Jake’s Story: Rebuilding Trust in the Swing
What began as one missed four-footer became a pattern under pressure.
The Situation
The individual nature of golf creates unique mental challenges. No one knew this better than Jake. Jake is a successful college golfer with shelves full of trophies that he's accumulated since childhood, but something changed seemingly overnight.
In a recent golfing season, he had been in a groove. His swing had felt right, and his swing coach had been pleased with his process. Then, in a tournament earlier in the season, he severely struggled coming down the stretch. He tried to shrug off the bad round, but his struggles continued. After that experience, everything felt different. His swing coach helped him on the range and in practice rounds, but when the pressure mounted and he approached the ball, he no longer felt “right." His hands trembled. His mind would spin. Even with simple putts, he suddenly felt helpless.
“I’d stand over the ball and feel frozen,” he said. “My chest would tighten. I’d start thinking, ‘What if I miss again?’ I would try to focus on positive thoughts, but I couldn’t. I knew I had the ability. But my mind felt lost and my body just didn’t trust me.”
The Breakdown
During our first session, I asked Jake when he first remembered feeling that kind of fear on the green. He didn’t hesitate.
“It was at our second tournament,” he said. “I had a bad approach but told myself that I could recover. After a bad chip left me with a long putt, I left it short. I had a four-footer to stay in contention. I missed it. My coach was shocked. He tried to encourage me, but the wheels came off. My teammates didn’t say much, but I could feel their disappointment. I was embarrassed. I choked.”
That experience had stuck with him deeply. Not just as a thought—but his body “remembered” as well. The experience engaged a nervous system response—in other words, his brain established a neural network during the struggles at the tournament. Since then, when he lined up for an important putt or approached a shot, this neural network engaged. His body remembered that moment again, and his nervous system hijacked his muscle memory.
The Shift
Using a trauma-based approach to psychotherapy for performance concerns, we went back to that moment to find the negative cognitions attached to that experience and reprocess what happened. We implemented bilateral stimulation through a light bar and handheld pulsators to activate his brain’s natural processing system, a therapeutic technique known as EMDR.
At first, his emotions were strong as he recalled what happened. He could feel the same humiliation and the same tension in his hands and chest. But as we pressed on in therapy, things began to shift.
With each intervention and pass of reprocessing, his brain began to make new associations to the experience and create new neural networks.
His nervous system calmed down. The memory began to lose its power over his thoughts and its ability to hijack his body’s response to the event.
With that moment no longer carrying distress, we installed new beliefs and cognitive restructuring. Through his therapy, Jake reinforced these positive beliefs until they felt grounded—not just in his mind, but in his body.
Due to the inevitable experience of adversity and mistakes in golf, we looked to the future and prepared a mental and nervous system reaction to similar situations that will eventually occur. We practiced responses to the things that can go wrong so that he would be ready.
The Result
By the end of our work together, Jake noticed a clear difference. His mental game was stronger, and his body no longer defied him. He felt in control of his swing again. In subsequent rounds, he felt present. Focused. Unshaken.
“The nerves are gone,” he told me. “I’m just playing golf.”
Jake's story all traced back to a single tournament.
THE MISSED PUTT THAT STAYED WITH HIM
THE EMBARRASSMENT HIS BODY HELD
THE RESPONSE THAT REACTIVATED UNDER PRESSURE
Once that memory was processed differently, the response no longer took over.