Connect with us

Opinion & Analysis

How Gratitude Can Take Your Golf Game to the Next Level

Published

on

What are you grateful for? That might seem like a strange question to ask a golfer in a performance article, but the emotion of gratitude can help take your performance to the next level. Research has linked the emotion of gratitude to better overall physical and mental health, as well as sounder sleep, reduced anxiety and lower incidences of depression. Athletes who are more satisfied with their performances are also less likely to burn out and more likely to enjoy an better overall well being.

In my work with athletes, and in previous articles I have written for GolfWRX, I highlight the importance of enjoyment over achievement, which is making sure that enjoyment is at the forefront of performance in golf with achievement following. Golfers who pursue achievement in the game so diligently that they forget about the key purposes of sport, enjoyment and fun, can often end frustrated and miserable. Golfers who pursue enjoyment first, with a deep commitment to excellence and improvement, are the ones who achieve and last in the game.

So why can focusing on gratitude be so beneficial to you as a golfer?

Well, consider that it is impossible to have two emotions at once. The same goes for thoughts; we can only handle one at a time. As a golfer, this is important to know. When you feel negative emotions that limit your performance, you have the option of changing your state to a positive emotion. Gratitude is a great one to make the shift.

Characteristics of Grateful Golfers

Grateful golfers appreciate what they have. While some players complain, make excuses and don’t appreciate the fantastic opportunity of sport, grateful players are excited to have the opportunity to play a sport they love and enjoy all the benefits that are related to sport: fitness, relationships, life lessons, the joy of winning, learning from losing, and the opportunity to challenge and test their abilities.

Grateful golfers are grateful for competitors. Appreciate your competitors! Competitors can bring out the best in you, and without them you do not have the opportunity to play and test your limits. In his autobiography, former Olympic track star Carl Lewis said he chose to embrace his competitors as essential in the quest for performance excellence, rather than to see them as enemies meant to be beaten down. Lewis won 10 Olympic medals, nine of them gold. You need your competitors!

Grateful golfers appreciate the journey and struggle. They know that there will be difficulties and golf often goes in up-and-down cycles. Grateful players learn from these struggles and always move forward. There is an appreciation in the value of their struggles and an ability to look at the big picture and know there are brighter days ahead.

Grateful golfers “sweep the shed.” Like the World Champion New Zealand All Blacks, the great rugby team that tidies up its dressing room after every training and game, grateful players appreciate everyone around them. They appreciate everything they receive; there is no attitude of entitlement.

Grateful golfers enjoy pressure. Is there pressure in sports? Absolutely. But grateful players recognize the incredible opportunity they have to demonstrate their skills and test their limits. You play a game you love with people engaged and watching you. Grateful golfers appreciate the meaning that pressure gives their experience. They know pressure is a privilege. Grateful players look around and appreciate the challenge that is being given to them.

Grateful golfers do not rely on winning. Because they are so focused on a great process and appreciate great competition, the joy of grateful players is not dependent on winning. They want to win, but appreciate their process, the competition and the challenge.

Grateful golfers let go. When it’s time to play and practice, it’s done with purpose, intention and efficiency. Grateful players work hard with intention, but they also appreciate and enjoy their time away from practice and competition, appreciating all parts of their life.

What You Can Do To Become A Grateful Golfer

Many things, and it’s a little different for everyone, but here’s a start.

1. Never forget how lucky you are to be playing a fantastic game like golf, which gives you the opportunity to express yourself and has the opportunity to give your life meaning.

2. Remember you can only feel one emotion at once. Replace anxious feelings with feelings of gratefulness. You must make the decision to change your state with a shift to being grateful for the opportunity to participate in the game of golf.

3. Think about two things you are grateful for at the end of each day. Get in the habit of being grateful for things in your golf and in your life.

Remember to be grateful for what you have including your opportunity to play golf. Golf is never something you have to do, but always something you get to do!

John Haime is the President of New Edge Performance. He's a Human Performance Coach who prepares performers to be the their best by helping them tap into the elusive 10 percent of their abilities that will get them to the top. This is something that anyone with a goal craves, and John Haime knows how to get performers there. John closes the gap for performers in sports and business by taking them from where they currently are to where they want to go.  The best in the world trust John. They choose him because he doesn’t just talk about the world of high performance – he has lived it and lives in it everyday. He is a former Tournament Professional Golfer with professional wins. He has a best-selling book, “You are a Contender,” which is widely read by world-class athletes, coaches and business performers.  He has worked around the globe for some of the world’s leading companies. Athlete clients include performers who regularly rank in the Top-50 in their respective sports. John has the rare ability to work as seamlessly in the world of professional sports as he does in the world of corporate performance. His primary ambition writing for GolfWRX is to help you become the golfer you'd like to be. See www.johnhaime.com for more. Email: john@newedgeperformance.org

9 Comments

9 Comments

  1. asugrad1988

    Apr 25, 2017 at 11:34 am

    I have had a very good golf life. I’ve played for over 50 years and won a lot of tournaments. I also volunteer at a local food pantry. You see some very pitiful people coming in to get free food. Most all of them have some really sad stories.
    Now when I’m playing golf, if I hit a shot that’s not good or my round is not up to my expectations, I just remember those people at the food pantry and how much I spend each month to belong to a private club, and then I realize how many of those people that come in the food pantry would love to trade places with me for just one day, and I realize my round wasn’t so bad after all.

    • John Haime

      Apr 25, 2017 at 4:29 pm

      Thanks for the comment asugrad – that’s a great reminder and perspective that we have to enjoy every minute of our time in golf.

  2. Kenny Taylor

    Apr 25, 2017 at 11:27 am

    Thanks John. As a retired Navy SEAL and burgeoning performance consultant for youth sports, performance artists and young men interested having a career in the Military Special Operations, the message that “Pressure is a Privilege” really hit a chord for me. When people take time out of their lives to work with you on attaining your performance goals, is it a privilege and some thing to be grateful for.many
    Playing golf and testing your abilities in a vacuum and the range or on the course without fellow competitors, is hardly a test, it’s practice. I am grateful to have friends to share my golf experiences with. Most of us (amateurs), don’t have admiring fans standing outside the ropes, but those few people in our foursomes are often plenty to provide the pressure an external motivation to stay focused our process and attempt to play well.
    Thanks for the EI insight.

  3. Bigputt18

    Apr 25, 2017 at 11:27 am

    I have had a very good golf life. I’ve played for over 50 years and won a lot of tournaments. I also volunteer at a local food pantry. You see some very pitiful people coming in to get free food. Most all of them have really sad stories.
    Now when I’m playing golf, if I hit a shot that’s not good or my round is not up to my expectations, I just remember those people at the food pantry and how much I spend each month to belong to a private club, and then I realize how many of those people that come in the food pantry would love to trade places with me for just one day, and I realize my round wasn’t so bad after all.

  4. 8thehardway

    Apr 23, 2017 at 8:11 am

    Grateful to whom? I think you’re describing “appreciation,” a completely reflective process with no hint of (externally oriented) obligation, indebtedness or response.

    • John Haime

      Apr 23, 2017 at 10:35 am

      Hi,

      Many thanks for the comment and perspective.

      The article is about the feelings of being grateful for what the game provides and how it adds value to our lives.

      Yes, being grateful is about being appreciative for the wonderful benefits received (from the game). Those benefits are derived in many different ways – some outlined in the article – but just generally being appreciative and carrying the feeling of gratefulness before we play, during and after play. I think you’ll find appreciation in the definition of grateful along with others like thankful etc.

  5. coolhandbirdman

    Apr 22, 2017 at 9:53 pm

    To be able to walk in the hills of the finger lakes on a sunday wearing shorts enjoying a beer on the back nine with my friends. Sticking a few pins is an extra bonus. But thats why I’m grateful for golf.

    • John Haime

      Apr 23, 2017 at 10:39 am

      Exactly! Enjoy the game, enjoy your friends and enjoy the challenge – what could be better!

      Thanks for the great comment.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Opinion & Analysis

The 2 primary challenges golf equipment companies face

Published

on

As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!

Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.

Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.

One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?

Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.

Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.

Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”

For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…

Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.

Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…

That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.

Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.

@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic

Continue Reading

Podcasts

Fore Love of Golf: Introducing a new club concept

Published

on

Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!

Continue Reading

Opinion & Analysis

On Scottie Scheffler wondering ‘What’s the point of winning?’

Published

on

Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by BBC SPORT (@bbcsport)

“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”

Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.

That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.

As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.

I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.

One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.

The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.

If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.

Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.

As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.

It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.

David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.

In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:

“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”

Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”

Eventually, though, something shifts.

We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.

Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.

Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.

Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.

So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.

I see someone evolving.

He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.

It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.

Continue Reading

WITB

Facebook

Trending