Welcome to issue number 58 of The 3 Minute Golfer. This FREE publication is here to help every golfer improve their mental game and their personal wellbeing. 

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“Everyone has a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth,” is a famous observation from Mike Tyson about boxing but it might be the most accurate description of golf ever spoken by a heavyweight. 

The golf course rarely punches you literally. It prefers subtler methods…a drive that finds the trees, an approach that catches a bunker, a three-putt from close, or a triple bogey from nowhere.  You arrive on the first tee with a strategy. You know your percentages. You have decided which holes to attack, which holes to play conservatively, and the hazards to avoid. Then, somewhere around the fifth hole, golf punches and suddenly your strategy disappears in a concussed haze.

You rarely lose your strategy during a round because you’ve discovered a better one. You lose it because your current strategy goes sideways and your brain immediately starts negotiating. “I can get that shot back on the next hole.” Then comes the heroic drive, the flag-hunting and another lost shot. At this point, you are no longer playing the course…you’re playing against your scorecard.

This is where the psychology becomes interesting. As a normal behaviour, people tend to judge outcomes relative to a reference point. In golf, that reference point is obviously par…with over par being the punch you’re trying to avoid. Research by Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer examined more than 2.5 million PGA Tour putts and found golfers behaved differently when trying to avoid a bogey than when chasing a birdie. It appears the emotional sting of losing something like one shot is much stronger than the pleasure of gaining a shot. 

Now applying that psychology to the amateur golfer, who has just made a triple bogey, the internal conversation goes something like, “I'm three over. I need to get two back.” And there it is…the beginning of the chase. The next shot is no longer selected because it is the smartest shot. It is selected because it might repair the emotional damage caused by the previous shot.

And the chase is common to all golfers. McFall and Rotthoff studied ten years of PGA Tour data and found that professionals hovering near the wrong side of the cut line were more likely to take risks than those sitting just inside. 

The classic “catch-up shot” is the normal response to a punch. It’s the counterpunch after making a double bogey on the previous hole…when suddenly you’re thinking, “I have to get one back.” So, the five-wood comes out, and the water, which was an obvious hazard ten minutes ago, has apparently become decorative. 

Your original strategy is not the problem but abandoning your strategy because you feel a desperate need to compensate can be. The double bogey is history. So, spending the next three holes trying to win back strokes is normally futile…like a gambler at a casino who loses a hand, doubles the next bet to “get even,” loses that too, then starts behaving as if mathematics is just an opinion. 

This is the emotional trap…once you fall behind, the sensible shot starts to look boring. 

A punch on the nose hurts but it can change your focus of attention. That’s why the disciplined golfer accepts the punch. A bad hole is allowed to remain a bad hole. If the plan was to hit the safe side of the fairway, that remains the plan. If the strategy was to take bogey rather than bring double bogey into play, that remains the strategy. If the previous hole cost two extra strokes, the next hole doesn't need to earn them back. It only needs to be played according to the original decision-making framework. This isn't passive golf. It is emotional stability. You stop trying to erase the past and start making the best decision available right now.

There is a useful distinction here between changing strategy and abandoning strategy. Sometimes circumstances genuinely demand an adjustment…the wind changes, the lie is terrible, or the course is playing differently than expected. Good strategy is flexible. But “I made a double, therefore I need to hit driver over the trees” isn't flexibility. That's revenge. 

Ultimately, Tyson's punch is the perfect metaphor because golf doesn't destroy your strategy with one bad shot…it reveals whether you actually had a strategy or merely had a collection of intentions that worked while everything was going well. 

Anyone can play disciplined golf after four straight pars. The real test comes after the shank, the bunker flub, the lip-out or the dreaded duff off the tee. That’s when you must decide whether to chase the round or continue playing it. The best golfers understand that you don't get your strokes back by demanding them from the next shot. You get your best score by making the best decision you can on the shot in front of you. The difference between a ruined round and just one ugly hole is whether you remember the plan after the punch.

References

Pope, D. G., & Schweitzer, M. E. (2011). Is Tiger Woods Loss Averse? Persistent Bias in the Face of Experience, Competition, and High Stakes. American Economic Review, 101(1), 129–157. 

McFall, T., & Rotthoff, K. W. (2020). Risk-taking dynamics in tournaments: Evidence from professional golf. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 179, 378–394. 

Wells, J. E., & Skowronski, J. J. / related PGA research. Research on pressure and performance in professional golf, including the effects of high-stakes situations on putting performance. The broader evidence is discussed in The impact of pressure on performance: Evidence from the PGA TOUR. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 116 (2015), 319–330. 

Gucciardi, D. F., Longbottom, J.-L., Jackson, B., & Dimmock, J. A. (2010). Experienced golfers' perspectives on choking under pressure. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 32(1), 61–83.

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