Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Hello and welcome to Flaghunters ! It is a privilege to bring to you this powerful insight into playing better Golf. In all my years of being in the game of Golf from competing at a high amateur level, to caddying, teaching, and being a overall Golf geek, I have an insatiable, curiosity driven desire to get down to the bottom of what it takes to truly get better playing the game of Golf that we all unconditionally love. This has been one of the greatest journeys of my life and I am deeply grateful for all that Golf has given me. Thank you for joining me in this incredible journey. This is my ever evolving love letter to Golf. Jesse Perryman P.S. Please Rate, Review and Subscribe !
Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Unstuck: Performance Coaching for Lower Scores and Greater Joy
Tim O'Connor shares his journey from golf-obsessed amateur to performance coach, revealing how the mental game is often what separates good players from great ones.
• Getting into golf initially as a caddy, observing and learning from scratch players
• Moving from technical, "tab A into slot B" approaches to more instinctual, joy-focused golf
• Understanding that mistaking the golf ball for the target creates unnecessary tension
• Recognizing how we typically view golf as a test of competency rather than an experience
• Exploring "inside-out thinking" and finding happiness from within rather than external results
• Balancing competitive drive with present-moment awareness
• Learning to embrace negative thoughts rather than fighting them
• Using awareness as a curative tool to diffuse performance anxiety
• Practicing "quiet mind" putting by simply enjoying your stroke without technical thoughts
Find Tim at www.oconnorgolf.com and follow his blog "Up and Down" on Substack, or listen to his podcast "Swing Thoughts" now in its 10th year.
A big Thank You to Mizzuno and JumboMax grips !
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Fly Hunters Golf Podcast. My name is Jesse Perryman and I am your host, along with my friend, justin Tang, a lead instructor at the Tanah Merritt Golf Club in Singapore, holistic coach, well-versed, well-educated, well-spoken, and if you're ever in the Singapore area and you want to head on over there, I would behoove you to spend some time with him, because it will be an enriching hour or two and it's a privilege and a pleasure to have him as my podcast partner. And this week it's a privilege and an absolute pleasure to bring to you a performance coach by the name of Tim O'Connor. Tim is an author, he has come out with a book Getting Unstuck and has some incredible products that if you go to wwwoconnergolfcom you're going to find. And this conversation was great.
Speaker 1:I very much enjoyed the interplay between Justin, tim and myself. We go into really the mental side of it and we go into being very careful about what labels we give ourselves and how we choose to form identifications to the game and, quite frankly in our life, to be aware of that. Tim is from Canada and he was influenced by Fred Shoemaker. Those who are longtime listeners know that I had Fred on the pod, and Fred has been a nice influence for all of us, quite frankly, with his work, and we just continue that conversation. We really go into the things that we can do to make ourselves better and to play with more enjoyment and more joy. Even as a competitive player whether you play competitively for the love of the game or you play competitively for a living there still needs to be a perspective and we discuss those perspective and those gray areas that we can really fly into the perception and the balance of trying but not trying, of grinding but not grinding, and getting in there and allowing ourselves to play from joy even in the midst of competition. So I would encourage you to go to his website Once again it's www. O'connorgolfcom and check it out, reach out to him. The best way to get a hold of him is through his website for some one-on-one training and or his plethora of phenomenal products.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan. I absolutely loved this episode and I'm sure you will enjoy it as well. So everyone, thanks for listening and cheers. Loved this episode and I'm sure you will enjoy it as well. So everyone, thanks for listening and cheers. Have a fantastic rest of your week. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. I am your host, jesse Perryman, along with my great friend, teacher extraordinaire, believes in all things holistic to get better playing this lovely game that we all love. His name is Justin Tang and our guest today. Oh, by the way, justin is an instructor at the ternamera golf club in singapore, so if you're ever in singapore, tell him that you listen to the podcast and he'll probably turn you away. I'm kidding anyway. Uh, justin, he's a brother from another mother and our guest today is tim o'connor. Tim, uh, welcome, thanks for saying yes, coming on Well always.
Speaker 2:thank you for the invite.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Tim. Good to speak with you again, Jess. Always hey, Tim, so how do you get involved in golf?
Speaker 2:How do I get involved in golf? Well, as a kid I was, my dad said, hey, you could probably earn some money doing this thing called caddying. So I got into it that way at a private club in London, ontario, in Canada, and caddying. I was also a junior golfer but I became a much better caddy than a golfer a golfer. And so the really good players at our club would ask me to caddy for them in, like the club championships and invitationals and that kind of thing, and watching these players paint the sky, just the way they talk, the way they made decisions. I I golf got its hooks in me because I went I want to be like these guys, you know these scratch players, just everything about the way they conducted themselves and obviously the way they hit golf shots. And that's basically how I got into golf and, like a lot of people, I just became a golf obsessive, you know into. I kind of stopped playing the game because I got into music I play. I play bass in um. Right now I'm in a punk band, which is one of the most fun things I do, uh.
Speaker 2:But I got into golf, back into golf in in my 20s and I just was always working, working, working to emulate those scratch players I used to caddy for and I wanted they were the models that I wanted to be like. But, um, you know. So I did everything I thought was the right thing to do. I read every book, I read the videos, I did everything you're supposed to do, um, swing the right way, stand the right way, all that good stuff. But I never got really better than a nine handicap and I just sort of realized eventually, through the help of people like Sean Foley, who you've had on your podcast recently, another friend, paul Dooland, and some personal growth, work, work, I did I just came to understand that, oh my God, I was a paralysis by analysis basket case. So I just kind of did a 180 and I did.
Speaker 2:I really the work of Fred Shoemaker really resonated with me and I just did this, as I say, a 180 from kind of tab A into slot B, golf and all this technical focus to more of just playing and swinging in a more instinctual way. And so that's how I got into the game and I think, through my own struggles with it, that that's what helped me become a coach, because I've experienced everything that most players have gone through in terms of how this game just torments us, in terms of all this investment emotionally, you know, monetarily, the time and all this trying hard and it just the roi, for that is just so crappy. Most people just don't get better trying to. You know, do the what they see on youtube and all the trying to swing perfectly and um. So yeah, that's in brief, that's kind of my story.
Speaker 2:How I got into into golf and into coaching and you know that's that's. I just find that so many people they love this game but they kind of have the sense that why does golf hate me? I'm trying to work with them to maybe patch up that love affair.
Speaker 3:Here's a question for you guys when do you think all that turmoil comes from? I would say it comes from the ball just being there looking at you. That's where it all begins. And because the ball doesn't move compared to other sports, we think we can do things to the ball. We think we can overpower the ball, bend it to our will.
Speaker 2:That's where all the demons come from Jesse what do you think?
Speaker 1:Well, I think the very nature of the game is to elicit every possible holistic challenge known to man. I mean, can you think of a sport that will invite every dark side gremlin that you have rummaging around in your subconscious and have it manifest at a moment's notice, you seem, if you're looking down the middle of, say, a par five, that's got trees on the right and out of bounds on the left. If you think for one second, if that ball is going left, or you say that you don't want it to go left, nervous system says thanks, it's going left, exactly.
Speaker 3:Ironic reactance theory.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know it's. How do you get past that? How do you accept that part of our humanness that we are flawed by a very nature? But we can use these disadvantages to our advantage with a trained and disciplined mind yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I think that, um, someone with a trained mind is going to beat someone with a new semi-trained swing any day of the week. Really, I mean it just that'll just happen. But I also there's a couple of things. So, justin, I really resonate with what you're saying about that ball being down there. I think one of the core things that happens for people is like it's kind of like that ball sits there and it's almost like challenging. Really, really, you think you're going to hit me with that little implement thing. You really think that you're going to be able to hit me solid towards my target? Who are you kidding? But I think the core thing that happens around the golf ball is that we mistake the ball for the target and it is not the target. It's. You know we collect it for the target and it is not the target. It's you know we collect it on the way. So that's a core thing that I work with a lot of players. It's amazing how, when you take the focus from the little white thing at your feet and move it to the target, how it makes golf a lot easier. But I think also the thing that really, um, jesse, connecting to what you're saying.
Speaker 2:I I think a lot of it is that we view golf and the golf course as a test. It's a test of our competency, of our ability to do something at a level that we wish, and we attach our ability to do something at a level that we wish and we attach our identity to it and our self-esteem to it. And when golf is viewed in that way, that is setting yourself up for failure. It's just too hard a game. The emotional rollercoaster that you ride, the peaks and valleys, it's just nutty and it's none of that.
Speaker 2:So to me, if we can just somehow arrive at a balance of you know what, to me, gratitude is a big piece, is that I, you know, I am so fortunate to be able to play this game, have the means to do it the, the, the, the body, the physical, the ability to go out and be out on a golf course and be in this amazing environment, be with some friends or maybe some people you haven't met, but whatever, and to play this, this game, um, yeah, not unless, not for a second am I saying you hit it sideways? Ha, you know, laugh it off. No, we all want to hit the ball. Well, but it's like all the rest of our life, I believe it's. There's a whole cascade of things and if we hold them in balance, I think we get to experience joy a lot more, a lot more. And as a bonus, I think we generally play a lot better when we're in, come from that space. That it's not a test. It's actually, you know, a great experience that we're lucky to participate in. Couldn't agree more.
Speaker 3:Hey Tim. So going back to paralysis by analysis, right, so the ball sits there. I think it's a time issue, isn't it? You've got so much time to think about what you want to do to the ball, and in other sports, like baseball, there isn't much time to think. When the pitch comes at you, you just have to react. Same for soccer, same for football, same for tennis, but in goal, you've got time. Time is your friend, almost. Time is also your enemy.
Speaker 2:A thousand percent yes.
Speaker 3:And going back to paralysis by analysis. We tend to get in our way when we think, hey look, if I run through my pre-flight checklist I'm good. Can you talk to that for the benefit of our listeners how that is actually detrimental to our games?
Speaker 2:Well, okay, so when you run through the checklist, basically you're running through the list of things that you hope to do, right, and so whenever we're in that space, we're drawing attention usually to our golf swing and how we're going to move our body parts, and whenever we do that, we are going to bring extra muscular tension to whatever we're thinking about, and that is just a recipe for bad golf. You cannot achieve flow, you don't generate speed, you're going to be out of sync, all those things whenever you bring unwanted muscular tension to what you're doing and, in essence, you're self-interfering. That's the core thing. See, one of the things that is very interesting to me is that in our society, we are a very in our heads culture. Everything.
Speaker 2:We've got so much information coming at us that we're so self-conscious about what we're doing so we live in our heads. We're so self-conscious about what we're doing, so we live in our heads. And you know, the reason most men are bad dancers is because they're so disconnected from their bodies, and so when we live in our heads, we can't connect with the tool which is the golf club, and we just lose all that connection to what we can do. Quite naturally, you know most people when you so, coming back to what you said about sports and what you react it's much easier to access a state of flow, you know, responding to a target and allowing our body to go rather than trying to make it do things. So when we're trying to do something right, we're going to be in a state of tension and generally self-interfere.
Speaker 3:You know what's my favorite version of trying? Someone messes up the front nine, all right. All right, tom, time to play golf, let's try hard. And then I go. You mean, you were not playing golf on the front nine, you're not trying hard, what were you doing? There's this idea that if I try hard enough, I will go under par. But that often gets in our way, and I'll give you an example of one of my top players. His name is Philip Lee. He is 12 years old. He texted me one day and says hey, coach, just completed a tournament I won. I shot 29 and 37. Played bad. I'm like, hang on, you shot a 29 and you ended up six under par. That's his idea of playing bad.
Speaker 3:and then he was like, hey, he wasn't focused on. Hey, I shot 29, like, which is a damn good accomplishment for anyone, oh my god, yes, let alone a junior golfer at 12 years old. He was only focused on the 37. So he's like how did I shoot? Or why did I shoot that 37? So I said were you trying to shoot 58? And then he goes yes, I said that's the problem. When we try to make something happen, the probability of that happening diminishes greatly.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because it becomes something extrinsic to us, something outside of us, and it becomes kind of a have to and it's a standard we're trying to reach. And I think that when we're looking at things external to us like anything, that's kind of a standard, a score, a result, in many ways what we're doing is our true self is seeking joy all the time. We want fulfillment, we want growth, we want connection, all that. But when we are not setting, when it doesn't appear that we're going to get what we want, that we believe will deliver us happiness, that's when we are sapped of energy, we lose our focus, we lose our confidence, because it all becomes about this external goal that we judge will bring us happiness and joy. And there's no joy from things external. You could win the Masters Golf Tournament, that'd be a wonderful thing, but the next day you still have the same issues that are on your life, the things that are going on.
Speaker 2:There's a great phrase I learned a few years ago. It's called arrival fallacy. And we think in our life we get the, we get the hot car, we get the promotion at work, our, our index goes from, you know, seven till four. We'll be happy. What happens to the guy who gets his index down to four, oh, I want to be at two. The guy who wins a major tournament, what happens to him? I want to win two majors, and so it's all this seeking, seeking, seeking happiness and joy and happiness is an inside job. So I think that's the but. Again, our culture says that you need to accomplish things, you have to look a certain way and you need, you need to achieve, and we get hoodwinked as a society that we think that that will bring us joy and fulfillment.
Speaker 3:Can you talk a little bit more about inside out thinking? What you alluded to, happiness comes from within, so give give our listeners an example. Right, I've got two beautiful daughters, eight and six. On one occasion two of them can be creating a din. I'm not affected. Another occasion they could be doing the same thing and I get so worked up, angry, angry, start yelling at them. Can you explain to our listeners how to use the power of inside out thinking to make their lives a better place every day?
Speaker 2:is to accept that as a human being, we have potential and capability and connections to things that we aren't even aware of, like I believe that golf is a technical, physical, emotional, physical and spiritual game, and the things that we think will generally bring us happiness generally do not. And so what is happiness? I think happiness to me is what happened every once in a while. Well, yeah, you shoot a good score, you post your number in in the computer and your thing goes down. Hey, it feels good, you little high fives with everyone. But it's, it's ethereal, I mean, it's just ephemeral, it's, it's ethereal, I mean it's just ephemeral, it's just it's here and it's gone. But where does true joy come from? I think it comes from you hit a shot and you just see it through that little window and it just feels so good and that's just. You just have this feeling, you savor it, and, and so whether anyone else has saw it, whether it led to you winning a golf tournament, maybe, but to me it's the experience of just being yourself and connecting to what you're truly capable of and seeing those possibilities. It's really kind of a hard thing to nail down, but true joy to me comes from within and we experience it when you know you go to Starbucks and you connect with the server and you say, how are you today? And the person who was frowning suddenly smiles Joy. Or you just go out on a beautiful day and you just look at the sun and going and feel it on your face and you hear the birds sing and just like this feeling of just peace and joy comes through. Now that just ebbs and flows.
Speaker 2:I mean, life is full of sadness and anger and grief and all kinds of things, and anger and grief and all kinds of things. But I really do think that in golf and in life, what we're seeking is to be fulfilled as an individual. My life has meaning and purpose and I get joy from those things. And if I happen to win a golf tournament, hey, that's great, that's a bonus, but that's not going to change your life. And and I know a lot of, I know a lot of really good players and golf professors who are miserable pricks, people I don't want to be around. But oh, boy there. Yeah, that guy, he's got it, man, what a swing. The guy brings it in tournaments, hey, that's great and all the power to you, man. But life there's way more to life than just that.
Speaker 1:I have a question for both of you. Is there a way to have a balance of wanting the external goals let's say, for example, playing whatever level of competitive golf that you play, whether it's high-level, amateur or professional or whatever of wanting external stuff and being okay with, you know, surrendering to the moment and all that? So is there a possibility to be a dog and wanting to go out there and beat everybody's ass and having the internal fortitude or training to basically be a Jedi master, to be in a state of acceptance? It's like a dichotomy between being an asshole and an angel. Is there a possibility to have both consciousnesses inside of you while you're playing competitively, Like I really want to win, I want to go out there and play well, I want to whoop everybody's ass and I also am going to be okay with whatever happens and still have an undercurrent where the intention is to play within myself and to have the spirit of joy.
Speaker 1:And the reason why I ask this open-ended question is because I felt it from Scotty Scheffler. I got to spend a day with Scotty last year. I know Ted Scott really well and he exemplifies this very phenomenon which I'm putting out there to you two and in the universe that you could be a dog and be intense but yet have a smile on your face and yet enjoy the experience. It's like it's hard for me to put my finger on right now with words, so forgive me as I'm fumbling over, I'm trying to put them into understandable vernacular, but boy, it seems to me that that would be the best of both worlds.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, jesse, I would give you more credit. You did a great job there. I think you framed that. I think you framed that really well. And, yes, it's absolutely possible to want to go out and be the best player, use whatever phraseology you want, kill everybody, step on their necks whatever you know and emerge as the top person. But you spoke of it as you were laying that out.
Speaker 2:It's holding that in balance, and so Scotty Scheffler, I think, is a great example of someone who is so grounded. So what are the most important things to him in his life? To me, it's faith and family. So those are the things that he is emotionally invested in. So he wants to win a golf tournament, but will his life? Will he be? He'll be super disappointed if he loses a golf tournament. I thought it was so great last year when we finally heard Scott unleash an F-bomb. Oh, a human being. Okay, I like that. You know, yeah, we're going to be disappointed, but is he going to be like crushed? Is he going to be dragging his ass around for a week? But no, because he holds. It's that imbalance, and I think so.
Speaker 2:I've written a book called Getting Unstuck Seven Transformational Practices for Golf Nerds, and I talk about this subject in my book and so I have two other examples. So one of those is Jordan Spieth. So Jordan Spieth, his whole the family was always centered around. I forget his sister's name, but she's challenged. The whole family was around. How do they support their sister? So you know, when he dunks it in the water, makes what did he make? The 11 or 12 on 12 at masters? Yeah, super disappointed. Are you kidding me? Yeah, really disappointed. But did his life? Did he suddenly have to look at his life in a new way and reinvent himself? And all that? No, because that's important to win the Masters, but what's more important, family. And one of the best examples is, if you recall, bruce Litsky.
Speaker 2:Bruce Litsky, I interviewed him years ago. It was one of the most funny interviews I ever did, and so this Bruce Litsky played kind of a plotting game. He had that suddenly over over the top fade that was. You know, you could count on it, like the sun coming up every day, and I think he won something like 12 PGA Tour events and he won eight, 10. I'm not sure how many champions tour event. This guy was a super player. But I asked him what, why do you play golf, he goes. I play golf so I can earn enough money so I can restore cars, I can coach my daughter, my son, playing baseball, I can be an attentive spouse and I can go fishing.
Speaker 3:Essentially a means to an end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but he didn't define himself by his golf and I think that that's, when you look at a lot of these players like rory mcelroy, I think, is a great example of someone who's like, he's lived and died with his golf, uh, but he keeps coming back because the he he knows, at the end of the day, it's made him an enormously rich person, all these things, this life of fame and whatnot, but at the end of the day, that's not what's going to make him happy. And, yeah, he's got four majors under his belt. He wants to get that fifth. But is that going to make him ascend to this state of enlightenment and nirvana, eternal bliss?
Speaker 3:nah, so you jesse, to your question. I think it begins with understanding that there is no correlation between the asshole meter and success.
Speaker 2:Where can you get one of those meters?
Speaker 3:Go to flaghuntersgolfcom. We'll send you an autographed edition. That's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'll be ready soon in our merchandise shop. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Justin, Sorry. I wanted to ask Tim about his coaching influences and the road he took to performance coaching. So obviously Tim has taught a lot of high-level golfers, was a college college golf coach. For the benefit of our listeners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I coached the University of Guelph golf team in Canada. I've coached all kinds of players, a spattering of Canadian tour players, some scratch players, but everyone from novices to mid-handicappers for sure scratch players, but you know, everyone from novices to mid to mid handicappers, for sure. But the uh I I grew up like everybody else. Um, you know, jack nicholas was just like he was. You know, the guy uh absorbed everything that I could about ben hogan. I even edited a book on ben Ben Hogan's golf swing and I wrote the biography of Mo Norman.
Speaker 2:And Mo had a massive effect on on my understanding of golf and performance. And what was very cool about Mo is that, you know, universally regarded as the best ball striker whoever lived, Mo never took one golf lesson. Mo's golf swing completely homemade and anyone who's looked at Mo, either in still pictures or obviously on video, I mean his swing looks, his setup looks so weird. His arms ramrod straight out like that. His legs are super wide. He looks more tipped over than any golfer you've ever seen. But this was a guy who, just as I say, hit it dead solid, perfect, like close to every time, and I was really fortunate to play golf with Mo three times. Watch him do innumerable clinics, but the core thing what I'm getting to is that he developed his swing his way. He was not relying on any kind of method or this is how you do it.
Speaker 2:When Mo was an amateur, people would say you'll never be any good standing like that or holding the club like that, because it appeared that Mo had in his trail hand, his right hand, that the club was in the palm of his hand. And of course everyone says, no, you've got to have that in the fingers right. So people said, mo, you'll never be any good doing that. And he says, well, I guess I'm no good. Well, he won close to 60 amateur tournaments. You know the guy went to Canadian amateurs. The guy, as I say, universally regarded as the best ball striker that lived and he did it his way.
Speaker 3:And he was at ease with himself not playing on the US tour.
Speaker 2:Well, here's what I think happened. See, a lot of people made the mistake, the assumption, if you will, that Mo was like a hermit and that he always wanted to be by himself and he's kind of a very closed off person with Mo's friends, who were all golf professionals, you, he was highly social, he loved being around them, he was a loyal friend. And I think what happened for mo was when he was on the us tour, um, for two years he was exceedingly lonely. He just, you know, at the time pros would just finish the round, go play cards, have drinks when mo felt so uncomfortable. But also, mo came from a scarcity mindset financially, even though he was given bursaries by that he won to in essence finance him through his stints on the Southern US tour. He didn't want to spend any money because he came from a mindset of scarcity. So he never had good shoes, good equipment, anything, so he always felt like the odd duck.
Speaker 2:And then what happened was two professionals, professionals, and they either were very over the top in in telling Mo he needed to dress better, take a caddy, stop fooling around. There are there's kind of there's two ways. You kind of look at that. Either they were being very rude and over the top to Mo or they're trying to help him. Regardless. He was overwhelmed by this and felt humiliated and left the tour and so in essence, he came back to play golf in Canada and dominated the Canadian tour and I think a large piece of it was he just felt way more comfortable with the guys he knew and Canada and all that stuff and just very more comfortable being the the big fish in a small pond.
Speaker 3:So can you talk about the road you took to performance coaching? Okay, thank, you.
Speaker 2:Well, like I said earlier, when I came to understand that I was a paralysis by analysis, basket case, um see, one of the things I um, my background is as a journalist. I was, uh, in the 80s I was a music critic. I um, given my musical background, I was very fortunate to interview and meet people like David Bowie, pink Floyd, u2, those people. And then I got into golf in a big way again and, as I said, as a journalist I got to meet amazing people David Ledbetter, people, david Ledbetter, all kinds of interesting people. But when I met Sean Foley, he started to look. He looked at the game in a wider way than anyone else I'd ever met before and he also introduced me to the work of a British performance coach named Carl Morris, of a British performance coach named Carl Morris, and I just was just became enamored with Carl's stuff Back in the day of CDs and everything. I must have had 10 of his and I would just, I would study them, because that's what I did in my life. I once I get into something, I'm neck deep, and so that's what I did with Carl's stuff.
Speaker 2:I met a guy named Paul Dooland who is now coaching PJ tour and LPGA tour players in the mental game. So I started to understand that, oh, tim, you need to be looking in this other space particularly. You know, quote like the mental game. So they all had a big um influence on me. But the biggest really was fred shoemaker and I started to. I I got introduced to his work, his book I think extraordinary golf is just an amazing book, the most it. It's so different than any golf book you'll ever read. And then, uh, he came up to Canada a few times and went to his workshops and I just became a super fan of Fred Shoemaker and I got to know him and his, his wife, joe, and actually did some consulting work for them with some project that they had going and through that I really got to to have a different look at the game and, um, yeah, that's, those are my core influences, right there can you talk a little?
Speaker 2:bit about your two products. Quiet mind is a way of looking at playing the game in terms of developing awareness of what's going on for you when you play the game, and the obedience training for your brain is an online program that I did, that you can get access through the platform called Udemy, and those programs are largely around the core skills of developing awareness of what's going on, of what's going on, and that involves things like meditation, learning, using journaling, doing exercises, like recording your three best scores, those kinds of things. So largely they are all based around, in effect, the core skill of awareness. So what am I doing, you see? Because my core premise in what holds most people back and I've talked about so you asked about my latest projects, and my latest one is a book called Getting Unstuck Seven Transformational Practices for Golf Nerds, and in this book, I, I, I found that my core premise is it's not that we can't.
Speaker 2:The reason we feel stuck and we can't improve in golf is not because, um, we're not athletic. Uh, we started golf too late, we have too many bad habits. Um, your dad yelled at you, you're a choking dog. It's because of the things we do, it's our behaviors and most of us are lurching around, unconscious of what we actually do. So, for sake of example, you're on the golf course and you say you came to the first tee and you had some focus, some intention that you're going to do that day and quite often for most people it's something technical. So they start off and they say I'm going to finish my backswing today, finish my back, that's what I'm going to do all day. But you know, by the third hole you started to blow some shots up to the right. So you start to go through your R rolodex of old swing thoughts. You might even ask one of your buddies hey, what do you think I'm doing? So it's not what you're thinking and it's not what you're feeling. Of course it's what you do and that's the thing that keeps us, keeps us shackled. Is that?
Speaker 2:And like for the other example is let's say you're playing saturday morning with your buddies. You got a match coming up on tuesday and you're blowing all your your drives out to the right. So what do you do? You go to the range after saturday's round and you panic, practice, you try to find what's. How am I going to solve this problem with my driver?
Speaker 2:And usually what happens is you just go down this rabbit hole of of technical mumbo jumbo that you're going to try, and you usually come out the other side worse than when you arrived. So it's but these things that we do, we're largely unconscious and we kind of, as I say, we kind of lurch around almost unconscious of what we do. And so the core thing that I think that one can do is just bring some awareness what am I doing, what am I thinking at this moment, what am I thinking about? And that allows us, as opposed to react as we do habitually, that allows us to make a choice and allows us to respond in a way that could serve us better. And usually it's staying with a program or a thing I call mission, a thing I call mission.
Speaker 3:You know you talk about thinking. Can you talk a little bit about what you think versus how you think it? Let me give you an example. When I'm playing a practice round, there could be water there. I could say, hey, well, my ball's going to go in the water. I'm saying in such a relaxed manner because I know I don't have a slice in the water. But I'm saying in such a relaxed manner because I know I don't have a slice in the bag and ball never goes there. Fast forward to a tournament. Like, oh water is there, man. Like I gotta avoid it, like I'm too under par, I want to check into the clubhouse and keep my two under par. Score boom, water goes there. So it's not so much what you think, it's how you think what you're thinking well, I think it's large.
Speaker 2:So much of our thinking. So there's there's nothing wrong with thinking. You're not doing anything wrong. When you think about don't hit it in the water, that doesn't mean you're uh, you're a poor character and you're making a mistake. You're a human being. But it's being aware of what we're thinking at the time. And then how do we respond to it? And, largely, how do we take responsibility for ourselves and make the choice that's going to work? So, okay, you're two under par. You come up to a hole and you've got water left. So your choice is you could get. You could get caught up in a story about oh, if I hit it in the water, I'm blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right. Or you could take what are you gonna do with your attention? Okay, I'm going to go through my process the best I can here and where do I want to hit this ball? Okay, I've decided I'm going to hit it here. That's my target. Go through my process and I'm immersed in the physicality of making that happen, and to me, that's the.
Speaker 2:The core thing that we can do is is make golf into a physical rather than a mental game. So, when we talk about the, the mind, and you know a mental game, see, the mind is is. Generally what we're talking about is the ego, our conscious mind, and what we're talking about is is thinking. And so when we're thinking, we're in one of two places. We're either in the future, projecting, worrying, angsting about things about keeping your two under par going, or we're going to be in the past, and what often is that we're ruminating oh, that three putt's going to kill me, it's you know. I'm not going to make it in the playoff because of that and regret. And so where do we need to be? When you're standing on that hole with the water there? You need to be in the present moment, and that's not as hard as you would think if you can bring yourself to be in the physicality of hitting the golf shot, which, to me, is largely relying on your sensations of feel and connectedness to the club as you go through the shot.
Speaker 3:I was reading your book the Third Practice why do we play golf? I think that's such a massive question that everyone needs to ask of themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. I think that why I think that is a valuable exercise to do and I'll just be brief here. I think what I ask all my new clients to do is to simply get basically three pieces of paper and you're right across the top why do I play golf? And then you just start writing and there's no way to do this right, there's no how.
Speaker 2:All you do is you just keep writing and what happens as we do this is that as we write, we start to connect, we kind of go underneath the ego mind and we start to connect with, say, some memories or a good feeling that we had for something, and we get into sort of our value systems, feelings, memories, those types of things, and often what happens is people realize that they don't play golf just so they could lower their index, beat their obnoxious brother-in-law, win the B flight of Club C or win or win the masters, that there's some bigger things at play and that, to me, when we figure, when we go through the exercise of why do I play golf, then I think we can have, like we've talked before about having a better perspective on on why we're playing golf and what we, what we hope to get out of golf and, through the through, the experience of it, rather than always being dependent on getting a certain result or otherwise.
Speaker 2:You know I'll be disappointed, or I'll be lost in a story that I suck, or whatever you want to go with.
Speaker 3:So it's essentially the road to better performance is being in the present and not thinking about what you can do or what the future holds.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, you see the court see a lot of people think, well, how do I stop? How do I stop thinking, well, you don't. Okay, it's not a mistake to think, oh, I could win the US Open. That's natural.
Speaker 2:As a human being, you've been gifted with a mind and that's what keeps you alive and allows you to do a lot of amazing things.
Speaker 2:But it's being in that moment, particularly when you're getting ready to hit a shot.
Speaker 2:When you're getting ready to hit a shot, you know you step into that, you know I love the, I love that way of processing a shot that Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson teach the think box, play box.
Speaker 2:And when you get into that think box to play a shot, we analyze what's going on, we do our thinking, we make our decision, we commit and then it's about hitting a golf shot. So that process could take, depending on the player, it could be 45. Well, more normally it would be like 15 seconds, but for some players, maybe 45 seconds to 90 seconds, and in that time period that's when you just need to be taking care of business one thing at a time, and that allows you to be in the present moment, and once you hit your shot, then you can get back into a conversation. And then again it's totally natural to think about today I'm going to shoot my lowest score, I could win this tournament, all that again, it's totally natural to think that stuff, but to play well it's. How do you then respond to that thinking and make a better choice that's going to allow you to perform?
Speaker 3:Can you give our listeners a quick tidbit on how to improve immediately so you have this piece about quiet mind in the short game where you talk about puttling. Can you just run through that for our listeners?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a couple of different ways, but I think one of the most interesting. There's two things that one can do, and one is to go to a putting green and enjoy your stroke. Just enjoy what you're doing. And it's funny, when I've done quiet mind putting clinic, some people go. I tell them, go out and enjoy your stroke. And they kind of look at me like what you mean? Like I'm not supposed to do anything. And and I say, well, you mean, like what do you mean? Do anything? Well, like you know, focus on keeping my head down or see if I can make you know five out of five. I said no, just go and enjoy your stroke.
Speaker 2:And it's funny when people do that you can. They start laughing and they become more aware of what's actually happening in their stroke and they start to feel what's happening because they're more in the moment. So they're witnessing what's happening rather than thinking and trying hard to do something. And because when we're thinking we're disconnected, we're not even really here, Our minds are sort of off in this fantasy land somewhere. And so when we enjoy our stroke it's just way easier to actually experience what's actually going on, and you'll learn a lot by doing that. You'll start to observe.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, maybe I take the putter back a little, maybe that's a little far, maybe that's why I decel. You know, or you know, or you know. Maybe I have a tendency to um, you know, an old bugaboo of mine actually was to light my grip at impact. It was almost because it was a fear thing and I became. But you become more aware of these things, and that's part of what I think really takes people up the levels of golf. Is this discovery become aware of things that you never were aware of before. In essence, I love the phrase that Fred Shoemaker uses. It's distinctions Become aware of things that we weren't aware of before, and so exercises like that can really help you.
Speaker 3:Jesse, do you have questions for Tim?
Speaker 1:I have one. I have one. It's a big one. I don't know if we have time, but I'll just put it out there. So we've all. We've already analyzed the, you know, the proverbial water on the right and all that. Um. So if we're playing in a tournament, maybe both of you can answer this. I'm going to think out loud If we're playing in a tournament and we do have these negative thoughts, how can we train ourselves not to get attached to the negative thoughts If we already know, as human beings, that they're in there for reason I'm going to say in my psychologist background, self-preservation for the ego. Um, how can we train ourselves to accept the very human nature that we have but not be attached to them? So there's no charge for our mind to grab onto to perceive future prediction. This is all part of how can we stay in the moment in spite. How can we train ourselves to stay in the moment in spite of these human limitations, or are they limitations?
Speaker 2:You want to go first, Justin?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it begins with how our brains are wired. So if we need to preserve ourselves, then it's better for the brain to know what's going to happen in the future. So back to your question about the water on the right. I think it became a real speed wagon had. The answer to that, there's this song.
Speaker 3:I can't fight this feeling any longer and I think the problem with most people is that they go like, wow, water to the right. I shouldn't be thinking of this thought. Let's pretend that the water is not there. Now, how your brain works, is this right? You keep rejecting the thought. The brain says, hey, the dummy didn't get it. Let's amplify that, let's make it emotional, let's give him some feelings in his fingers. But I've done this with my players. I say, hey, look at the water, embrace it and like, okay, it's there. I'm not going to reject these feelings of doubt that I have. In fact, let me palpate these feelings, like why do I feel like that? Why and how? What am I feeling? And then, when you are at one with whatever you're feeling and thinking, magically it just kind of goes away Because your brain has done its job, like the dummy got it, that's it. He's aware, got it. That's it. He's aware of it.
Speaker 1:Let's go.
Speaker 3:Versus rejecting the feelings. Emotions are not good or bad. It's just there. It's a thing. It's there to tell you what's ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I mean, emotions are super valuable. They tell us to pay attention. They tell us there there are a way that that comes up for us. There's something going on here you need to pay attention to, and so they're not to be ignored or made to go away. And you've probably heard this phrase many times what we resist persists. So I think what happens for a lot of players what I talked to them about is just it's like you just accept and you're aware that this is happening. This is happening, but our thoughts are just thoughts. We don even know Neuroscientists can't even tell you where thoughts come from. And a core thing is to understand that our thoughts are not real. They're not real. We don't know where they come. If thoughts were real, I would have been put in jail years ago. They would have put me on an ice floe and pushed me out because you ain't safe dude for society. So it's just kind of understanding that we're going to get these thoughts, we're going to get these feelings. They're all going to come. They're going to come. So a great phrase that I learned through Fred Shoemaker was awareness is curative. Just to be aware that this is going on, that diffuses the energy that comes in, the emotion oh, I'm kind of nervous about the water there and that, right away, that dissipates the, that awareness dissipates the fear. Oh, I got this going on. Okay, then I then, rather than holding a death grip of the club, okay, I'm going to hold it in a certain way. So that, to me, is just that's why awareness is so big to me.
Speaker 2:But also, I think a core thing that you can take into any round of golf is what is your intention for that day? And when you have an intention, a macro piece of why you're playing, I think it's particularly if you've thought about it for a while. And this is my intention for this day. In some ways, it's like having a game plan so that when things happen as they do in golf, you're going to hit one in the water, you can make a double bogey. When things happen as they do in golf, you're going to hit one in the water, you make a double bogey.
Speaker 2:Then you come back to what's that master plan that I have for the day? It could be that I'm going to join my shots, whatever I'm going to be with the club head, I'm going to, you know, whatever it is. Then, when this stuff happens, you're just able to roll with it a lot better. Because if, if the focus is on going low for that day, qualify we, we want to qualify, we want to win, but if you're three over after two holes, where do you go with that? It's be able to hang it, it hang in with it. So, um, yeah, those are some of my thoughts on that great question, jesse thanks, great answers, boys.
Speaker 1:Uh, I think we're about ready to close this out. Tim uh, tim, how can our listeners find you?
Speaker 2:um, my website is O'Connor golfca. I have, uh, a blog on sub stack. It's a T O'Connor at a sub stackcom. I write a weekly blog called up and down. Um, I also do a podcast as well. It's called swing thoughts, and I've been doing it for well. We're in our 10th year now. Uh, so there's that and um, yeah, that's. Those are core ways you can get a hold of me amazing.
Speaker 3:Thank you, tim tim.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much. I've really enjoyed this conversation, gents, thank you, thank you.