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The encouraging practice session presents a familiar golfer pitfall. You know how it goes: hit it solidly on the range, march to the first tee brimming with confidence, then wonder why it all unravels on the course. I’ve written about this dynamic before, mostly because I’ve lived it.
The inverse scenario can be found in a story recently shared by the former PGA Tour player-turned-Golf Channel announcer Tripp Isenhour watching Tiger Woods on the range after a round at Torrey Pines in the mid-2000s. As Isenhour recounted, Woods struggled so much with his driver that day he put it away and started hitting an assortment of shots with a 6-iron: first way up in the air, then curving 40 yards in either direction, then some low bullets barely off the ground. When Isenhour asked why, Woods responded, “If this is where I am going to be tomorrow then I might need these shots.”
It was vintage Woods thinking two moves ahead. “That’s the reason why I’m a freaking announcer now and not playing the Champions Tour,” Isenhour, who is also the founder of TournamentMindset.com, elaborated by phone. “Because when that happened to me, my thought was, ‘Damn it, I gotta fix my swing.’ ”
By contrast, Woods showcased a mindset the clinical and sports psychologist Bhrett McCabe and I have been studying in recent months, including in a cover story we wrote for Golf Digest’s April issue after McCabe’s client Nick Dunlap became the first amateur in 33 years to win a PGA Tour event. The disconnect between the range and the course, for example, stems from a misconception that competition hinges on technical proficiency. I better be hitting it OK, we think, otherwise I’m screwed. But as Woods and Dunlap have shown, the real key is accessing what you can and compartmentalizing the rest.
This “Competitive IQ,” as we call it, can be found in a wide range of high performers in golf and beyond, rooted in three core principles: awareness, acceptance, and adaptability. More than just being “clutch,” the trait reflects an understanding of where practice ends and competition begins, and how to prepare accordingly.
“The Tiger story illustrates his ultimate superpower, which was he was always willing to look not at what he had as a definition of his ability to compete that day, but what he could do with what he had,” McCabe says. “He was able to compete and use his higher-level skills to compete against others who were often stuck in what we call the ‘competition paradox.’ When stress intensified, they reverted back to trying to control their mechanics and he didn’t. That’s what made Tiger great.”
With Woods at Torrey Pines, for instance, awareness was recognizing he didn’t have full command of his swing and needed to approach the final round differently. When he stuffed his driver back in the bag, that was acceptance; frustrated as he was with the club he decided this wasn’t the time to try to fix it. “That was a time where I saw someone say, forgive my language, ‘F– it. I’m not going to hit the ball that straight tomorrow, so I’m going to have to beat you from where I’m going to be,’” Isenhour said. Woods’ willingness to test a series of recovery shots that he’d likely need if he was spraying the ball off the tee was the same adaptability he had displayed throughout his career. Don’t forget this is the same golfer who won the ‘97 Masters by 12 shots, then decided to rebuild his swing once he determined he needed it to hold up better under pressure.
It’s telling that even the most talented golfer in history recognized where his talent had limits. Those of us who fail to sense how competition is different, meanwhile, often spin our wheels trying to find something temporarily out of reach, which exacerbates the problem. Why? Because Competitive IQ also factors in our hardwiring, and how it shapes our response to different situations. The responses themselves are rarely the problem. The problem is when we spend precious energy railing against elements outside our control.
“Stress isn’t negative or positive. It’s just a demand upon the body,” McCabe says. “If we choose to believe it as a sign of weaknesses, we will spend our time trying to fix our mechanisms. If we look at it as a situation that we must respond to, we will then change our mindset to be in the moment.”
