The Mental Golf Show

Listen to this episode ad-free: join Mental Golf Club Hello everybody, welcome to The Mental Golf Show, where we explore high performance through the lens of golf. On today’s episode we have Michael Leonard, host of the Wicked Smart podcast, author of several golf books, and phenomenal player himself. This is actually Michael’s second appearance on The Mental Golf Show 3 years later. Feel free to...

Get Julie Elion’s new book Mastering Your Mental Game ( link to Amazon ) On this episode we’ve got THE Julie Elion. Most notably the mental performance coach for Wyndham Clark. She’s also the author of her new book Mastering Your Mental Game, which is excellent. So the timing of this one was pretty dang cool with Wyndham just winning the U.S. Open last week. We of course talk a lot about Wyndham a...

On this episode we have Joel Suggs, a PGA Master Teaching Professional with decades of experience helping golfers of all levels understand their own games. Joel is the author of Golf Success Before Every Round, which was the number one new release in golf coaching on Amazon when it came out. By the end of this episode, you'll learn why golfers already have the right answers for their game — and ho...

Get Steve Kamb’s new book How to Try Again: An Approachable Guide to Navigating Chaos and Making Change THAT STICKS ( Amazon link ) ----- Steve Kamb is the author of the brand new book How to Try Again: An Approachable Guide to Navigating Chaos and Making Change THAT STICKS. In this conversation (and in his book) Steve helps us learn about life and golf and the many parallels between the two. We t...

Take the FREE Mental Game Assessment:  app.joshnicholsgolf.com/assessment ----- Dr. Justin Ternes is a world expert on breathwork, physical therapy, and the connection of mind and body. I wanted to have Justin on because there’s so much pseudoscience out there about breathwork, meditation, and emotional awareness. But Justin sets us straight and teaches us that what we’ve heard and learned might a...

FREE Brand New Mental Game Assessment: app.joshnicholsgolf.com/assessment ----- In this episode Josh dives deep into his tournament prep, what he's done this year different from past years, and how he readies himself for a competitive round. ----- Chapters & Topics: 00:00 - Intro 00:54 - Preparing My Body: New Stretches, Better Pre-Round Warmup, and More Regular and Intense Hitting Sessions 6:...

Click here to take the brand new redesigned Mental Game Assessment! I’m a Golf Mental Coach and the host of a golf mental game podcast. Yet my mental game has gotten worse. How do I know that? And what am I going to do about it? And what you can do to improve your mental game. All of that in this short episode.

Peter Melton is a Golf Enjoyment Coach and author of Conversations with Par. He spent three decades stuck in the same trap most golfers never escape — believing his score determined his worth. In this conversation, we dig into the inner golfer versus the outer golfer, why your survival identity is quietly running your game, and whether enjoyment is just another arrow in the quiver or the whole bag...

Chia Chou is a classical pianist and has taught the best of the best musicians for decades. In the last 5 years he has grown his very unique approach to helping golfers through the use of audio. We even get into how Chia's method is different from (and potentially better than) Tour Tempo. You'll leave this episode with actionable practices to help you have better tempo, a better understanding of w...

I made a massive shift in my game between missing the cut at the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur to making it the finals of the 2017 U.S. Mid-Amateur. In this episode we get into two major ways I did that. ----- Join Mental Golf Club for FREE here: app.joshnicholsgolf.com

Join Mental Golf Club here: app.joshnicholsgolf.com You guys comprise the best community of the smartest, most thoughtful, deepest thinking bunch of golfers I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen and heard how much you guys have engaged over the years. It's been incredible. So we wanted a way for you to engage even further and deeper than you already do. Somewhere you could get even more out of the podcast...

We've got another check-in with Nerd Fitness Matt. Ok, sure, these are thinly-veiled selfish conversations with my fitness coach. But also I firmly believe they're a peak for you into the mindset that builds real consistency and actual results with fitness, nutrition, habits, self-care, and just general relationship with ourselves and what we need. Hope you learn more about yourself listening to t...

If you've ever played your best golf alone but fallen apart the moment others are watching, this episode is for you. In this conversation, Gary Belsky makes a compelling case that solo golf isn't just a scheduling convenience — it's a mental training ground that can rewire how you handle pressure, self-criticism, and the performative noise that creeps in during a round. You'll walk away with some...

Andreas Kali is a golf coach based in Denmark who works with nine professional golfers across four tours, including players ranked inside the top 50 in the world. He's spent the better part of two decades coaching, and his philosophy runs counter to a lot of what you see or hear — harder practice, honest feedback, and no false confidence. Things that I love and agree with. This is going to be a co...

You ever feel like the mental game advice you try doesn't stick? That's because most mental game advice is superficial and not effective in high-pressure moments. Including some of the stuff I've put out. That's because there has to be a deeper layer underneath that advice for your mental game to actually be effective. In this episode, we dive into that. Key topics: The Ineffectiveness of Common M...

Jeff Troesch is a mental performance coach to major champions on PGA Tour and LPGA Tour, Olympians, and athletes in nearly 100 other sports. He has just released a new book titled One Day Better: Mental Performance Concepts to Transform Your Game and Life. It contains 150 one or two-page lessons on the most important facets of performance. It's unlike anything else I've read in any other mental ga...

Matt Young is an Emotional Change Specialist. His expertise is in helping people move past their limiting beliefs and protective/automatic emotions in order to access their best as often as possible. Matt's an avid golfer himself, and in this episode we we dive in to some real-world case studies of PGA Tour players, as well as Matt's (and my own) golf game to discuss the deeper psychology of how a...

Rye Stinson is perhaps the only person in the world who is all of these things: Occupational Therapist, Certified Hand Therapist, TPI M3 Certified, AND has qualified for a U.S. Mid-Amateur, which he did in 2024. So I took that as an opportunity to dive right into how on earth he is so successful in his work while also being such a high level player. He plays humble, but he shared some great wisdom...

It's that time of year. You've been working hard on your game all offseason, grinding on your swing, getting things dialed, and now it's almost time (or is already time) to get outside and play. But what typically happens when you do that? If you're like me, everything you worked on all winter can seem to go right out the window when you touch real grass. That terrible feeling of all that practice...

John Dunigan is the cofounder of the Practice Golf Coach app. I haven't used the app personally yet, but one of my mental coaching clients uses it and he swears by it. He's sent me screenshots and it looks awesome. It uses AI combined with John and cofounder Dr. Will Wu's expertise and experience to build you custom workouts that change with you as you enter in more data. I'll have to check it out...

Andy Gorman is ThePASS (The Putting And Shortgame Specialist). And this episode is truly all about putting. If you wonder why you don't putt better, whether you have the right putter for you, why you don't putt well under pressure, why you under-read so many putts, and then exactly how to address all of these things... then you're going to love this episode. Andy is both extremely knowledgable abo...

📕 Click this link to get Cameron Strachan's book UNF*CK YOUR GOLF BRAIN, plus bonus videos, a pre-round cheat sheet, and more: https://bit.ly/ufygb-josh ----- Cameron Strachan was not a name I had heard before this. But when he reached out to me expressing interest in being on the show and shared his book UNF*CK YOUR GOLF BRAIN with me, I gave it a read and I was immediately hooked. I read over h...

I had the pleasure of hosting Alex Fortey on the podcast. Alex is a content creator with over 300,000 subscribers on YouTube ( The Art of Simple Golf ). He's a pro golfer with some very strong opinions on the golf industry and golf instruction, and has some very honest takes on how to make golf simpler. Some of the topics we cover: The Complexity of Golf Instruction Understanding the Disconnect in...

Is chasing consistency actually hurting your golf game? In this episode, I’m joined by Brendon Post — a longtime competitive player, coach, and caddie with decades of experience at the college and professional levels. Brendon brings a rare perspective from living on both sides of the rope: competing under pressure and watching the game with total clarity as a coach and caddie. Topics covered: Why...

I had the honor of hosting Steven Yellin on the podcast. Steven is an author of the book Simplicity. He holds some very strong positions on how good golf must be played. But he claims they aren't his ideas, they are just the way the brain and the body work. I truly can't spell it all out here, you'll have to listen to know what I'm talking about.  If you like this podcast in general, you're going...