#41. 6 Month Progress Update: Breaking 90, Understanding the Process, and Learning Lessons Thus Far

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In late April, 2024, I shot a 65. I couldn’t find a fairway. I did not flirt with a green in regulation and I couldn’t too putt to save my life. Now, let me be clear. That was a 65 on nine holes. Nine holes of which I’m pretty sure I found out of bounds every single hole.

if not twice on a handful of holes, likely used a handful of mulligans to say the least. I vividly remember topping my initial drive as the foursome pulled up behind us. And this was the second time I had played golf in 15 years. We fast forward roughly six months later, and I shared with you a couple of episodes ago, I shot an 87. And in today’s episode,

I want to highlight some of the biggest learning lessons, most impactful action steps and key takeaways I’ve gleaned, learned and accepted the past six months that has allowed me to more or less go from shooting a 125 to 135 score to having carded my lowest score to date of an 87, a couple of weeks ago at this point. And as you, the listener,

begin to open your mind to what I’m about to share. I want to plant this seed. Whether you are struggling to break 100, whether you are striving to break 90 or 80, whether you’re committed to becoming a scratch golfer and a multi-tournament winner, or whether you’re an avid golfer who has far more ambitious goals you’re committed to in your business, in your personal life, or in your family life.

If you show up with an open mind and a coachable attitude for today’s episode, you’re going to glean a handful of powerful insights that will enable you to move faster toward goal attainment, regardless of whether or not that goal is related to the golf course or away from the golf course. Well, with that said, welcome back to another episode of the Scratch Golfers Mindset podcast. I’m your host, Paul Salter.

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the golf hypnotherapist and just want to say welcome to my recent and new listeners. I appreciate you tuning in and to my long time listeners, the OGs back from episode one. It’s an absolute pleasure to spend this time with you every single week, whether it’s Tuesday when I recap my own journey to scratch or Thursday when I rotate solo episodes in addition to bringing you some of the best minds in the game of golf.

I am so grateful that you are here. And in today’s episode, I want to highlight several key learning lessons and action steps I have prioritized and taken from my first, let’s call it truly committed six months of golf. Again, going from that 65 ish with a couple asterisks next to it might’ve really been like a 75 to shooting an 87 in about six months time. And to be frank, I wasn’t

by my definition, truly committed to the game of golf and this goal of becoming a scratch golfer and hoisting the trophy of my club championship when I started in April. Those goals clarified and really solidified closer to late July, probably early August, if I recall correctly. But a lot of good progress has happened in the last six months. And from my perspective, this

Progress is quite quick, though I’m well aware the closer I get to my goal of scratch, the more resistance I will encounter, the more patience I will need to practice, and even more important, worth noting, I recognize the closer I get to my goal of achieving scratch, the more off the course work I will have to do. And you might hear that, and you might think absolutely not, you need more technical work.

and I could totally support and understand where you’re coming from. Speaking for myself, it’s going to be more about emotional regulation, mental resiliency to cultivate that confident competitive attitude, fierceness, fearlessness and demeanor I need to achieve my goal of shooting scratch. And let me recap our timeline and we’ll dive into learning lessons. So six months ago, I’ve already mentioned a shot that’s 65.

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Since then I have taken eight formal lessons. have tallied, I think just over 20 rounds. A good majority of them are logged on the Grint. but again, I didn’t start logging until I think mid July, six months, eight lessons, roughly a one 32 and 87 with the bulk of my last 10 to 12 scores being in the 90s. So

trending in the right direction. The 87 is my low to date. It’s not an anomaly. I’ve got several 92s, threes, fours, sixes. So, you know, I had definitely played out of my mind that day by my standards and we’re moving in the right direction. And I think one of the biggest reasons that I have been able to have this type of progress thus far is my ability to not only gain clarity on my ultimate goal,

achieving scratch and winning my club championship. But it’s been my ability to chunk down the process and priority of smaller goals that will inevitably help me achieve my goal of becoming a scratch golfer. Let me be frank, I have zero expectation of achieving this goal in six months. And personally and with 15 plus years of coaching experience professionally,

Any time we start thinking beyond three months, especially six months, it’s quite challenging to maintain the level of commitment and focus we need to consistently perform and execute at our best. The way that we circumnavigate that is by setting smaller short-term goals. And for me, it’s been quite simple. First and foremost, it was to break 100. And after that,

The next test for me, the goal was breaking 90 by a certain date. And I’ll talk about the sense of urgency and specificity in my date selection here in a moment. But the reason and the power of setting short-term goals is it allows you to really see and experience progress. But more importantly, the clarity of your short-term goal allows you to effectively align.

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the most appropriate action steps to achieve that goal. It keeps that carrot dangling in front of your face much closer. The goal is just within reach. You can almost grasp it. And because you’re so close, it affords you the opportunity to gain clarity on what you need to do to achieve it. You’re able to maintain a peak sense of interest, commitment, and curiosity as to what it will take to achieve that goal because it’s just around the corner.

So you need to think in terms of chunks. I like having a goal that is 12 to 36 months into the future. And for me, I very much believe that at the end of next year, I will consistently be shooting in the seventies. Give me 18 months. And yes, you can come back to what is this going to be episode 42 and quote me on this 18 months. I will have shot at least one round at or below par.

period.

But I have so much to do, so much to learn, so many opportunities to grow between now and then, that to be frank, it’s still too far in the distance. I’m still too far away to really obsess over that goal. It’s in the back of my mind, but to keep me motivated and excited and to feel like I’m making progress, I need a short term.

chunked down version of that goal. So for me next up, the big transition I’m making is not only moving from white teas, but playing back on the blue teas. But I want my next goal is shooting or excuse me, breaking 85 from the blue teas three times. This gives me specificity. It gives me a short term focus. I’m a handful of strokes away, but now I’m playing at a slightly further distance, which is going to require different confidence, different consistencies and executions with different

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different angles, different approaches, simply seeing some of the holes I’m intimately familiar with in a different way. So it’s a new challenge. And ultimately I know once I break 85 three times, my next goal will be to break 80. And then I will chunk it down to 75. And then I will chunk it down to shooting par, shooting under par, and allowing my handicap to slowly but surely catch up.

The point about short-term goals that I think is like dumping gasoline on a fire that I absolutely thrived with was adding a literal level of healthy pressure or specific urgency to my goal. So my short-term goal of breaking 90, that’s great, but when? Why?

Do you need to add a short term timeframe? Because it’s a healthy amount of pressure. And to be frank, I was blessed with a unique situation. My son is due in November, and I know my golf schedule might not have quite as much flexibility for an indefinite period of time. So I use that as the urgency. The goal was to break 90 before he gets here when I have a lot more autonomy and flexibility to play. And this sense of healthy pressure, this

deadline allows you to lock in develop strategic tunnel vision, cultivate a laser like focus to again, align the most effective action steps to achieve that goal. So for me, I became incredibly clear on what aspects of my game I needed to prioritize. First and foremost, just my core foundational swing, confidence and technique off the tee.

confidence chipping and pitching. I was able to communicate that in my lessons with my coach, which ultimately gave me a clear roadmap and list of priorities to practice in my own time. The result? Well, I achieved my goal roughly 37 days early. Really, really impactful for me. One of the next lessons I hope you’ll take away is simply this. Asking for help accelerates results.

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Asking for help accelerates results. So I have used two swing coaches, four lessons with each, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from each, but especially the latter, who I jokingly talked about in a previous episode. He spent 30 minutes on the range with me one morning at 7 a.m. when I was the only individual on the range giving me unsolicited swing advice.

My curiosity and open-mindedness allowed me to be a sponge in that moment rather than put up walls and shoo him away. The result was two weeks later, I called him and hired him and I’ve had a tremendous working relationship with him to date, got four more lessons already lined up and we’ll keep this thing going. But having a coach is incredibly powerful for so many reasons. In the game of golf, there are a million and different, a million and one

different things you could potentially think about and focus on. Having a coach with a different set of eyes, ears, a different mind, a different framework of experience, both as a player and in a professional coaching role. This affords you the opportunity to get concise, clear, high priority feedback. It creates a vesicle, a target, if you will, for you to channel your attention and energy to.

Rather than feeling scattered and uncertain and inconsistent about what to focus on, what matters, you can get pin point accuracy of the one singular cue or aspect of your game you need to work on, complimented with a set of drills and practice techniques to further ingrain or embed that element of your swing into a state of unconscious competence to the point it becomes automatic. Even more.

You have someone there to clarify the vast amount of conflicting and misinformation that runs rampant on social media. depending on the type of coach you hire, whether he’s a swing coach or more of just a traditional golf coach, he can be there to validate, to support, to get you out of your own way and hold you accountable. And one of the best things my coach told me early on was that he didn’t aspire to be my guru, my end all be all for all answers and insights and pieces of wisdom.

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He wanted to empower me to be able to coach myself on the fly. When something feels off or I’m noticing a pattern of inconsistency, can I dig into my toolkit, my library of knowledge to troubleshoot on demand, grasp one of the most important cues I had previously worked on to double down on it and double check I’m executing. He’s done a tremendous job empowering me with this ability to coach myself. And I think that’s incredibly important. The next.

Perhaps the most important aspect of my journey thus far has been my ability to have a collection of practices that allows me to regulate my emotional state. I’ve been incredibly candid and vulnerable on this podcast. I have been frustrated out of my mind. I have battled this so-called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde version of myself when I had a few weeks, if not a month, where

One day you would think I’m a scratch golfer when I’m hitting on the range. The next day I couldn’t fucking hit the ball. was Hazel City. I had smaller moments of this on the course, but on the range it was incredibly pronounced. And to say I was angry would be an understatement.

If I had no ability to regulate my emotions, to diffuse that emotion, remember, the definition of emotion is energy in motion. I would have remained frustrated, tense, tight, and knowing myself likely contemplated just stopping playing or not setting nearly as ambitious goals as I have currently set. And having a collection of practices such as breath work,

meditation, self-guided hypnosis, working with my own mindset coach and hypnotherapist, having a very consistent gratitude and journaling practice. All of these have enabled me to first turn down the volume of frustration, anger, and impatience. They’ve allowed me to take a large step back to observe a 30,000 foot non-objective view of the situation.

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They’ve empowered me with the strength to take a step back, to end a practice session early, to split a practice session up into two micro sessions. All of these have increased the number of high quality, intentional, methodical reps I have taken in practice. Rather than frustratingly trying to out swing a bad practice session.

My ability to regulate my emotions has either granted me the opportunity to pause and reset for five to 10 minutes or the strength to walk away altogether. Even more, it’s allowed me to understand one round doesn’t define me, one shot, one hole doesn’t define me. This has allowed me to strengthen my ability to bounce back, which…

By the way, tomorrow’s newsletter, the More Pars Than Bogies newsletter is all about cultivating what I call bounce back ability. You need a single go-to practice or a handful of effective practices to regulate your emotions, to cultivate emotional resiliency. And I can tell you that these absolutely need to be centered on some type of breath work practice. I have an entire newsletter on the most effective

Breathwork strategies I use with myself and my clients before and during around as well as the science behind Why and when to breathe out of your nose versus your mouth to extend an exhale versus not? So all of that can be found in the more parsed and bogeys newsletter catalog as well. The link is in the show notes Another major tipping point for me ultimately serving as a catalyst was that when I became willing to lead with curiosity

Every individual shot gives you feedback. My coach once said, you know, it’s beautiful and so nice to have a top or a tracker, a shot man. Why am I butchering that? my God. The name is eluding me. Having a shot tracker available. But if you really think about it,

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Each individual shot on the range gives you all of the feedback you need. You can see the trajectory, the apex, the spin, the ball flight, the ball path. You know how well of contact you made. You can see your divot. And yes, it’s not quite as intense or immense and detailed and precise as having all of the technology around you. But if you’re willing to approach each shot with curiosity rather than immediate frustration, you can learn an incredible amount.

where the ball goes, how the contact felt can tell you so much about your posture, your grip, your takeaway, your contact, your balance, and so much more. And for me, curiosity has proven to be one of the most potent strengths and skills for me to regulate my emotions. Because leading with curiosity doesn’t allow any room for frustration or anger to linger.

Rather than shanking a shot and motherfucking it, I’m able just to sit back, take a deep breath, and just get curious. Huh, was I out of alignment? Was I up and down in my takeaway? Did I get off balance? Interesting, was I standing too close to the ball? Was I too far away?

And I am not perfect with this by any means, but leading with curiosity has proven to be a potent way to diffuse emotion, to help me better regulate my emotions. And building off of curiosity is developing the ability to just simply accept the past outcome. That’s it. The shot has been made, the hole has been played. You can’t go back and redo it. And you can sit there and dwell and ruminate and get all pissed off about it. Or you can accept it happened.

Take a moment to get curious, reset, refocus, and move on. Curiosity and acceptance have proven to be super powers for me. And I hope that you’ll really dig into understanding the value and the power that each of these absolutely have. Moving forward, one of the biggest, I think, aha moments for me that caught me by surprise in my journey thus far was how valuable and important it is to begin training like a golfer when I’m in the gym.

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I have a long history of competitive bodybuilding, of competitive powerlifting. There’s an inner meathead that resides within me. I’m not too interested in mobility and rotation and thoracic rotation and ability to twist turn with this force and speed and power. Just doesn’t quite do it for me to be frank. But I’ll tell you what, hitting powerful long striped shots down the middle of the fairway.

or hitting the green and sticking it within 10 feet of the pin. That’s fucking intoxicating. And if I need to alter and adjust what I do in the gym to produce more of that experience at a higher frequency, sign me up. And it was in episode six that I had the pleasure of meeting doctor of physical therapy, Dr. Trevor Hirsch, who is TPI certified out the wazoo, who really broke down some of the distinct differences in ways we need to be been prioritizing

different exercises and really just taking a different approach to the gym. If we’re truly serious about improving our golf game. And I have began to allow elements of what I’ve learned to, what’s the word, to creep into my routine. But about six to eight weeks ago, I made the decision that I’ve got to start training like a golfer, period. I’ve got to let go of all of these bodybuilding and powerlifting specific aspirations. And I love being strong.

I love the pump, but I can absolutely still prioritize those elements in my training regimen because they’re necessary to help me perform best on the course. But now my routine is littered in with a lot more core work, flexibility, mobility, rotation, exercises that in the past I would have considered silly and unnecessary. For a long time, I just thought I could muscle my way through the golf swing. And to be frank,

I have a lot of muscle and strength I can draw upon. I’ve just been using it incredibly ineffectively. So learning how to generate force in different planes of motion, allowing and creating an opportunity for my muscles to stretch, rotate and be mobile and flexible through various ranges of motion has allowed me to tap into the reservoir of strength, power and energy I possess.

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Had I not been taking mobility, flexibility and rotational strength seriously to this point, I would not have shot in some of the scores I have because I would constantly find myself before this stuck, tight, unable to rotate through. And if I’m being candid, I see it all of the time and I know you’ve seen it too, just these out of shape, overweight individuals and they might be hella good golfers. I’m not taking anything away from them. What I’m positing is I can’t help but-

wonder from a state of curiosity, how much better they could be, how much better you could hit the ball, how much more consistently you could hit the ball and not have lingering soreness for days after a round of 18. If you paid more attention to the type of work you were doing in the gym and on your body away from the course, that’s been an absolute game changer for me is really prioritizing training like a golfer.

Now I’m just looking through the list of notes I made here. And at the end of the day,

Playing the long game has really served me well. Truthfully, there’s no real deadline or sense of urgency to becoming a scratch golfer. That is the outcome I desire, the outcome that will happen. But in playing the long game, you and me need to be able to cultivate an attachment to the process. That’s it.

I talk a lot about this with my golf clients and with my professional poker clients. Is it so easy, whether on the poker table or the golf course, to get attached to the result? What’d you score today? What’d you shoot? How much money did you walk away with from an individual session? But the truth is, whether on the poker table or on the golf course or in the game of entrepreneurship in life, you can do everything right and still get a less

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than optimal result. If you remain attached to the result and you allow the result to determine your happiness, how worthy, deserving, and capable you feel, you will remain stuck in a shit-show downward spiral of unhappiness, frustration, and shame, and guilt, and grief, and the list goes on.

When you play the long game, need to learn to fall in love with the process. You need to fall in love with the mundane because the truth is significant and sustainable results are built upon a foundation of executing the basics over and over, falling in love with monotony, falling in love with the process of hitting X number of balls per practice session, of getting those 15 minute mobility and flexibility workouts done. Fall in love with the process.

Because the truth is if you want to expedite feeling confident, which I believe feeling confident is one of the most powerful drugs in the world. Cultivating confidence fast depends on your ability to follow through on the promises and commitments you’ve made. That is the process. The process is a series of steps.

action steps that need to be executed. A commitment to follow through and execute them allows you to feel good, to feel proud, to feel accomplished. It also helps you detach even further from the results. If you can show up for a round of golf and play committed, confident golf with every swing, methodically take your time, execute your pre-shot routine every single shot.

I have a strong imagination. You can walk away from that round feeling proud and accomplished, whether you shoot a 92 or a 72. So you need to learn to not only fall in love with the long game, but fall in love with the process as well.

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And as we wrap up this episode, I’m just looking through my notes to see if there’s anything else I wanted to really share here. For me personally, I think I’ll end on this note. I have alluded to this in many episodes, especially the first few golf for me is a mirror. I thrive and thoroughly enjoy the competitive nature, the element of playfulness, the gamification of it all. Golf has been my biggest teacher.

I have learned an incredible amount about myself and I’ve only been playing the game seriously for six months. It has shown me sides of myself I dislike. It has shown me sides of myself I didn’t know existed or to be frank, I thought I’d already let go of and overcome. Golf has been a phenomenal teacher for me. Approaching the game with a commitment to play to my potential, a commitment.

to become a scratch golfer and place myself into the top 1 % of golfers has been such a powerful personal development tool. It is required that I strengthen some of the tools already in my toolkit, my breath work, my meditation, my visualization, my hypnosis practices. It has forced me to walk the walk.

and align the walk with my talk to engage in the practices I speak about, the journaling, the breath work, the hiring of a coach, the after round reflections, the pre-shot routine, the setting and intention, the training like a competitive scratch golfer away from the golf course as well. And it just made me a better person. And I look forward to what the next six months will bring. And I know that the process

of breaking 90 to then breaking 80 is going to teach me an incredible amount about myself. And I hope that as you continue to come back to the game and continue to find enjoyment and success in the game, you’re slowing down to extract the learning lessons, the takeaways that have been most instrumental in your improvement on the course and allowing yourself to see how this has benefited you away from the course as well.

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Because whether it’s on the golf course, in the game of entrepreneurship on the poker table, or this beautiful game of life we all indulge in, there is a core collection of tools, concepts, and principles, presence, patience, acceptance, acknowledgement, emotional resiliency, confidence, the list goes on and on, that are superpowers in every domain of life.

And if you’re truly committed to becoming the best version of yourself on and away from the golf course, you’ll continue to tune into this podcast. You’ll continue down your personal development track, reading the books, doing the deep work on your own, hiring a coach, a therapist, whatever you need at that particular juncture of your chapter. You’ll continue to go all in on becoming the best version of yourself, which will allow you to shine your brightest on the golf course.

in your business as an employer, an employee, as a husband, a wife, a partner, a father, a mother, a friend, a son, a daughter, a neighbor. Never stop investing in yourself. Well, hey, I thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. You’ll be happy to know that there’s an even more detailed iteration of some of my key learning lessons as a recent edition of the More Pars Than Bogies newsletter. Again, the link to my newsletter is down below in the show notes.

I hope you found great value in today’s episode. you did find it valuable, share this episode with a friend, a fellow golfer, a coworker, a colleague up here, help them continue to understand some of these key learning lessons and be able to effortlessly start applying them to their own golf games and respective lives to achieve their goals. And hey, let me be frank.

I would greatly appreciate taking 30 seconds to leave a genuine rating and review on Apple podcasts. This podcast is an absolute blast. love connecting with so many of you on Instagram and on Twitter, hearing how you’ve taken key nuggets away from the respective episodes. It would mean the world to me if I could continue to grow this show and your support your willingness to leave a rating and review goes a long way and having this podcast place in front of more eyeballs and in more years.

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Well, thank you so much for listening. Have a fantastic rest of your day. Hit them straight this weekend and I’ll catch you in the next episode.