#9. Emotional Mastery: The Key to Consistently Shooting More Pars Than Bogeys

Episode Summary:
In this episode of The Scratch Golfers Mindset Podcast, Paul Salter shares exciting news about the launch of his More Pars Than Bogeys newsletter and dives deep into a vital but often overlooked aspect of golf—emotional mastery.
Paul discusses how emotional triggers and mismanaged emotions can sabotage your performance on the course. He breaks down a simple yet powerful breathing technique, the rapid reset breath, to help golfers reset emotionally after a bad shot, hole, or round. By learning to manage emotional and mental triggers, golfers can improve their performance, reduce frustration, and shoot lower scores.
P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about how mindset coaching and hypnotherapy can help you get unstuck from the proverbial bunker of poor performance on the course and in your business, click here to schedule a coaching discovery call with me.
Key Quotes:
- “Emotional mastery is imperative if you wish to shoot more pars than bogeys.”
- “You’re not going to immediately salvage or fix the deep rooted emotional problem by taking a couple extra hundred swings after a sub par round.”
- “You’ve got to learn to better manage, regulate, identify, control your emotions.”
Time Stamps:
- 00:00: Introducing the More Pars Than Bogeys Newsletter
- 02:06: The Importance of Emotional Mastery in Golf
- 04:08: The Impact of Unaddressed Emotions on Performance
- 09:51: The Rapid Reset Breath: A Strategy for Emotional Regulation
- 16:28: Read the More Pars Than Bogeys Newsletter for Valuable Insights
Transcript:
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (00:02.26)
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (00:02.26)
Hey fellow golfer, welcome back to another episode of the scratch golfers mindset podcast. My name is Paul Salter and I am thrilled you’re here because I am coming at you today, a million miles an hour with some exciting news updates and of course a whole lot of value designed to help you shoot.
more pars than bogies and it’s on that note that I’m going to take a minute to share with you something I’ve been working on. I’m excited to launch the very first edition of the more pars than bogies newsletter, which goes out tomorrow. Today’s Thursday. I don’t know, June 13th, I think Friday, June 14th.
first official edition of the more pars than bogeys newsletter and it will be a weekly staple every Friday around 6 30 a Eastern delivered to your inbox and the aim of this newsletter is simple to help double digit handicap golfers.
like yourself, overcome the emotional and mental hazards of your minds so that you can shoot more pars than bogeys. And I am really excited about this project. As much as I love speaking, talking here on this podcast, I believe I’m a writer at heart and every week will be jam packed with value. But most importantly, every edition of the newsletter will sign off with an action step or two and something that you can immediately
the show notes and I’m inviting you please reach out I’d love to hear what you think of this first one so I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to be sending out a link to the show notes and I’m going to
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (02:05.862)
I can continue to fine tune and upgrade to best provide you with the value you need to shoot more pars than bogeys. And on that note, we’re gonna dive into an aspect of the game here that again, continues to not get the attention it not only deserves, but needs if you are truly serious about.
and committed to shooting lower scores. You can spend hours and hours at the range every week, every day, but let me just drop the blunt truth on you. You cannot out swing the emotional and the mental hazards of your mind.
You know, I was having a wonderful conversation with Jesse Perryman. He is the founder and host of the Flag Hunters podcast. And I had the privilege of joining him in what turned out to be actually a couple of episodes. It was so long and had so much depth, we broke it up into two. So be on the lookout for that in late June. But we started talking about one of the grave mistakes we’ve witnessed and he spent so much time.
on the course, on the range and around the best of the best golfers. But you see a golfer have a subpar round by his or her standards. And many of them, and I’m talking 98 % of them, make the mistake after a subpar round.
They go to the range for hours and I mean like literally hours trying to swing themselves out of the funk, the anger, the regret, the shame, whatever cacophony of emotions they experienced that day. They are misled and of the mindset that three additional hours after an already six to eight hour day on the range is going to be what helps them play their best tomorrow.
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (04:07.796)
And the simple truth is that is not the case. You’re not going to immediately salvage or fix the deep rooted emotional problem by taking a couple extra hundred swings after a sub par round. These golfers in this example, as Jesse and I discussed at great length would be better served taking some time to wind down.
taking some time to intentionally not only go do the physical recovery aspects to ready their body for the next round, but do some of the emotional recovery, do the work to turn down the volume of their emotional brain and whether that be self hypnosis, hypnosis with a coach, meditation, visualization, journaling, or just time and what I like to refer to as silence, solitude, and stillness.
they’d be much better off.
if they took one of those approaches, because golf is an emotional game, you and I both know this. And the reason you’re listening is because you’re aware some of your big emotions have continued to get in the way they’ve plagued you from performing to your potential when you need it most. And the reason I’m using this example is because I think you’ve been there. And I think you’ve at least seen it or read about it in the professional leagues, you have a subpar round, you’re pissed off.
off, you’re angry, you’re uncertain and questioning why did my weeks or months of extra instructions and lessons and time on the range.
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (05:45.012)
not translate to this weekend’s tournament, this competition, or this round with some of my best friends, coworkers, or the random two some I got paired with. And what I want you to begin understanding, begin recognizing is at the core of the cacophony of emotions you experience, anger, frustration, excitement, joy, regret, fear, embarrassment, pressure, overwhelm, is the following.
Emotion is literally defined as energy in motion. And I want you to really chew on that for a second.
Emotion is energy in motion. So when you have an emotional experience, what’s taking place is a significant amount of energy is moving throughout your body. And this is what you physically feel on the course or literally in any aspect of your life. So to give you a few examples you might relate to.
You may experience tightness in your chest when you’re stressed, tension in your body when you’re frustrated, a heat in your forehead when you’re angry, butterflies in your stomach when you’re overexcited or nervous, heaviness on your shoulders and neck when expectations and pressure to perform are present.
Any of those sound familiar? Again, this is just simply energy and motion. And when unaddressed and not properly managed, each of these emotions contributes to further tension and tightness throughout the body. And you may be wondering, okay, I get this, it makes sense, but why does it matter? How does it influence my golf game? This is how.
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (07:46.452)
Tension and tightness are the antithesis of a smooth fluid swing that perfect swing You’ve been working tirelessly on for countless hours tension and tightness are the antithesis of that swing and it it just baffles me when I constantly Constantly see golfers of all levels not only spend hundreds of hours but thousands of dollars
continuing to try to fine tune, tweak, optimize, upgrade, update, and change their swing, yet when they need it most, they continue to underperform because of mismanaged and unaddressed emotions. You have to recognize that life…
which I firmly believe as I’ve shared on this podcast is a beautiful reflection or mirror of the golf course and vice versa. So this statement applies to both, but you are forced to traverse an emotional battlefield of triggers. We have those physical literal hazards on the golf course, the bunkers, the water, the OB markers.
But you have so many more emotional and mental hazards of your mind that when triggered, lead to experience a strong, intense, visceral emotional reaction that as I’ve talked about before, permeates into your word choice, self -talk, your beliefs, your swing, and ultimately your ability to score low and shoot more pars than bogeys.
We need to take a different approach. Emotional mastery is imperative if you wish to not only shoot more pars than bogeys, but to truly achieve your potential as a human, a father, a mother, a spouse.
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (09:51.348)
a leader, a neighbor, a brother, a son, a daughter, a sister. You’ve got to learn to better manage, regulate, identify, control your emotions because the truth is, in the words of the great Dr. Sigmund Freud, unexpressed emotions will never die. That energy just keeps moving and circulating and yes, it might settle, but it grows and becomes this pent up.
ball of energy. And Freud goes on to continue saying that these emotions, when buried alive, will come forth later in uglier ways. Think about that for a second. All of the moments in your life where you’ve experienced an emotional outburst, whether it be anger, shame, frustration, or sadness, or grief at the core, is besides the point.
This emotional outburst was caused by this accumulation of energy. It continued to accumulate and accumulate. It had nowhere to go. It was unexpressed until it reached a boiling point. It crossed the threshold. And boom, the emotional explosion occurred. I mentioned earlier the root of the word emotion.
And the root definition is energy and motion. And you feel these emotions physically, again, like anxiety in your chest, a heaviness, a weight on your shoulders, because this energy literally is in motion. It’s vibrating at a certain frequency. And I just want you to take a moment to pause and consider the following. Like, think about the difference in not only your overall experience playing around, but…
each hole, each individual swing when you are playing frustrated versus playing confident.
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (11:50.74)
I have a hunch there’s a massive difference in your body, your swing, and your score.
Now it’s important as we continue this discussion back and forth, let’s define emotions. Let’s make it really simple and tangible to begin understanding and working with. Emotions are pre -programmed unconscious reactions to circumstances, people or environments. And what’s really important to note is they’re learned programs. You as a child mimic your parents and your environment’s expression of emotion. So as a very likely relatable example for many of you,
listening, you know, when you were five years old, you might not have known that your dad was angry. But that little five -year -old could feel it. He could sense it. And he began to learn that when dad was angry, he yelled, he screamed. So you began to internalize whenever this emotion was present, the correct reaction was yelling and screaming.
Does any of this sound familiar to how you might respond or previously have responded to a poor shot or slicing your opening drive?
Yeah, I thought so. So as you begin to think about the collection of different emotions you experienced as a child, from sadness to shame to anger, guilt and regret, but you didn’t know how to handle them because you’re a five year old little boy or girl, unequipped with emotional regulation tools, what happens? These emotions that overwhelm this tiny young little body of yours.
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (13:28.5)
become repressed, they become stuck. And these stuck emotions begin to resurface every time you accumulate and reach a threshold or boiling point. And again, when unexpressed emotions won’t die, they’re buried alive and they do come forth later in uglier ways. So what we need to take away from this is…
The collection of emotional reactions you have, A, are unconsciously occurring when you are triggered by the vast number of triggers that you experience in life and in a round of golf that I’ve talked about in great detail, specifically on episodes three and seven on the Scratch Golfers Mindset podcast. But what I want you to take away is,
It’s not just enough to recognize, this pisses me off on the golf course. This makes me angry. I’m frustrated. I have a bad temper. Like those labels and identities, like it’s great to have that awareness, but it’s just scratching the surface. If you truly want to get out of your own way and save yourself five, eight, maybe 10, 12, even 15 shots per round, you need to label and identify the emotions most
holding you back and begin to acknowledge where and how they physically present in your body. Tightness, tension, heaviness, pressure, heat, the reason being…
A, those are just simply physical signs from your body. So as you start to notice a little tickle of tension in your chest or heat on your forehead, this is a sign. The more aware of this you become.
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (15:14.196)
the more proactive you can be in getting ahead of these emotions, implementing some of the strategies I’m going to share with you in just a couple of minutes to emotionally off gas, emotionally reset, to take back control and remain in the driver seat of your decision making. And I like to go to,
describing two different types of strategies when it comes to managing emotions to help you play better golf. There’s the deep work you can do off the golf course, which is the self -hypnosis, the mindset coaching, and the in -depth emotional journal prompting, and even deeper emotionally specific breath work exercises.
But I think it’s incredibly important that you have a couple of tangible skills in your back pocket to deploy while you’re on the golf course. And in this week’s edition of the More Pars Than Bogies newsletter, I break these down in great detail for you. But I think it’d be really helpful to actually go through one of them on the podcast with you as well. So you can literally hear how it is done. So again, this is one of my favorite on the course emotional, what I like to call off -gap.
passing strategies. If you think about it, you’re navigating all of these triggers that are slightly increasing this emotional pressure, this emotional intensity, and your job is to lower that emotional pressure or accumulation to keep you in that zone of focus because you are an emotional being, you do want to feel a little bit of pressure, a little bit of focus and tightness as a result of this, this tension, this level of care and focus present to keep you in that flow state, but too much emotion,
as we both know, can boil over to become counterproductive. So here is one of my favorite strategies. I call it the rapid reset breath. And the aim of this breath is to bring immediate attention to the present moment before off gassing.
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (17:16.308)
whatever accumulating emotion is present and beginning to step into the driver’s seat of your decision making. So I’m gonna walk you through how it’s done and then I’m gonna actually demo it as well so you can hear it because there’s just some distinct subtleties that are important. So here it is in six simple steps. Number one, you’re gonna take two sharp.
inhales through your nose and then exhale audibly through your mouth for three seconds and then you’re going to repeat that.
but the second time will be an audible of six seconds exhaling through your mouth, two more sharp inhales through your nose, and then another exhale audibly through your mouth for nine seconds. So it really is two sec or two sharp inhales through your nose, a three second audible exhale, then a six second, and then a nine second with those two sharp inhales through your nose in between each exhale. Now a couple of important nuances of this breath. Number one, the sharp,
for watching.
Inhale is something that requires a lot of attention and focus. So the reason I include this breath is it helps force you to be present in the moment. You can’t do this breath unless you’re 110 % focused on the present moment. So it takes you away from the worry, anxiety that you may be experiencing as a result of these accumulating emotions and it grounds you in the present moment. Two, as we begin to lengthen our exhale in relation to the amount we are
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (18:48.006)
inhaling that begins to further ground us begins to turn down the volume of our emotional brain and then the audible exhale the reason I’m so specific on audibly exhaling which I’ll demonstrate in just a moment is again that sound helps to engage some of your senses and further keep you in that present moment so one round is gonna look or I guess in this case sound as follows
Paul Salter | Golf Mindset Coach (19:35.028)
And that’s it. Now you can modify and maybe you’d be feeling slightly embarrassed to do this out in front of your buddies. So do it when you’re driving to your ball or the next hole by yourself, walk 50 yards away from the cart and do it yourself. But that’s one round of a rapid reset breath, which is going to help you off gas.
any pent -up emotion that’s spilling over in rapid fashion. And I recommend that you implement this immediately after you notice a surge in any toxic emotion. So specifically helpful after a bad shot, a bad hole, and definitely a couple rounds of this after a bad round. Again, you are an emotional being, and you are forced to traverse
a countless number of potential emotional triggers on the golf course. The better you can begin to identify them and off gas and regulate your emotions in real time, the more calm, cool, collective, collected, excuse me, you will feel as you play your round, which will keep you locked into that flow state empowering you to play to your potential.
I sincerely appreciate you for tuning into another episode of the scratch golfers mindset podcast. And again, I want to invite you to read the first edition of the more pars than bogeys newsletter again, every Friday around six 30 Eastern, you will get this newsletter delivered to your inbox, which is designed to help double digit handicap golfers overcome the emotional and mental hazards of their minds to shoot more.
cars than bogies. Thank you so much for listening today. If you haven’t done so already, 30 seconds to leave a genuine rating and review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, wherever you’re listening to the show goes a long way and would really be appreciated. With that said, have a fantastic day, a phenomenal round of golf, and I’ll catch you in the next episode.
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PAUL SALTER
Paul Salter - known as The Golf Hypnotherapist - is a High-Performance Mindset Coach who leverages hypnosis and powerful subconscious reprogramming techniques to help golfers of all ages and skill levels overcome the mental hazards of their minds so they shoot lower scores and play to their potential.