Hey Fellow Golfer - 

Thank you for reading this week’s More Pars Than Bogeys Newsletter. If you find it valuable, could you forward this email to a fellow golfer?

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You can click here to read the online version of this week’s newsletter. 

And be sure to catch up on this week’s podcast episodes:

#57: Overcoming the Rush: Slow Down to Elevate Your Golf Game

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 (and off) the course, click here to schedule a coaching discovery call with me.

You’ve been there: standing on the range with a bucket of balls, grinding away, determined to crack the code to lower scores.

You’re putting in the hours, focusing on your swing, dialing in your putting stroke, and religiously following every tip from the pros and experts. You feel like you’re doing everything right.

But then it happens - your next round leaves you staring at the same score, or worse, a higher one. The effort you’ve poured into practice seems invisible and unrecognized by your scorecard.

What gives?

The frustration is real. It gnaws at your confidence and makes you question: 

Am I wasting my time? 

Is all this practice even worth it?

You're not alone if you’ve ever felt stuck in this cycle. 

The good news? Progress is happening - just not in the way you might expect.

In today’s newsletter, you’ll learn the truth about the relationship between practice and progress, which will help you better manage expectations, strengthen trust in the process, and expand your mental bank account of confidence. 

Let’s tee off!

The Purpose of Practice (versus Performance)

When you step onto the range with a bucket of balls and a smile, it’s easy to believe you should hit each shot perfectly.

No course or round-specific pressure or nerves are present, meaning you should be able to operate flawlessly, right?

Wrong.

Before we discuss the relationship between practice and progress, it’s essential to clarify the purpose of practice. 

The purpose of practice is to build skills and habits. 

And here’s a little secret: skill acquisition and habit formation demand mistakes.

In fact, with the right mindset, in a strange roundabout way, the more mistakes you make, the more (and faster) progress you’ll make.

In golf, mistakes are teachers. 

And, as Ryan Holiday says, “Your ego is the enemy.”

Every shanked drive or pulled five iron gives you feedback. It reveals gaps in your mechanics, focus, or mental approach that you can address and improve. If you shy away from making mistakes during practice, you miss the opportunity to learn from them.

My first swing coach described the golf ball as a mini trackman. With the right mindset, he said (one I’d describe as curious and non-judgemental), you’ll learn an incredible amount about what you did - and did not - do well with each swing. 

Think of practice as your laboratory. It’s a place to test new techniques, analyze what works, and identify what doesn’t. It’s where you intentionally push yourself to explore areas of your game that need attention, knowing mistakes are not only expected but essential for progress.

If you want to learn to fall in love with practice - or at least cultivate a neutral relationship with it - you must avoid judging your abilities based solely on your performance during practice.

Practice is the time to make mistakes to build the skills and confidence to perform under pressure. It’s like rehearsing a play: actors miss lines, try new deliveries, and adjust their timing during rehearsals to shine on opening night. 

Your rounds are the "performance," but practice is where you get the kinks out.

Perfection is not - and never should be - the goal for perfection has a dark side…

Practice Results Are Nonlinear

In his book, “The Confident Mind,” Dr. Nate Zinsser, the Director of Performance Psychology for West Point Academy, states that “the return you experience from practice will be uneven and inconsistent at best.”

In a day of instant gratification, it’s hard not to feel like you should see substantial changes in strokes gained, your handicap index, and your lifetime low with each consistent week of practice. 

This is further ingrained when you think about the supposed “10,000-hour rule,” which suggests that the more deliberate practice you accumulate, the more direct the payoff is regarding skill acquisition.

The reality, however, is that progress follows a pattern of growth spurts and plateaus, the former becoming shorter and the latter becoming longer as you acquire more skill. 

Improvement rarely happens in a straight line. The sooner you accept this difficult truth, the easier your path to progress will become. 

In fact, I wrote all about the power of acceptance and how it can help accelerate results in this previous newsletter. 

As you move forward, keep this in mind: Progress may feel inconsistent, but every practice session contributes to growth, even if the returns aren't immediately visible.

To put it bluntly, you already know what to do to achieve your ultimate goal. 

You don’t have a lack of information problem; you have a mindset problem. 

That’s where I come into play and why so many avid, amateur, and aspiring professional golfers have hired me this off-season so that they can experience a next-level breakthrough in 2025. 

If you’re serious about getting out of your own way and playing to your potential, click here to schedule a Mindset Coaching Discovery Call to learn how I can help you make playing to your potential a habit. 

The Delayed Returns of Practice

Imagine this: you plant a bamboo seed. You water it consistently, give it sunlight, and care for the soil. Days pass, then weeks, and eventually months. Yet, nothing seems to happen. 

Frustration might set in as you wonder, is anything growing at all?

But beneath the surface, something incredible is happening. The bamboo is building a robust root system - one strong enough to support the towering growth it’s about to achieve. 

For years, it appears as though nothing is happening. Then, suddenly, the bamboo shoots up, growing as much as 90 feet in just a few weeks.

Wild, right!?

The secret? 

The bamboo was always growing. Even when there were no visible signs of progress, the foundation for success was being laid beneath the surface.

Your golf practice is like planting bamboo. 

Every swing on the range, every putting drill, and every mental training session might feel like it’s not paying off. 

You may think, “Why am I putting in all this work when I don’t see immediate results?”

But just like bamboo, your progress is happening beneath the surface. You're building a solid foundation - developing muscle memory, sharpening your mental focus, and creating the confidence and resilience needed for explosive growth.

As Dr. Zissner says, “It’s important to understand that every minute of practice, every rep, drill, and practice session properly conducted, creates beneficial changes in your nervous system (subconscious) that ultimately, over time, bring about substantial progress.”

These changes that occur beneath conscious awareness occur while you feel stuck in a plateau. 

So long as you persist, you’ll make progress. 

One day, all that unseen progress will manifest. You’ll string together consistent rounds, break 90 or 80, and feel a level of confidence you’ve never experienced before.

It may feel sudden, but it’s the result of every drop of effort you’ve been pouring in that has led to this moment.

Key Takeaway: Remember that you're always growing even when you don’t see immediate results. Trust that your effort is building the foundation for breakthroughs. Keep watering your bamboo - your golf game will shoot up in ways you never imagined.

The Pattern of Progress

You and I understand that practice is a lifelong commitment if we’re serious about continuing to play to our potential. 

With that said, it’s essential to recognize a phasic pattern that consistent practice creates: periods of growth followed by periods of plateaus. 

Early on in your golfing journey, you’ll spend significant time in a growth spurt as the information overload you guzzle begins to materialize into consistent execution. 

As your swing improves and your core begins to drop, you’ll notice that the pace of progress starts to slow. In turn, the time you spend in a plateau phase of progress is longer, while the smaller the bursts of improvement become. 

The former will feel like extended dry spells in which you’re not improving at all - heck, you may even feel like you’re backtracking at times.

The Diminishing Returns of Practice

If the relationship between deliberate practice and progress weren’t bleak enough, I would be foolish not to also mention the law of diminishing returns and how it relates to progress over time.

The law of diminishing returns means that as you continue to put time and effort into your deliberate practice sessions, the benefits you gain from each additional session will eventually start to decrease.

As you can imagine (and likely relate to), this creates a fertile breeding ground for frustration and doubt. 

Not only is it important to recognize this as a universal law and truth, but also that everybody - your peers and competitors - experiences this, too. 

You’re not the only one, though, some days it may feel like it.

A reframe I encourage you to adapt is that every progress plateau is an opportunity to separate yourself from your competitors (and even from the previous version of yourself). Because of the rampant fear, doubt, and frustration these plateaus often produce, many stop practicing as deliberately or consistently or may quit altogether.

If you can practice patience - which is hopefully easier with a better understanding of what's really happening during these plateaus - you’ll give yourself a competitive edge to push past your competition, which, in the long run, will yield significant results. 

The Compound Effect of Practice

Each practice session builds upon the last, creating long-term results that may only become apparent over weeks or months.

Think of your golf practice as making daily deposits into a bank account. Each swing, drill, or putting session is like adding a small amount to your account. On any given day, it might not seem like much - just a few dollars here and there.

But over time, those deposits add up. With consistency, you build interest on your efforts, and the balance grows exponentially. Eventually, you’ll have a "wealth" of skills, confidence, and muscle memory to draw upon during a round.

Even on days when practice feels unproductive, remember: you're still adding to your account, setting yourself up for big returns down the road.

How to Maximize Progress During Practice

Now that you have a better understanding of the relationship between practice and progress, as well as a new respect for the importance of practice, here are a few key points to keep mind to maximize progress during your practice sessions. 

Quality Over Quantity: Practicing endlessly doesn’t always mean better results. Focused, intentional sessions often lead to more improvement than grinding for hours. I’ve found that more often than not, a 30-minute deliberate period ends up being more productive than an aimless two-hour period

Avoid Overload (Take Breaks): Practicing too much in one area can lead to mental fatigue, physical strain, and even regression, as tiredness introduces bad habits. Permit yourself to take breaks between drills or clubs. Or, consider setting an alarm for 15 minutes and using that as a cue to take a two-minute water and breath break. 

Celebrate Small Gains: As you get better, progress naturally slows. This is normal and a sign that you’re refining your skills, not starting from scratch. Make it a priority to celebrate - fist pump, anyone? - the shot shapes or consistency you used to struggle with.

Recognize (and Embrace) the Plateau: Plateaus are part of the process. They’re not a sign of failure but an opportunity to refine your focus or shift to a new area of improvement.

As a Golf Hypnotherapist, I use hypnosis to unlearn and upgrade outdated, habitual ways of feeling, thinking, and behaving that are holding you back from your potential.

Click here to schedule a Mindset Coaching Discovery Call to learn how I can help you make playing to your potential a habit. 

Your Next Step

Every newsletter will conclude with a suggested action step and further resources on the topic we discussed.

After reading today’s newsletter, I challenge you to audit your current relationship with practice. Not only should you be looking to audit your consistency and deliberate practice time, but also your attitude toward practice, specifically during a frustrating session.

If you have any questions, feel free to DM me on Instagram (@thegolfhypnotherapist) or send me an email directly: [email protected]

After reading today’s newsletter, I want you to take the time to complete each step in my goal-setting process. Then, share it with me via email or on social media.

Thank you for reading today’s newsletter.

If you found it valuable, share it with a fellow golfer ready to take their game to the next level.

Until next time,

Paul

P.S. What did you think of today’s newsletter? Reply back / drop a comment below to let me know.

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