The Existential Golfer: From Grip to Letting Go

Exploring how loosening mental control improves not only your golf game but your way of being in the world.

Golf, at its core, is a game of intention, attention, and emotion. As a passionate amateur golfer—and as The Existential Chef—I’ve come to see how the game reflects life itself. We strive, we analyse, we fix, we hope.  In both golf and life, what often hinders us isn’t a lack of skill, but rather the mind’s propensity to interfere.

This blog is for those who have stood over the ball, club in hand, overcome with doubt and indecision. It’s for those who have walked off the 18th green pondering, "Why can’t I play the way I know I can?"

This blog is also for those who have stood at a crossroads in life, pen in hand, staring at a message they’re unsure how to write. It’s for those who have left meetings or conversations thinking, “Why didn’t I show up the way I know I can?”

More deeply, this blog is for those who sense that life, like golf, isn’t just about outcomes, but about presence. About staying grounded when the stakes feel high. About finding flow not through control, but through trust.

Trials and Tribulations of the Amateur Golfer

You want a perfect swing that sends the ball soaring gracefully down the fairway. After lessons, YouTube videos, and quiet breakthroughs at the range, you settle on something that feels just right. The first tee confirms it: a crisp strike, a confident follow-through, and a result that fills you with joy. For a moment, you feel like the golfer you've always hoped to be.

But by the third tee, something strange happens. The ball curves sharply right and disappears into the trees, out of bounds. Agony.  However, your mind takes over and tells you exactly what went wrong and how to fix it.  You reload, regroup, and swing again using this fix. It works, sort of. The ball takes a different flight this time but lands on the fairway, not where you thought it should.   For the next shot, you face a dilemma: Should I reapply the fix to my next swing or stick with my original swing that worked so well on the first two holes? Your mind kicks in and reminds you that the original swing failed on the third tee, and even the fix did not work as well as you expected.   Should you return to the first swing? Stick with the one that didn't quite work? Or invent a new swing altogether?

So, you do what many of us do: you invent another swing by recalling something that worked the last time you played well. And it works! At least for a hole or two, and then you add yet another tweak from memory. By the end of the round, you've used many different tweaks, resulting in many different swing thoughts.  Over the course of a season, you have accumulated a menu of swing thoughts, each seemingly useful in different weather, mood, or moment. You switch between them or keep creating new swings endlessly, trying to match internal sensations with external results.

This is the mind of the amateur golfer—full of analysis, improvisation, self-doubt, and invention. And while it’s endearing, it’s also exhausting.

The Illusion of Diagnosis

Here’s the truth that I, as The Existential Chef, have come to accept: what I think went wrong is rarely what actually went wrong. The golf swing is an intricate, dynamic movement that occurs in under two seconds. Hundreds of micro-adjustments unfold in that blink, far too many for the conscious mind to track accurately.

And life is no different.

A moment of tension in a conversation, a decision that feels off in hindsight, a path that seems to veer unexpectedly—our minds rush to label the mistake, assign blame, and apply a fix. But what we think caused the slip is often a simplification, a projection based on emotion, fear, or habit. Life, like the golf swing, is full of invisible mechanics—context, conditioning, timing, tone—all shifting in ways we can't fully perceive.

When we attempt to fix a perceived flaw, we often react to a narrative rapidly constructed by the brain, not one built on full awareness or grounded data. This story isn’t rooted in emotion but in neurology.

The brain, utilising its vast predictive coding network, quickly explains why something went wrong.  It draws on memories, habits, and mindset rules—shortcuts formed through past experience. If you previously hit a slice after “lifting your head,” the brain tags that as a cause. Therefore, when you slice again, the same theory resurfaces, even if it wasn’t the actual cause this time.

This isn’t analysis—it’s rapid pattern-matching in action. Your prefrontal cortex, striving to keep things moving, provides an answer to make the uncertainty more bearable.

But here’s the issue: speed often comes at the expense of insight. The brain makes a decision before you have had the chance to feel or reflect fully. In this drive to “correct,” we frequently introduce a new variable, attempting to address the wrong problem.

In golf, these hurried mental narratives take us away from rhythm and put us into repair mode. We add tension to a swing that requires softness. We shorten a motion that calls for patience. Gradually, we lose access to our trained instincts—not because we didn’t practise enough, but because our mental interference substitutes felt awareness with a guessed diagnosis.

The swing becomes a search for safety rather than an expression. The game evolves into a form of self-defence rather than self-trust.

This pattern appears everywhere in life.

A conversation doesn’t go well, and before we've had time to truly process what happened, the mind leaps in: “Next time, be less direct.” Or “You need to be more assertive.” Not because those responses are correct, but because they’re available—and they promise quick control.

A project falters, and we abandon the approach, not because it lacked merit, but because we’re shaken. A dream meets resistance, and we second-guess the dream, not the resistance. We adjust our tone, our truth, our timing—not as refinement, but as retreat.

We change who we are not out of clarity, but in reaction. Like a golfer who leaves the course with six different swings and none that feel like home, we move through seasons of life wondering: “Where did my rhythm go?”, “Where did I go?”

These reflexive corrections often take us further from our natural centre. We live by adaptation, not alignment; by avoidance, not awareness. Over time, we become strangers to our own instincts.

But real growth—on the tee or in life—doesn’t come from a better fix. It comes from deeper trust. Sometimes, the wisest thing we can do is stay with what we know: breathe, observe, let the noise pass, and allow clarity to emerge on the other side of uncertainty.

Because sometimes, the swing is just fine.  Only the shot didn’t land, and that's not a crisis; it’s just the game.

From Grip to Letting Go

In both golf and life, turbulence often triggers the urge to regain control. When outcomes become unpredictable, our left brain—the part wired for problem-solving—takes over. It wants a plan. It demands answers. Sometimes, the harder we grip, the more things slip away.

But golf, like life, doesn’t always respond to control. It is best played from a place of trust, rhythm, and quiet confidence, rather than through micromanagement.

We’ve all experienced it: the difference between a relaxed practice swing and the one we force under the pressure of achieving an outcome. The body tenses. Timing falters. The result confirms our worst fear: something's wrong. And the cycle continues.

The subconscious, however, knows the swing. It retains every repetition, every sensation, every quiet success. Yet we rarely access it in moments of stress, because stress undermines the system. We shift from being in flow to being caught up in thought.

So, what can we do?

A Different Approach to Golf and Life: Awareness Without Interference

We don’t need to abandon thinking altogether—but we do need to change our relationship with it. The mind makes a great caddie, but a terrible swing coach. In both golf and life, our inner commentary should guide gently, not dominate.

Here are five powerful mindset shifts to help you move with greater ease and authenticity:

1. Trust What You Already Know: Gather, Coil, Connect

Let your actions reflect your calm, centred self, not the version that emerges under pressure. The wisdom you’ve gained is already within you, waiting to be trusted. When you stop trying to control every moment, life flows with less effort and more grace.

Gather is the pause before action. It is gathering your presence instead of generating urgency.

• In golf: Visualise the shot, loosen tension, centre yourself.

• In life: Pause before responding. Breathe. Be present. This is where your next move finds its soul.

Coiling is preparation with patience, not panic. It allows potential energy to build quietly until it’s ready to be released.

• In golf: Don’t snatch or lift the club with your hands. Let the core initiate the coil — slow, centred, and intentional. Then release the stored energy with grace, rhythm, and trust.

• In life: Build quiet momentum. Align before you act. True power emerges not from haste, but from inner stillness and deliberate intention.

Connect is the moment when intention flows seamlessly into action.

• In golf: Move with rhythm. Let the swing flow. Finish in balance, fully aware and grounded.

• In life: Live your values. Act in resonance with who you are. True connection brings clarity, coherence, and calm.

  
  

2. Reflect Later, Not Sooner

• In golf: Analyse after the round, not during it.

• In life: Don’t rush to fix yourself in the middle of a moment. Let the experience settle. Reflection needs space to become wisdom.

3. Simplify the Cue - Clarity emerges when you quiet the noise.

• In golf: Choose one or two key anchors — tempo, balance, or a smooth takeaway. Let simplicity guide your swing.

• In life: When overwhelm creeps in, return to simple inner cues:

  • Am I being authentic?

  • Am I fully present?

  • Am I in resonance with the moment?

These gentle questions bring you back to yourself — quietly, powerfully.

4. Redefine Success - Let success be measured by presence, not perfection.

• In golf: It’s not about the score — it’s about how present you are with each shot.

• In life: The real scoreboard is within.

  • Did I act with integrity?

  • Did I honour my timing and truth?

  • Did I stay grounded, or react out of fear?

Redefining success this way brings meaning and peace to your journey.

5. Let Go of Constant Self-Fixing - You are not a problem to be solved — you are a self to be understood.

• In golf: One bad shot doesn’t mean your swing is broken.

• In life: You don’t need to reinvent yourself after every stumble.  Let your identity breathe. Growth is not about endless correction—it’s thoughtful calibration over time.

Golf as a Mirror for Life

Golf is not just a game—it’s a metaphor for life. The same dynamics appear in our relationships, careers, and inner worlds.

Both golf and life ask for something more subtle: presence. They invite us to notice our experience without rushing to fix it, to let go of rigid outcomes, and to trust the preparation we’ve already done.

When we overcorrect in golf, we lose the swing. When we overcorrect in life, we lose our centre. Both require a form of surrender—a deep understanding that not everything can or should be micromanaged. Just as the golfer must learn to trust the body’s training, we must learn to trust our inner knowing in life. The reward is a sense of flow, clarity, and grounded action, even when the result is uncertain.

You don’t need to fix your swing every time it falters—just as you don’t need to fix yourself every time life throws a challenge your way. You don’t need a new theory every few holes, or a new life philosophy every time something doesn’t go to plan. What you need is a clearer, calmer relationship with your mind—a way to listen with discernment, without being pulled in every direction by fear, doubt, or urgency.

Because when you can approach both golf and life without the pressure of needing to prove or achieve, you open the door to your fullest potential. You move with freedom, act with clarity, and reconnect with the quiet confidence that has always been there, just waiting to be trusted.

That’s the wisdom of the Existential Golfer, and it works just as well off the tee as it does on it.

If this reflection resonated, I invite you to join me in more conversations like this—on the podcast, in coaching, or simply in the quiet space between swings.