Golf has always been more than a game to me. It’s a mirror.
It reflects your thoughts, your emotions, your fears, and your faith one shot at a time.
I’ve seen players lose themselves chasing scorecards, rankings, and recognition. I’ve done it myself. You can shoot 68 and feel empty, or 78 and feel free. It depends on what you’re really playing for.
For years, I helped golfers build confidence, manage pressure, and think better under stress. The results were strong: players won tournaments, got college scholarships, and moved up leaderboards.
But something still felt off. They were getting better, but not happier.
That’s when I realized we were all keeping the wrong score.
The Outer vs. Inner Scorecard
Most golfers play with two scorecards, one everyone sees, and one only you can feel.
The outer scorecard measures strokes. The inner scorecard measures truth.
The outer tells you how you performed. The inner tells you why you performed that way.
When your worth is tied to the outer scorecard, every round becomes a test of identity. When your focus shifts to the inner scorecard, golf becomes a practice of awareness, trust, and purpose.
That’s where freedom begins.
What I Discovered
Over the years, I began to see a deeper pattern in every player I coached, from tour professionals to junior golfers. The ones who performed with real confidence weren’t just mentally tough. They were spiritually aligned.
They had learned how to:
Own the Moment: to be fully present and trust themselves on every shot.
Play with Nothing to Prove: to compete without chasing approval or validation.
Execute for the Audience of One: to align performance with a deeper purpose and integrity.
I call this The ONE Framework.
The Promise of ONE
Playing for ONE is not about perfection. It’s about peace.
It’s about freeing yourself from the noise, the expectations, the judgment, the comparison, and learning to compete from your core.
When you play for ONE, golf becomes more than performance.
It becomes a path to self-discovery.
It’s where you learn who you are when no one’s watching.
When I first started in sport psychology, Dr. Bob Rotella was my North Star.
His books shaped how I thought about performance. Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect became a bible for players and coaches. He taught golfers to focus on what they can control, to visualize success, to stay patient.
It worked. It still does.
But after years of working with players at every level: juniors, college athletes, tour professionals, I began to see something deeper.
The mental game could help players stay calm and think better.
But it couldn’t always help them feel whole.
The Hidden Search
Behind every conversation about swing thoughts or pre-shot routines, I started hearing something else. A quiet question underneath the surface:
“Am I enough?”
It showed up in different forms.
“I just need one win to prove I belong.”
“If I could shoot lower, people would finally notice.”
“I don’t want to let my parents down.”
These weren’t performance problems. They were identity questions.
And no amount of breathing or positive self-talk could answer them.
That’s when I realized... golfers don’t just want to perform better.
They want to feel free.
The Shift
Traditional sport psychology focuses on controlling thoughts and emotions.
It’s about training the mind to serve performance. But what if performance could serve something greater? What if golf could be a spiritual practice: a place to meet yourself, to confront ego, to discover purpose?
That’s the shift I made as a coach. I stopped helping players “fix” their minds and started helping them find themselves.
When you play golf with spiritual awareness, every shot becomes a mirror.
You see your habits, your fears, your patterns of self-judgment, and your capacity for growth. You start to compete from a deeper place.
The Hidden Drive
Underneath every performance struggle, I started seeing the same theme:
“Golfers weren’t playing the game to play well.
They were playing to prove something.”
Prove they were talented enough.
Prove they deserved a scholarship.
Prove they could make it on tour.
That’s the quiet trap of modern competition. You start performing for validation instead of truth.
When your worth depends on your results, golf becomes survival: not expression. Every shot carries too much weight. Every mistake feels personal.
That pressure doesn’t come from golf. It comes from identity.
A Different Way
The turning point came when I realized that peak performance isn’t about more control. It’s about more surrender.
The best players I’ve worked with don’t fight their minds: they align them.
They’ve learned to compete with peace because they’ve accepted that their value doesn’t depend on their score.
Most golfers live in what psychologists call external motivation: performing for trophies, approval, or recognition. It can drive short bursts of success but often leaves you anxious, inconsistent, and unfulfilled.
Intrinsic motivation, or playing from purpose, lasts longer. It’s quieter. More stable. You play because you love the craft. You compete because it brings out your best. You don’t need a score to tell you who you are (e.g., think Scottie Scheffler).
That’s what playing for ONE means.
Golf doesn’t just measure how well you swing: it reveals how deeply you know yourself. When you stop chasing the outer scorecard and start honoring the inner one, the game changes. Pressure fades. Freedom grows. You stop performing for approval and start playing from truth. That’s the promise of playing for ONE: to compete from peace, to live with purpose, and to realize that the greatest victory isn’t the number you post - it’s the person you become.
Read the previous article about ONE here.
Your Mental Coach,
Dr. Mat