The challenge for golfers is to make the game as consistent as they can through mental and physical understanding and training. Is your pursuit fun or frustrating? Life and golf are natural processes of ebbs and flows, ups and downs. Life and golf constantly present challenges for us to learn and grow. Everything that occurs, that has occurred, is occurring, and will occur in the future is the outward physical manifestation of your innermost thoughts, choices, ideas, and determinations about who you are and who you choose to be. Golf is a metaphor for life because it has the same perpetual cha ..read more

April 6, 2024 Saturday at Augusta National Golf Club  In the final round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur (ANWA). University of Southern California (USC) 19-year-old freshman Bailey Shoemaker started the day four shots back of the leader, Lottie Woad, 20-year-old sophomore at Florida State. Shoemaker posted a bogey free course record 6 under 66 to take the lead in the clubhouse with the lowest final round in ANWA history. She then had an interminable wait to see if her score of 7 under would be the winner. Lottie Woad never gave up. Her birdie putt on 16 to tie didn’t drop. She bir ..read more

February is the month of love. The feeling of love comes from your heart. The feeling of hitting a perfect golf shot resonates in your heart. Discounting that feeling by judging the result keeps you in your thinking mind. When you love something, you don’t have expectations. You just enjoy the experience. It took Billy Joel 30 years to regain his love of song writing to produce a new song this year. Find your joy and resultant success now by loving to play golf. Golfers experience this feeling of love on the golf course when they let go of trying to make things happen, stay in the present mome ..read more

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Welcome to January 2024, the beginning of the New Year and a fresh start to your life and your golf game. 2023 was a challenging year for just about everybody on our planet. As golfers we are fortunate to participate in a sport that gives us relief from the drama and chaos to focus instead on something we enjoy doing. Now is the time for reviewing your intentions and accomplishments during the past year. It is also a time to identify your goals and the possibilities to move you forward for the success you desire in the coming year. Studies show that setting goals increases ..read more

To all who love to play golf, Thank you for being a part of my blog community and for the trust you have placed in me.  Please accept my warmest wishes for this holiday season, for the happiest and most successful of New Years, and for an abundance of joy, peace, love, happiness, prosperity, radiant health, and whatever else your heart desires. Be well, be safe, be healthy, and may abundance come to you soon in many, many ways. With my heartfelt wishes for you, Joan   ..read more

As a charter member of HeartMath, I learned years ago that the human heart actually possesses the equivalent of its own brain. HeartMath calls it the heart-brain which interacts and communicates with the head-brain. The two brains continually exchange critical information that influences how the body functions. Your heart is the 15th club in your bag and is surely the most important one. Playing from your heart is always going to be more meaningful than playing from technique. Anyone who has ever played the game of golf knows that it is different from all other sports and games. The golf ball ..read more

Overthinking your situation will cause a missed shot. Not letting go of a missed shot will also sabotage your round. How you view yourself and your golf game determines the success and enjoyment you will have. Not being able to let go of a missed shot is one of those life lessons. Holding on to feeling bad about yourself because you didn’t perform up to your expectations will ruin your self-confidence and cause you to be tentative on subsequent shots. Since we are the only ones who think in our own minds, letting go in life and in golf requires a change in our belief about ourselves. Here are ..read more

The puzzling question in golf has always been; “How do I get into ‘the zone’ or ‘flow state’ to play automatically at my personal best?” This is the biggest mystery of golf. I live in an area that is known for being a rainforest. We have a substantial amount of sunshine and an equal amount of rain to keep the grass, trees, and flowers lush and growing. This fall I dug up the crabgrass in my lawn and planted grass seed in the bare spots. I watered it faithfully every day for a week and then I got busy and didn’t water it for three days. The hot summer sun dried up the seed and most of it died ..read more

As you know, winning is not under your control. What are the skills you can develop that are under your control? There are the technical/physical skills where golfers practice in hopes of perfecting their golf swings. There are also the non-technical/mental skills of self-empowerment. An important skill to develop is a strategy for management of your game on the golf course. Victor Hovland, the 25-year-old Norwegian who just won the last two PGA Tour Championships has been very vocal and honest about his journey to winning. Last season he was ranked 191st in Strokes Gained. He learned throug ..read more

Modeling is the basis of Neuro Linguistic Programming. NLP is the study of the internal maps in successful people’s brains. Then their patterns of successful behaviors can be learned and modeled. Children are the most accelerated learners. For children everything is new. They don’t have to compare their new learning experiences with old experiences (maps). Children learn unconsciously by trial and error without judgment. This is evident in the way they learn to operate cell phones, computers, and video games. What is your knowledge base that keeps you from playing successfully? Golf like every ..read more