

This is what’s happening here: when pressure rises, most golfers try to add more thoughts, more control, more urgency. Stillness asks us to subtract.

And that’s where acceleration actually begins.

Stillness is a performance skill, not a personality trait

Psychologically, stillness creates space between stimulus and response. That space matters. It’s where emotional regulation and mental training lives. It’s where attention narrows instead of fragments and where the nervous system shifts from threat mode to performance mode.

Research on elite performers consistently shows the same pattern: the best don’t think more under pressure. They think less, and they feel more grounded in their bodies. Slowing the breath slows the heart rate. Slowing the heart rate steadies fine motor control.

You don’t become passive. You become precise.

Why slowing down helps you speed up

Golf rewards tempo, timing, and trust. None of those can be forced. When you pause… before the shot, after a mistake, between holes, you allow the brain to reorient around intention rather than reaction.

Reflection doesn’t pull you backward. It recalibrates your direction.

High performers who build in moments of stillness report greater clarity about why they’re playing, not just how. Purpose stabilizes performance. When the “why” is clear, decisions simplify and execution follows.

Here is a question I often ask my students when I notice noise inside their minds: “Where are you rushing right now? What might be available to you if you paused?

Stillness after mistakes is where resilience is trained

Most golfers rush too fast after a bad shot. This is often avoidance masked as resilience. Stillness after a mistake is uncomfortable. It forces awareness. It invites responsibility without judgment. That pause is where learning can happen. Neuroscience calls this consolidation. Faith calls it listening. Either way, stillness allows meaning to form instead of emotion to hijack the next swing.

You don’t need to replay the shot; you need to fully release it.

A quiet faith lens (for those who carry it)

Across Scripture, stillness is not framed as weakness, but as alignment. “Be still” is not a command to stop acting; it’s an invitation to stop striving. Psychologically, this mirrors what we know about trust under pressure. Spiritually, it reframes performance as stewardship rather than self-protection.

You’re not trying to prove. You’re preparing to respond.

Practicing stillness on and off the course

Stillness doesn’t require silence or solitude. It requires intention.

One breath before the shot.
One pause before reacting.
One reflective question at the end of the round: What did today teach me?

These moments compound. Over time, they rewire how you relate to pressure itself.

Because the goal isn’t to slow life down.

The goal is to move forward with clarity, purpose, and a calm center that holds the test of time, especially when everything else speeds up.

Where could stillness help you play faster, freer, and more like yourself?

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

P.S. YOU ARE INVITED!

Join us this January 29th at 7:30pm (ET) in partnership with the PGA NY Metro Junior Golf Section on a LIVE stream webinar…

Seats will fill up fast… save yours here.

Junior golfers today are navigating more pressure, more comparison, and more emotional noise than ever before. Not just on the course, but in school, online, and in everyday life.

When something goes wrong, one bad hole, one tough conversation, one disappointing result, the recovery window seems longer than it used to be.

From a psychological standpoint, this is what’s really happening here:
Our children’s nervous system is overloaded, and recovery skills are undertrained.

Golf simply exposes it.

Why One Bad Hole Becomes Three

(The Psychology Behind the Spiral)

The collapses we see after a mistake are often not technical. They are attentional and emotional.

Research in sport psychology consistently shows that after an error:

• Heart rate increases

• Muscle tension rises

• Attention narrows toward threat and self-judgment

• Athletes shift from task focus to outcome monitoring

This is sometimes referred to as error-induced attentional collapse.

When that happens, the brain stays in “threat mode,” and performance suffers because the system never resets and our children have not yet learned the proper skills of emotionally regulating their nervous system.

This is why simply telling our juniors to “calm down” after a mistake rarely works.

Under stress, the brain cannot respond to abstract commands.
It needs structure, language, and a physical anchor to re-regulate.

Resilience Is Not a Trait. It’s a Trainable Skill.

One of the most common misconceptions parents and athletes hold is that resilience is about toughness or personality.

Psychologically, that’s not accurate.

Resilience is better defined as:

The speed and quality of recovery after disruption.

And decades of research (from self-regulation theory, cognitive behavioral approaches, and applied sport psychology) show that recovery improves when athletes are trained to:

• Notice physiological activation

• Use brief, repeatable cues

• Re-anchor attention to the present task

This is why short reset routines outperform motivational talks.

They work with the nervous system, not against it.

The Skill That Transfers Beyond Golf

When juniors learn how to reset after mistakes on the course, something else happens.

They start applying the same skill:

• After a poor test grade

• After a conflict with a teammate or parent

• After disappointment or self-doubt

This is why resilience training matters now, not just for performance, but for emotional health and confidence development.

Golf becomes the training ground for life.

One Evidence-Based Tool You Can Use Right Away

Here is a simple, research-aligned reset tool families can apply immediately.

I call it the 3-Step Reset Routine (and it only takes 60 seconds to complete):

1. Exhale longer than you inhale (10–15 seconds)
Research on vagal tone and emotional regulation shows that a longer exhale helps downshift the stress response.

Example:
Inhale for 4 seconds → exhale for 6 seconds (repeat twice).

2. Name one neutral fact
This is a cognitive grounding technique used in CBT and performance psychology.

Example:
“The ball is in the fairway.”
“The hole is still the same length.”

Neutral facts interrupt emotional storytelling.

3. Use a short cue phrase
A simple, repeatable phrase re-centers attention.

Examples:

• “Next shot.”

• “One swing.”

• “Right here.”

The goal is not positivity.
The goal is presence.

This exact structure is what high performers use, often without realizing it.

A Live Opportunity to Train This Skill

In partnership with the New York Metropolitan PGA Section, Mental Performance Golf Academy (MPGA) is hosting a free, live class designed to teach this recovery skill in a way juniors and parents can actually use.

Built to Bounce Back: The Mental Skill Every Junior Golfer Needs

📅 Thursday, January 29, 2026
🕢 7:30 pm ET
📍 Live on Zoom

This session will focus on:

• How juniors can reset emotionally after mistakes

• Why common parent responses unintentionally increase pressure

• Simple language and routines families can practice together

No swing mechanics.
No hype.
Just evidence-based mental skills.

👉 Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/zdihwujCRm-bYEjCglVUiA

Why This Matters Now

The world our juniors are growing up in is faster, louder, and less forgiving of mistakes. If we take the time to teach them how to bounce back, we will be equipping them with a skill that keeps them steady when standards are high.

Sometimes the most important performance skill isn’t how you prepare.

It’s how you recover.

That’s what bouncing back is really about.

Your Mental Coach,

Dr. Mat

Share this post with a friend and invite loved ones to the event on January 29th. This is a rare opportunity to learn reset and resilience skills from a performance psychologist to start the year!