Could You Just Not Suck Today? What I'm Learning About Swing Thoughts

What the pros actually think about over the ball, what the research says, and the mean little voice in my head that needs a new script

Here is something I have never said out loud on a golf course, but have absolutely said inside my own head while standing over the ball: "Don't be a loser." Also: "Try not to embarrass yourself in front of these people." And my personal favorite, usually on the first tee after a long week: "Could you just not suck today?"

Inspiring stuff. Really. Someone should put it on a throw pillow.

I would never say any of that to a good friend. I wouldn't say it to a stranger on the next tee box. I wouldn't say it to one of my students if their 3D print came out looking like a melted crayon. But somehow it feels totally normal to say it to myself, right before I ask my body to do one of the hardest things in sports.

And here's the part that really gets me. My best shots almost never come from a checklist or a pep talk. They come on the days when I think about nothing except getting that little white ball up into the air. That's it. That's the whole thought.

And that's the funny part, because I really do love playing. Golf calms me down and brings me back to my body. But some days, the second I'm standing over the ball, my inner yogi gets absolutely kicked off the meditation pillow. Namaste? More like "nama STAY DOWN, please, just this once."

So, being a librarian, I went looking for why. And along the way I found out that some of the best golfers in the world are just as weird about this as the rest of us.

The Swing Thought Pileup

You know the pileup. You took one lesson, watched four videos, and got a tip from your husband, your wife, your brother in law, and the retired guy at the range who "used to be a 2 handicap." Now you're standing over the ball trying to keep your head down, your left arm straight, your weight on your front foot, your grip light, your hips turning, and your face calm so nobody in the group behind you can tell you're panicking.

That's not a swing thought. That's a committee meeting. And the committee has never once hit a good shot.

For me it's even more than that. I have a brain difference, so this might sound a little extreme, but here is an honest look at what goes through my head before I even start my setup. Where's the ball in my stance? Is my grip right? Am I lined up with that tree or the other tree? Soft knees. Don't sway. Head down. Slow back. Is the group behind us watching? They're definitely watching. Did I reply to that email? Is that a goose? Don't be a loser. Head down. HEAD DOWN.

And then, after running through just about everything, I swing, and somewhere in the middle of the whole thing I look up to see where it went. The ball rolls into the ground twenty yards in front of me. And I stand there truly wondering why I looked up, like it's a great mystery, when I just asked my brain to hold a staff meeting in under two seconds.

If your brain works like mine, or if you're just a busy person with a lot of tabs open, I see you. And if yours is quiet and calm over the ball, I would love to know your secret, and I'm only a little jealous.

What the Pros Actually Think About (Spoiler: Not Much)

This was my favorite part of the research, because it turns out the best players in the world are basically trying to think about as little as possible, and some of them are hilarious about it. I narrowed it down to two women and two men.

Lydia Ko told Today's Golfer that her coach reminds her of one word: KISS, which stands for "keep it simple, stupid." She admitted that under pressure she can overthink and get complicated, so she tries not to think about anything at all. And then she said the most relatable thing a Hall of Fame golfer has ever said: "Sometimes it is hard to not think about not thinking!" Lydia. Same.

Rory McIlroy told Today's Golfer what he does when the shot really matters: "If I have a tough shot or a moment where I really need to hit a good shot, I just think about trying to make good contact, and that's really it. It's as simple as that." He goes on to say that you should take everything else and declutter your mind, concentrate on making good contact, and more often than not it works out okay. A librarian will always love the word declutter. Turns out the same thing that works on a messy shelf works on a messy brain.

Nelly Korda, an Olympic gold medalist and major champion, shared her main swing thought on Adam Scott's FAIRGAME podcast: "My main thought in my swing, because it gets really long, is shoulder to chin. Once my shoulder hits my chin, then I start my downswing." That's it. One of the best players on the planet may walk up to the ball with one thought. One. I walk up with a grocery list.

Padraig Harrington, a three time major winner, said he read Bob Rotella's book Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect in 1997 "and I've never had a swing thought since then." Now he just thinks about the target. A librarian's dream, by the way. The man fixed his head with a book.

And just to prove that nothing is too silly, Padraig has also said that "every kid should be doing 'Happy Gilmores'" because the running start teaches the right pivot. So if you've ever secretly wanted to take a running start at the tee on a Tuesday night league, you now have a three time major winner in your corner. (Please check the group behind you first.)

What Regular Golfers Swapped Their Swing Thoughts For

Pros are one thing. What about the rest of us, the golfers squeezing in nine holes between work and dinner, trying to remember whether we put sunscreen on one side of our face?

So I went looking at what regular golfers say when nobody is handing them a microphone, and the answers were reassuringly unglamorous. In golf forums and Reddit threads about swing thoughts, the same advice comes up again and again: save the technical work for the range. Practice the grip change, the takeaway, the hip turn, whatever your instructor gave you. Then, once you're on the course, pick one simple cue and let your body do the job it practiced. Plenty of golfers say their best on-course swing thought is no mechanical thought at all. See the shot, make the swing, and hope your body remembers what it learned on Tuesday night.

The cues themselves are wonderfully unfancy. Some are about tempo: "smooth," "easy," "80 percent." Some are a picture instead of a sentence: toss the club toward the target, swing around your body, send the ball to one small spot in the fairway. More than a few golfers swear that swinging easier makes the ball go farther and straighter, which feels deeply unfair and is apparently golf's favorite joke. Others skip words altogether and hum a tune to keep themselves from rushing. No positions. No checklist. Just a little musical supervision for the nervous system.

I would like to officially propose that we all find our swing song, by the way. Mine is currently DA-DA-DA (really it is ).

My favorite lesson from regular golfers is that there is no one magical swing thought. The useful one is whichever thought gets you out of your own way. Maybe yours is "smooth." Maybe it's "finish." Maybe it's "hit the little white ball up in the air," which is currently where I am living emotionally. The only rules are that it's short, kind, and simple enough to survive contact with the first tee.

And my favorite confession came from the writer behind the Practical Golf blog, who listed the swing thoughts he used to carry around: take the club back on an inside path, make sure the face is open, limit the length of the backswing, and, of course, "Don't hit it there!" We have all been that golfer. The one who looks at the water, says "don't hit it in the water," and then hits it directly in the water like it was the target all along.

Which brings me to the science, because it turns out there's a very good reason that happens.

What the Research Actually Says About Swing Thoughts

Scientists have been studying this in golf specifically for more than 25 years.

In a 1999 study, researcher Gabriele Wulf and her colleagues taught a group of total beginners (nine women and thirteen men, none of whom had played golf) to hit pitch shots. Half were told to focus on their arm swing. The other half were told to focus on the swing of the club. Same shot, same practice, one tiny change in where their attention went. The club group hit more accurate shots during practice, and they were still better the next day when they came back and hit without any instructions at all.

Researchers call that an "external focus," meaning your attention is on something outside your body (the club, the ball, the target) instead of inside it (your elbow, your wrists, your hips). A 2023 study on the golf pitch shot found the same accuracy advantage, and the external focus group also reported feeling more confident and in a better mood while they learned. Better shots and a better time. I'll take both.

Then there's psychologist Sian Beilock, who has spent years studying why skilled people fall apart under pressure, using golf putting as her test case. Her research found that experienced golfers putted worse when they were told to pay close attention to the mechanics of their stroke. Once a skill is learned, it runs best on autopilot, and pressure tempts us to grab the steering wheel and manage every little step. That's choking, in plain terms.

One honest nuance, because I don't want to oversell this: Beilock's work also found that true beginners actually did better when they paid attention to the putter head. When you're still learning, some attention helps. But notice what that beginner focus was on. The club. Not a body part, and definitely not a lecture about whether you're a loser.

So the point isn't that beginners should never learn mechanics. It's that one cue outside your body is a lot easier to use than six instructions about your body all at once.

So when Lydia Ko says keep it simple, and Padraig says think about the target, they aren't just being folksy. The science backs them up.

The Mean Coach in My Head

Now for the voice. Psychologist Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan published a set of seven studies in 2014, with 585 people total, looking at how we talk to ourselves under stress. People who coached themselves using their own name or the word "you" (as in "Jessica, you can do this") instead of "I" performed better on stressful tasks like giving a speech, according to outside judges, and they felt less distressed doing it.

When I read that, I laughed out loud. I'm already talking to myself as "you." I've got the distance part down. I'm just using it like the worst coach in the world. Picture a Little League coach yelling "could you just not suck today?" at an eight year old. He'd be banned from the snack stand for life.

The fix might not be dramatic. It might just be changing the tone to the one I'd use with a friend. There's research on that too. In a 2013 study, varsity women athletes who described themselves as self critical spent one week on short self compassion writing exercises. Afterward they were less self critical, did less replaying of mistakes, and worried less about messing up, and those improvements were still there a month later.

Being kind to yourself isn't going soft. For those of us who tend to beat ourselves up, it's a skill, and it can be practiced like chipping. Probably with better results than my chipping, but we'll see.

Why the Voice Rides Along to the First Tee

I think a lot of us show up to the course carrying the whole week with us. I work full time at a school, and some days I get to the first tee still thinking about a class, a book order, and whatever I forgot to take out of the freezer. If you're a stay at home parent, your job doesn't have a clock out time at all, and the round might be the only three or four hours all week that are truly yours. If you're caring for a parent, running a business, or working weekends, same story.

That time is hard won. The National Golf Foundation has pointed out that from 2007 to 2012, the number of women playing on golf courses dropped by 30 percent, and one reason they cite is that women tend to absorb a bigger share of household and childcare responsibilities when life gets stressful. The good news is that women came back in a big way, with a record 8.1 million women and girls on the course in 2025. But it tells me something: for a lot of us, getting to the course at all is a small victory.

So spending that time calling myself a loser feels like the worst possible use of it.

And guys, I see you too. The mean coach doesn't check anyone's gender or job title before it starts talking. If you've ever muttered at your ball after a slice like it personally betrayed you, this post is for you as well.

My Before and After Swing Thoughts

Here's what I'm swapping, inspired by the pros, the Reddit crowd, and the research. My inner yogi would like her pillow back.

Before: "Could you just not suck today?"
After: "Jessica, just get it in the air." Same "you," same name, much nicer coach.

Before: Head down, arm straight, weight forward, grip light, hips turn, don't panic.
After: One thought, and it lives outside my body. The ball going up. A spot on the fairway. The target. The rest of the list stays on the practice range, where the committee is allowed to meet.

Before: "Don't hit it in the water."
After: Pick the exact spot where I want it to land and look at that instead. Padraig would be proud.

Before: Replaying the bad shot for the next three holes.
After: The friend test. If I wouldn't say it to my friend in the cart next to me, I don't get to say it to myself. "That's fine. Next one."

Before: Silence, dread, and the sound of my own heartbeat.
After: A swing song, or one word. "Smooth" is currently winning. I'll report back.

Before: Bringing the whole week onto the first tee.
After: One deep breath in the parking lot. The emails, the laundry, and the to do list will all still be there in four hours. They always are.

I'm not cured. I still hear "don't be a loser" some days, and I still top one off the tee and want to crawl under the cart. But I'm noticing it now, and noticing is where every change starts. As Lydia Ko put it, sometimes it's hard to not think about not thinking. Fair enough. I'll settle for thinking nicer things.

So tell me: what's the craziest swing thought you've ever had? What does your inner voice say to you on the first tee, and what did you swap it for? Share it in the comments, because I have a feeling a lot of us have the same mean coach, and I'd love a few new swing songs.

Librarian's Notes: The beginner pitching study is Wulf, Lauterbach, and Toole (1999), "The Learning Advantages of an External Focus of Attention in Golf," in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, which found that novices told to focus on the club outperformed those told to focus on their arms, both in practice and a day later. The self talk research is Kross and colleagues (2014), "Self Talk as a Regulatory Mechanism: How You Do It Matters," in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, seven studies with 585 participants showing that using your own name or "you" improved performance and reduced distress under stress. The quotes from Lydia Ko, Rory McIlroy, and Padraig Harrington come from Today's Golfer's March 2016 roundup "What do the world's best golfers think about during their swing?" and Nelly Korda's comes from her 2021 appearance on the FAIRGAME podcast with Adam Scott, as reported by GolfWRX. For the regular golfers section I also drew on golfer discussions in Reddit's r/golf community, including the slice fixes collected by Golf Digest. A recurring theme there is to use practice for technical changes and the course for one simple cue, a picture of the shot, or a rhythm thought rather than a full list of mechanics. That material is lived experience from everyday golfers, not peer reviewed evidence, while the studies above carry the research claims.

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