Better Golf Academy: Strategy to Awesome Golf

I used to think the shakiest part of my game was the part where I got mad. Turns out that's backwards. In this one, I'm closing out our five-part series on Jared Tendler's Everyday Golf Psychology with the idea that changed how I think about every bad shot I hit. There's a reason the best poker players in the world don't try to calm down when they're furious — and the same logic applies the next t...

Greg Norman had a six-shot lead at the Masters and the exact same swing that got him there. By the back nine, it was gone. Same motion, same guy — so what actually changed? Today on Close the Gap, we're looking at why the range and the course are never really the same task, even when the swing is identical. It's the reason "just practice more" doesn't always fix Sunday

In 1997, a college golfer stood over four short putts at a U.S. Open qualifier — and missed every one, losing a playoff spot by exactly one shot. Most people would've spent the rest of their life trying to forget that afternoon. This guy went the other way. He turned it into a twenty-year career studying exactly why golfers fall apart under pressure — and today I get into what he actually did with...

Ever notice how one guy takes a bad bounce in stride, and another guy is still complaining about it three holes later? Turns out that reaction says more about your scorecard than your swing ever will. Today we're getting into one of the most misunderstood parts of the mental game — and it might explain more of your bad rounds than you think.

There's a line about golf so famous almost everybody's repeated it without ever really thinking about it — and it turns out it might be completely wrong. Today kicks off a five-part series built around a brand new book from a coach who's worked with Tour pros and world champion poker players. Stick around for the story of a missed four-footer that changed one man's whole career, and a much better...

Every golfer thinks replaying their worst shots is how they get better. Turns out there's real research showing that's only true if you do it a very specific way, and most people are doing the exact opposite without knowing it. There's a tiny shift, something as small as one word in your head, that decides whether a bad shot teaches you something or just ruins the rest of your round. This one clos...

I used to think the golfers hitting the most range balls were doing everything right. Turns out there's a second half to that practice most people never get to — and it's the half that actually shows up on the course. There's a batting practice study from the nineties, and a quieter follow-up on golfers, that together explain why some grinders never seem to close the gap between the range and a re...

There's an experiment I can't stop thinking about. Researchers offered people in rural India a month's pay to win one simple game of skill — and the ones with the most on the line played the worst, by a mile. I'll tell you what that has to do with the four-footer you need to win your match, and why the most natural advice in golf might be quietly costing you the shots that matter most. If you've e...

Part two of my new series, Bad Advice — the five bits of golf wisdom everybody repeats that the research quietly disagrees with. Every golfer knows the feeling: first tee, shaky hands, and a little voice telling you to calm down. But what if that voice has been sabotaging your game this whole time? Today I dig into a Harvard study that flipped everything I thought I knew about pre-shot nerves. It...

There's one piece of advice you've heard on every first tee of your life, and I'm convinced it's quietly sabotaging your golf. It sounds supportive. It feels harmless. But there's a psychology study that shows it backfires hardest on the exact people who reach for it. In this one, I get into why you can't summon a feeling on command, and what actually holds up when you make a double and everything...

I used to read my scorecard like it was a report card — see the number, feel good or feel awful, drive home. Then it hit me that two golfers can shoot the exact same score playing two completely opposite rounds, which means that number can't actually tell me how to get better. In this one I get into the idea that almost every stat in golf has a twin — a loud one that lies and a quiet one that tell...

It's late June, and if I'm being honest with you, the year probably hasn't gone the way you promised yourself it would back in January. I want to get into why that happens to almost every weekend golfer right about now — and why it usually has nothing to do with how hard you're trying. Then I take apart the most famous piece of advice in all of golf — the one on every coffee mug — and show you why...

Wyndham Clark woke up Sunday at the U.S. Open with a six-shot lead and nearly handed the whole thing back. In this one I get into why — and it has almost nothing to do with talent. There's a shift that happens in every golfer's brain the second they get ahead, and it quietly turns you tentative before you even notice it. I dig into a Columbia psychologist's research that explains exactly why prote...

One of the greatest golfers who ever lived hit ugly shots all day long — and won anyway, more than almost anyone in history. In this one I get into his strange little secret, and why the player across from him, who swung it far more beautifully, kept losing to him. It comes down to a number Walter Hagen carried onto the first tee every single round, and what happened the moment a bad shot showed u...

A year ago, Wyndham Clark smashed up a locker room and turned himself into golf's villain. This past Sunday, with an entire crowd openly rooting for him to fall apart — heckling him after almost every swing — he won the U.S. Open anyway. What carried him through wasn't talent, and it wasn't toughness in the way you'd expect. It was three small sentences he repeated to himself every single time the...

There's a voice in your head over every pressure shot, and most of us have never stopped to ask the obvious question — whose voice is it? On this one I get into why that voice keeps betraying you at the worst possible moment, and the strange one-word fix a University of Michigan researcher proved can change the whole thing. I'll show you why you're a brilliant coach for your friends and a total di...

Ever been able to do something a thousand times in your sleep, then blanked the one time it actually mattered? It happened to a seven-foot superstar on the biggest stage in basketball — and it's the same thing happening to you over that knee-knocking two-footer. In this one we get into why a choke is the opposite of a skill problem, what a confused centipede reveals about your short game, and a fi...

In this episode, we get into why your brain treats a birdie like a bonus and a bogey like a wound — and the simple three-word trick that quietly costs the pros over a million dollars a year. Once you hear it, you'll never stand over a birdie putt the same way again. There's a famous study with the greatest title in sports science — "Is Tiger Woods Loss Averse?" — and what it found inside two and a...

Ever notice your worst golf decisions show up late — never on the first hole, always on the back nine? I dug into a famous study about parole judges that explains exactly why, and it has almost nothing to do with your swing. Turns out you've got a hidden tank, and every choice you make all day quietly drains it. In this one I'll show you what that means for your round — and the one simple move tha...

Some Knicks fans didn't watch the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history. Not because they didn't care — because they cared too much, and they couldn't sit in the discomfort long enough to see how it ended. Turns out that exact flinch is one of the quietest things holding back our golf. In today's episode I get into why we mentally "turn off the game" on ourselves the second a round goes ugly, wha...

What if the missing piece in your golf game isn't a swing fix — it's the right person in your corner? Today I'm telling the story of J.J. Spaun, who lost 50 pounds after a diabetes misdiagnosis, watched his entire sense of his own swing disappear, and had to rebuild everything from scratch. The coach he found didn't give him a checklist. He gave him a feeling — borrowed from a skateboard trick — a...

I picked a friendly fight with one of the smartest men alive this week. He ranked the hardest sports on earth, looked golf dead in the eye, and called it easy — because the ball just sits there. And on paper, he's got a point. But he walked right past the one detail that flips his whole argument inside out — the reason a still ball is scarier than a ball coming at your face at ninety. Stick around...

Ever played the best nine of your life without a single conscious thought, then watched one bad swing turn you into a total stranger over the ball? Today I get into the question every golfer asks the second it goes sideways: slow down and lock in, or stay loose and fast? I'll show you why that question is a trap, and bring in years of research on focus that explains why "concentrating harder" is s...

I always assumed the all-time greats were quietly obsessed with their legacy. Then Nelly Korda won the one title she'd chased her whole career, and when a reporter asked her about that legacy, her answer flipped the whole thing on its head for me. In this episode, I get into the goal-setting research that explains why a vivid dream pulls you forward and a vague "legacy" never could — and what Kord...

I was outside the ropes at Riviera yesterday watching Nelly Korda, then went home and caught her post-round interview on YouTube. That's when the real story hit me, her game plan for the final round of a major isn't about her swing at all. It's two words she repeated, and they go against everything you'd expect from the most driven player in the game. Turns out there's hard science behind why want...