How to Play Your Best Golf with U.S. Women's Mid-Am Champ Ina Kim-Schaad

00:00:00
Speaker 1: I miss the green. For example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.

00:00:05
Speaker 2: And when I find my ball in a fried egg Friday egg, the dreaded Friday Friday, Fridagg Egg, Fridagg bride egg, Lie, I'm about ready to run off of the hump course. Welcome back to the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host, Andy Johnson. Today I am excited to be joined by Ina kim Shadd who is the uh now raining I guess raining.

00:00:50
Speaker 1: She won the US Women's Midam.

00:00:52
Speaker 2: It was her second US Women's Midam win and uh On top of that, she is also a mental coach for golf. She is a coach at Fearless Golf. So we kind of dive into playing your best golf as well as her win at the Women's Midam. So before we get to Ina, let's talk about our partner, Best Day. I love Best Day. Best Day Brewing is a non alcoholic beer. I think it's the best non alcoholic beer on the market. I've tried out a bunch of them there. They are an awesome, awesome product. So it was created by Tate Hufford and launched a little over than three years ago. In the simplest terms, Tate leads a very active and social lifestyle and he loves a good beer. As he got older and had more responsibility career, marriage, kids, those mornings where he had to get up and try and after a couple IPAs, suddenly became a little bit more challenging. So it took some time, but he may a couple of recipes after testing multiple batches on his friends and took it to market. Now Best Day is in almost forty states and one of the fastest growing NA beer brands in the country. I am a huge, huge fan of the Electro Lime, also the kolsh Those are two of my favorites, but any type of beer you like, they have.

00:02:24
Speaker 1: A replacement of that.

00:02:25
Speaker 2: One of the things my favorite things to do is kind of split you know, Best Day regular beer. Best Day regular beer never gets off the reels feel really good in the morning. If you want to check this out, go to Best Day Brewing dot com. That's Best Day Brewing dot com and use the code Frida Egg twenty and you'll get twenty percent off your first day of first order. That's Best Day Brewing dot Com. Frida Egg twenty. Big thanks to them for partnering with us and supporting the pot. All right, Ita, fresh off the US women's Midam victory, you just got on a plane and headed to Ireland.

00:03:10
Speaker 1: I got to ask what was the what was the highlight of the of the Ireland trip.

00:03:16
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know if I could say a single thing that was like the highlight. I mean, listen, winning's nice, but genuinely, the Irish are so lovely win or lose, Like, we just love the camaraderie and meeting the players over there and getting to play real wings golf and you know, all the team bonding that happens throughout the week. So just a lot of really big highlights the last two weeks, I have to say, a lot of really positive moments.

00:03:44
Speaker 2: Before we get into the uh your your win at the Midham, I wanted to talk a little bit about your background. You were a great junior player, college player, and then you took a break. You went to the Northwest, You took a break from the game and just entered the workforce. Kind of similar to how most people's college experience goes. You finish college and then you go into the workforce, but you kind of took a break from the game of golf.

00:04:13
Speaker 1: Why did you? What was the thinking behind that.

00:04:16
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say it was like a really scripted thing where I wasn't going to play golf and I was just going to focus on my career or anything like that. It was one of those natural things that happened as I entered the workforce, priorities shifted and I cared a lot more about work and traveling and doing things that I was never had the free time to do, like skiing and partying till three in the morning and you know, jumping in on a plane and going somewhere for day and a half and just literally just the little luxuries in life that you don't get really when you have a full time playing career. So yeah, it was it was more like I got sidelined for eleven years and then and then I was lucky enough to meet my now husband, who who is quite obsessed with golf, and he's the one who got me back into it.

00:05:04
Speaker 2: It's funny I think about when in my life I was most disconnected from the game, and it is like the early twenties, Yeah, know where it's just like a like your work at you enter the workforce and you are literally just the bottom of the total pool to be you have more ambitions socially than any other period in your life where you have more things that you want to do and you want you know, you have no attachments to it. And I imagine for you playing competitively through college, it was probably somewhat of a like this is nice not to have this, you know. I don't want to use the wrong term, but golf can be a little bit of a ball and chain.

00:05:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think there's definitely so true to that. I think that feeling of like from five pm on Friday till you know, Sunday night at nine pm, like literally having no obligation whatsoever is such a novelty to anybody who's played really high level you know, anything, right, whether it's music or sports or whatever. But yeah, just you're absolutely right. It's like the goldfish thing where like you latch onto the next shiny thing. You're like, oh, that's shiny, I'm pretty Let me try that, and let me try this. And I think it's a healthy thing for people to just try on different things and see what suits them and figure who they are out a little bit more.

00:06:22
Speaker 2: You know, post college, what as you've had time to reflect. Obviously you've been playing again for a while now, you've won too midams in the timespan, But what at the long break do you feel like teach you about the game.

00:06:39
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know how much time we have on the podcast.

00:06:42
Speaker 2: But plenty of times the pod. It's all depends how much time you have.

00:06:48
Speaker 3: So I would say, you know, I kind of view like the eleven year hiatus and coming back to golf. It's like kind of like you know, when you marry somebody and you get divorced really early, and then like you take some time off and then you actually marry that same person again and you go in eye wide open. It was kind of like that, Like we I went back to golf, and I decided to remarry this thing, but I wanted it to be on much healthier terms as the person I was currently as opposed to, you know, like my adolescent self. And I think that, you know, one of the biggest things I realized through that journey is that, you know, human beings were like giant bundles of habits, Like we're totally just creatures of habit from everything from like brushing our teeth to you know, tying our shoelaces and things like that. And you know, it occurred to me that a lot of these habits that I had, these knee jerk reactions which you know don't feel like reactions they really are on the golf course, were just me when I was five, six, seven years old, falling into certain you know, mental cycles or thought habits or even reactionary habits. And rewiring a lot of that as an adult was really interesting.

00:08:03
Speaker 2: I Yeah, I golf is such a weird game, and your ties to it are like, you know, you're especially on a competitive level, your emotion you they your emotions are so intertwined into the sport.

00:08:21
Speaker 1: It's funny.

00:08:22
Speaker 2: I I think about my game sometimes now I have a I have a five year old, and the way my disposition on the golf course pre and post five year old is just extraordinary, extraordinarily different. Like something that I find now is like, I mean, little things just don't bother me. Because if you if you hang out with a five year old and are parenting a five year old, there are just little things that bother you all the time that they're doing that you have to learn to just not you know, get involved with it's funny, like I think life. It's it's hard though, because I imagine in a way, golfers get wired to think, and there's a lot of stuff that's tied to your like upbringing in the game for sure. So you've won multiple mid ams with that week, what do you find to be the toughest part of the competition.

00:09:23
Speaker 3: Hmm. I think it's really easy to fall into worrying about you know, who's going to win, or how many up or down you are, or who's your next opponent, or what bracket you're in, or you know, like all the just noise that happens when you're playing competitive anything. And I think I did a really good job of I mean I literally didn't look at the bracket. I didn't pay attention to who was next, who I was going to play. I literally was like, okay, this match, I'm playing this person, Great, what am I doing on this whole? And I really didn't get bogged down whether I was up or down or or how many holes were left. I start to really strong strategy, really strong commitment to my shots and just try to play the golf course and not worry about who my opponent was or what they were doing, And yeah, I mean, I know it sounds really simple, but when you're in the heat at the moment, it's so hard to not listen to that little voice that wants to tell you, hey, you're you're only one up right now, or like you're two down right now. To not give that credence and attention and just focus back on your game is really tough.

00:10:29
Speaker 2: I mean, staying in the present moment is extraordinarily hard in golf. I find that when I get out of it, it's immediately when train wrecks happen right right, like when they just go spiral out of control. With that tournament kind of being fresh in your mind, was there a specific, singular moment that you were most proud of of overcoming a you know, bad break or a you know, whatever it may be, or being in a tough situation and really, you know, overcoming that obstacle.

00:11:05
Speaker 3: There was a pretty fascinating thing that happened in the final round that I don't think I've ever This has never happened to me in my life, but I was too up going into the eleventh hole and I had a perfect We were debating the artage and you know, I write down everything and so I don't forget, and I'm looking at it and we decided it was like a perfect pitching wedg. So I pull my club, I hit it and I'm like, Ian, i flagged it, like this can be a tap and Birdie like it was so good. And I'm looking at the ball and I can't see it landed, and somebody's like, it's way over man. I'm like, I'm talking fifteen yards over the green and I look at Ian. I'm like, what the hell? I mean, I feel adrenaline, but it's not that bad. And I put the club back in and he looks down. He's like, you know, you just hit your nine iron, not your pitching wedg. And I'm like, I've never done that in my life, and talk about in the finals.

00:11:58
Speaker 2: Right.

00:12:00
Speaker 3: So I'm in absolute jail, like there's no coming back from this mistake, because there's just like desert back there, you know, with like all the you know, the sand that's not packed in. It's just like beach sand with all the potholes and all. I'm it's it's a disaster. So I try best I can lose the hole. I take a bathroom break because I'm like, I need to just get this out of my system. And then I get to the next team and I'm still a little bit hot, to be honest, I end up snaphooking my drive back into the freaking desert on the left on the next hole, and there goes my two shot leads. So I get back to all square and I'm like reeling from basically, I hit a perfect shot, what I thought was perfect shot, and I just grabbed the wrong club, which should never happen and I've never done in my life, so obviously something was going on there right mentally, but I don't know if I was rushing or what. And I really really really had to like buckle down after that. I'm like, take so many breaths and just collect myself and say, listen, like you've given up two holes. It's fine, but like you really got to focus and like let go of it, because whatever residual anger you have right now, it's it's just not going to help you. And we got to focus back on just playing again. You're playing so great, Like keep doing what you're doing. It doesn't matter. And literally, I just like, you know, mentally, did this dust in my hands? And I walked to the next tea and really really stabilized from there and I didn't look back, and yeah, I mean that's just that was I was really proud of myself for that.

00:13:30
Speaker 2: We're we're now blooding you. You also do work as a mental coach for golf. Yeah, at Fearless Golf. I think like what you hit like it resonates so much, and it's probably resonates so much with so many people. I feel like there are so many times in golf where you hit shots and you feel like you've played a hole so well, but you walk away disappointed. Whether it's you know you you three putt from fifteen feet and maybe you know you you catch a lip and it and it spins a little bit further, or you hit what you feel like, in your case was a great shot and you have a mental mistake, or you get a bad break, and so often you go to that next tee and then, as you said it, sure enough a snap hook, even though you took a break to try to reset totally. What what are the best things because like I feel like the snap hook like almost always happens after that that situation. For me, What are the best ways to overcome those those I would call them maybe a disappointment. Would you say, that's probably the right way to phrase it.

00:14:40
Speaker 3: That's fair. Yeah, I mean there's there's multiple layers, but but the easiest, most tangible things are you know, taking really deep breaths to just calm your your you know, adrenaline and everything else that's going on your autonomic nervous system down, because definitely everything tends to get faster, Like it's very that somebody goes through a hiccup like that and then there all of a sudden like calmer and you know more walking slower or anything like that. If any, they tend to rush, right, everything kind of speeds up. And so just paying attention to your rhythm and tempo I think is really important in using breathwork. And then you know this sounds strange, but there's this phenomenon that happens that that doctor Geo really discovered that you know, when you get nervous or anxious or you're you're overstressed, your hands, all the blood in your hands actually leaves, and so all the blood that you see in my hands where it turns white when I press leaves your your your extremities to go pump laad to all your vital organs and things, and so you actually lose feeling in your hands and you end up gripping the club tighter than you intend to to feel the same amount of resistance that you normally do. And so literally just understanding the relationship between the resistance you feel in your hands when you're in competition and nervous or excited right interpretation of the person, and understanding how that affects your tempo and your rhythm of your swing. It's very rare that somebody's going to snap hook something from being too fluid.

00:16:20
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean that makes total sense.

00:16:22
Speaker 2: I've always you know, recently, I've really started to come around on like the idea of like all of your preshot routine in everything you do before you hit the ball is kind of preparing your body to make a movement, because that's what the golf swing is. If you can get to the place where it's like I'm just getting ready to make a movement, because then to me, I'm like try and think about it. It's like, how can I make this as athletic as possible? But I didn't know that about the hands, And it makes total sense, because it's like it gets so much harder to feel that that body freedom when you are feeling some sort of nerves.

00:17:02
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. Yeah, everything tends to seize up, including like your forearms, you know, your rotation. Everything's just gets shorter and tighter. And really understanding the fluidity of what you feel or how to feel that fluidity when things get tight is the real crux of the thing. And so continuing to put yourself under pressure, understanding the relationship between the tightness and how to get it looser, and how to emulate your normal swing even though it feels totally different. That's that's where the magic lies.

00:17:32
Speaker 2: I was gonna I was going to ask this later in the in the interview, but we're here now.

00:17:39
Speaker 3: Uh.

00:17:40
Speaker 2: I think like so many people struggle when they have a big round coming up, whether whether they're at their club and they're trying to qualify for the club championship, or they're playing you know, their arch nemesis in a match, or it's coming down what would what are do you have any steadfast like tips on how to deal with a bround that you even if you're not trying to do you have heaved more expectation than your normal round.

00:18:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think you know it's let's start with that word expectation, right. Expectation inherently implies something in the future, right, which, again going back to what we're talking before, there's such a pull for us in golf and really in anything that we want to excel at towards being in the future. Right. So a lot of psychologists call it like we're time traveling. Right, We're always in the future as opposed to being present. And it takes a lot of discipline and practice, like even when you're playing with your buddies or even when you're practicing, to not anticipate and already have your mind float to the future and the result, but to really really be present and locked in on the target. Like that's where the practice, actually, the discipline of practice really comes in. And there's this phrase in psychology, like there was a great article I don't know ten twenty years ago about the mondeity of excellence, right, And genuinely, you look at all the pros like they're not doing anything that's rocket science, they're not practicing anything that's super different than you and me. But what they do between the ears and how they think about doing it. It's literally doing and thinking the same thing every single shot, every single rep, every single time, every single day. Right, So excellence is not something that is like, you know, you snap your fingers in half, but they literally do it day in and day out to the point where it is mynd numbing. It is not exciting. There's no fireworks, but that's what it looks like. It's boring.

00:19:37
Speaker 1: They are.

00:19:38
Speaker 2: They're like machines when it comes to that. How would a lay person start to make that? Is it all just kind of routine based? How would you go about kind of building that so that you can handle a big round more coactively?

00:19:59
Speaker 3: I think there's two problems of it. I think one is how we interpret the feelings that we feel. I think a lot of people get out there and you can either be psyched up or you can be psyched out. Right, obviously, the choice is ultimately ours, right, and it genuinely is as simple as glass half full or glass half empty. Like when you get out there, rather than being like, oh my god, this guy's really good, like he's my nemesis, I really want to beat him, it's like, hey, like genuinely, right, pressure is a privilege. This is an opportunity for me to put into practice all these things that I've been rehearsing for so long, and let's keep putting it to the test. This is an opportunity for me. And where we see opportunity, it's so much more promising than where we see threats. Right, It's just like when you're putting the difference for a lot of people, when they're putting for Bertie versus par they tend to be a lot more aggressive when they are putting for par As opposed to Bertie. Right, they don't want to lose the par when they're putting for Bertie alright, Right, they're already in the future. So I would say that's probably number one, is how we interpret our feelings of what we feel out on the golf course and kind of reframing, as simple as it sounds, is really really powerful.

00:21:13
Speaker 2: Right.

00:21:14
Speaker 3: If you think about you know, Olympians who you know like Winter Olympics, Right, it happens once every four years. They genuinely don't have an opportunity to showcase what they're doing.

00:21:24
Speaker 2: Talk about a crazy existence totally talking about whole, pure and your whole barometer of success with a lot of those sports boils down to how you perform in one race every four years.

00:21:36
Speaker 3: Totally right if you think about that, Like golfers have it so easy. We've got it week in and week out. We've got tournaments right for these pros. So think about a Winter Olympics, you know, skier or something downhill skier, and they've got literally one opportunity to do it. You listen to any interview of any of the top athletes, and you know, they say, how do you feel? Not a single one of them are like I'm so nervous. Yeah right, They're like, I am so excited. This is such a privilege. I've been rehearsing. You know. You look at Chloe Kim and she's literally there with her head sit on with her eyes closed, like rehearsing what she's going to do out on the slopes. Before she goes out, she's already done the run before she even gets down to the bottom. Right, So again, like interpretation is so powerful and we don't given enough credit. That's number one. Number two, how do we stay you know, kind of in it? And like again, I know we talked a little bit about the physical part. I think that's something that anybody can practice. But again, I think just having the awareness of when you are time traveling. It's like we spend our whole life's time traveling, and you know, some of it is evolutionarily helpful, like anticipating trouble and things like that, it's helpful. But when you're at your most athletic is when you're so locked in on the target. And I'll show you like a really simple example of athleticism that literally everybody has the ability of. Is like you're in your office right now. You crumpled up a piece of paper and throw it in the waste basket in the corner, like not thinking about it. Like there's no you know, repercussion, there's nobody watching, there's nothing that happens, there's no like degradation of self if you miss, Like there's nothing right. So it's very easy for you to crumple it up, not think anything, and just athletically throw something in the waste basket. Golf is no different, but we put so much meaning around every single shot that it completely reroots and we're like, okay, at this point, I got to like snap my wrist forty five degrees and then my two fingers on top, like maybe I should let go then and then what about my pinky? What what was my pinky do?

00:23:36
Speaker 2: Like?

00:23:36
Speaker 3: And then you totally freak out and you over instruct and your body literally can't do it because there's so much stuff going on. And you know, that's that's basically what happens people out there is like it's such a crutch mentally to think that overinstructing is going to help, and it actually is the biggest thing that people do that is hindering their natural ability.

00:23:57
Speaker 1: It's funny.

00:23:58
Speaker 2: The second point, I've been doing this for a couple of years now, and I think it's completely changed the way I approach putting. And I've decided. I decided one day. I was like, listen, like, if you told me to throw a ball to somebody thirty feet thirty yards away that's running, I would I probably could hit them in stride, you know. And I think about putting and it's like I've hit so many and I think this works for people that played golf for a very long time. I've hit so many putts in my life, so many that I believe that my eyes, if I look at something, I'm going to subconsciously know how hard to hit the putt. The analogy I always tell people is like Steph Curry doesn't dribble across half court and is like, I'm twenty seven feet away from the hoop.

00:24:51
Speaker 1: This is how hard I'm going.

00:24:53
Speaker 3: To shoot the ball.

00:24:54
Speaker 2: And so I've stopped thinking about speed altogether, where I just like walk around and I allow my subconscious to handle the speed component and I'm just like looking, I'm reading the putt for break, and then I just hit the putt. But removing the idea of like I need to hit this putt hard or this putt's uphill it's going to be slow has dramatically improved by speed control, which was always like somewhat of an issue with my putting, where was like it was like a little inconsistent and I think about, like, oh, this is going to be really fast, I need to.

00:25:26
Speaker 1: Hit this soft.

00:25:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, And instead I just allow my body to react and it's become much it feels a lot more athletic.

00:25:33
Speaker 1: To me.

00:25:34
Speaker 3: That's awesome. I mean, I think that's such a cool thing that you've been able to do on your own. And if more people could, like for me, I would phrase it as like you actually let go right, and it's kind of scary to let go, but I asked so many of my players to do that. It's like different versions of that, but letting go is the hardest thing because we like that feeling of control. Just like you know, you get into New York City elevator and like, well, press the close button. They don't actually work right, but it gives us a false sense of control, and so it makes us feel better even though it's literally doing nothing. And it's the same thing in golf, Like there's so many little ticks that we have that are the equivalent of pressing that close button on the elevator that makes us feel better, but are actually hindering our natural ability.

00:26:21
Speaker 2: It's they And the prior point that you brought up, I think is an interesting one. I don't I see this a lot with alternate shot, where people people totally get psyched out by alternative shot.

00:26:32
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a reason it's called divorceums.

00:26:34
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, And it's it's totally like it's a it's a you just spoke about control, you don't have control when somebody else hits the other shot. And I think there's like also this expectation and pressure that's placed on people where they're like worried about letting the other person down that.

00:26:53
Speaker 1: But you know, something that I've seen is like if you take.

00:26:57
Speaker 2: The approach of when when your partner puts to put you in a bad spot, or if your mantra is like, hey, I have the opportunity now to do something great.

00:27:07
Speaker 1: After a poor shot.

00:27:08
Speaker 2: And I've never been able to translate this to my own game because I just end up saying, God, you suck, Like watch you hit it over.

00:27:15
Speaker 3: There, you know, just you built when you were five.

00:27:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, bad self talk. I'm king of bad self.

00:27:21
Speaker 2: But if I'm playing with like a partner and I have a teammate, I noticed I'm way more positive and upbeat. And I don't know what it is, but if you if you kind of take the mentality of this is an opportunity to do something great. Like you see the other alternate shot teams like where they get in bad and it's like they can self destruct because of like they psych themselves out. I think that psyching out is like a huge part of golf.

00:27:46
Speaker 3: Massive. Yeah, there's with all shot, there's definitely that pressure of letting your opponent down, but it's also like you literally only have this one thing that you can hit and then you can't go for like two turns, and so it's there's like this added component that's that's pretty nerve wracking. But I mean, I listen, I think that people have this strange thing where it's totally okay to self abuse, and I mean genuinely, the psychological equivalent of our negative self talk is like if I stood behind you every single shot and every single bad shot you hit, I was like, Andy, you suck it golf. You're so bad, I'm going to hit you on the back of your calves. Right, but for real, right, how would you feel after the third or fourth bad shot? Like physically and mentally emotionally, how would you feel?

00:28:39
Speaker 1: Pretty bad? Generally? You know, like how I do what I do to myself on the golf course.

00:28:45
Speaker 3: Right, But not only that, there's a physical mental component of like I'm scared that I'm going to get hit, right, And yeah, your actual subconscious feels that because that negative self talk is pain, right, So we're reinforcing steeriness, right, scaredness, like all this stuff with negative self talk. We think it's harmless, but it's actually really not harmless. At all. There's a reason we start staring it. There's a reason we get scared. Like, what are you scared of? You're not going to get hit by a running back, right, Like, what is there to be scared of in golf?

00:29:23
Speaker 1: Nothing?

00:29:24
Speaker 2: Well, and it's it's what I find most amazing, Like you talk about, we talked a little bit about like the highest level pros. Like I always tell people about by golf game. I say, listen, I'm a snorekler. I can go a couple under par. If I get too far down though, the water comes in and I have to come up for air. But like the PGA Tour pros are nuclear submarines, And I think, like what happens with everybody outside of like the select few is what it's when they're chasing, When they know when they're where that they're chasing a great round, whether it's breaking one hundred, breaking ninety, breaking eighty, breaking seventy, whatever it may be. When they're chasing it, the thought comes in and then what's weird about golf is that people play scared instead of continue to just do what they're doing.

00:30:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, well one hundred, I mean it happens all the time to everyone. It's human nature. And it goes back to like, you know, chapter one of our conversation, which is time travel. Right when you start getting like two, three, four under and you're like, oh my god, I'm having a really good round. Right, where does your awareness.

00:30:36
Speaker 1: Go to the round?

00:30:38
Speaker 2: Right?

00:30:38
Speaker 3: Where am I to finish?

00:30:39
Speaker 2: What am I going to?

00:30:40
Speaker 3: Can I screw this up? What if I don't make any of moreberdies? What if I make a double but there's no bee over there?

00:30:45
Speaker 1: Like, what am I going to?

00:30:46
Speaker 3: You know, there's all this stuff that happens. It's all in the future. Right If you think about genuinely, like what's the best round you ever had?

00:30:54
Speaker 1: I this is the recently.

00:30:58
Speaker 2: I just played a great round, but I hold out like three times early in the round, like it was kind of crazy. But then of course, like I finished with like six straight pars with lots of up and downs, Like it was not easy. You made it tough for yourself, extremely hard, okay, like grinding to a finish.

00:31:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, and think about the care freedness that you played with in the beginning when you were holding out, versus how much time travel that you probably did in the last bit.

00:31:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about course records I was thinking about it was bad news.

00:31:33
Speaker 1: It was bad news, right.

00:31:35
Speaker 3: And you know what's funny about time travel, it's actually really exhausting, like really exhausting. Yeah, it's not We're not meant to do it. And so you know, I think that as simple as it sounds, but it's really really really hard to do. The more you can immerse yourself in literally as just a shot in hand, like what is in front of you is the only thing that matters in your entire universe for forty seconds with people.

00:32:01
Speaker 2: So you know we've heard this a million times, right, Like the idea like what are your what? What do you tell people who like once you start to think ahead, what are you? How do you reset and get that out of your thought?

00:32:16
Speaker 1: Probless?

00:32:17
Speaker 3: It's just awareness is power, right, So being aware that you're in the future is all you need to know to like snap yourself back into the present and the present. If you have trouble getting back to the present, there's all sorts of like neural hacks that you can do to get back. Like literally take a sip of water, right, you can feel the coldness of the water go into your mouth, like go down your throat, enter your stomach. Literally, that's very present. That's about as present as you can be. Right, you can feel the grass underneath your feet. There's so many things you can do to like just literally bring yourself to where your feet are. And then ultimately it's real kind of flipping everything so that instead of the future, you're just focused on the show on a hand, which is like, what is my strategy? What's my target?

00:33:04
Speaker 1: Right?

00:33:04
Speaker 3: And why is it? Why did you choose the target that you did? And once you lock in on that, like you're so focused on your target that all that stuff melts away. Right. Our attention is super finite. We don't have enough of it to give it to ten million places.

00:33:20
Speaker 2: I Yeah, I've I feel like golf is one of the sports as someone who with ADHD that appeals so much to me because I just have to hyper focus for like five seconds.

00:33:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, and like.

00:33:35
Speaker 2: That's what you're doing, I feel like is getting ready then to hyper focus and then it's away and then it's almost a superpower that you can't pay attention to anything for very long.

00:33:45
Speaker 3: Bingo. It really is to be able to dip out like that much out of your shot rather than grind on it for the whole walk to your next shot, which is exhausting. By the way, that is a superpower. It's amazing.

00:33:57
Speaker 2: This is all though, why we love golf is because it is just the most ridiculous game that is mental gymnastics. How did you get into the mental coaching? Like, how did you decide this was something that you wanted to do with your life?

00:34:13
Speaker 3: I mean so I didn't really. I kind of was so lucky right place, right time. So when I started golf again, you know, in twenty sixteen, I was playing in a golf Tournma and I was playing a singles match and it was basically the French version of what I just played in in Ireland, and I'm playing against his French girl, who doesn't speak a look of English, was very nice, and I kept playing against her and kept throwing away every hole like I would just give a toronto platter. And I got to this one hole where I finally was like, all right, momentum, I'm going to flip this. This is going to be great. And I got to a green side, like a par five green side bunker in two and she was kind of like a little bit out of it. Not totally out of it, but I was like, all right, you just got to get up and down or like up into pop, get your power and like get out of there. And you're so I get in the bunker thinking this is the momentum turner, and I cold blade the thing like forty yards over the green legit almost obi I'm like, do I need to hit another ball? Like what's going on?

00:35:12
Speaker 2: That's the worst feeling in the world.

00:35:16
Speaker 1: You're starting to think about like the drop.

00:35:19
Speaker 3: It's so bad. It's so bad, and my knee jerk reaction right without any time to think, anytime to rationalize nothing. I just started bawling, crying in the bunker because I was putting so much pressure on myself and telling myself what a terrible golf were. I was like, why was I wasting time doing this? Like you're not worthy all sorts of like all sorts of the crazy stuff that goes in our mind. And that was like the the straw that broke the camel's back. So I'm sitting in the bunker having cold bladed it, with little tears flowing down my face, having the hiccups like snop bubbles coming out of my nose, and like, in between hiccups, I have to apologize to the usg official and the poor French girl who has no idea what's going on. I mean, I don't even have any idea what's going on. And I'm like, I'm so sorry, guys, I need a minute, and they're like, of course, they were very nice, and I don't even I mean, everything was like a blur after that. But basically, long story short is, you know I got done with that round. I'm like, I don't want to play golf like this anymore. Like why am I even playing golf?

00:36:24
Speaker 2: Right?

00:36:24
Speaker 3: I'm literally an amateur golfer. I'm playing golf for fun. This isn't fun. What am I doing? So I then, you know, went on this multi year journey with a you know, one of the best sport psychologists out there. His name is doctor Giovaliante, who started you know, he wrote a book called Fearless Golf, hence my handle Fearless Golf Coach. But you know, he and I worked together for a few years to just discover what was going on scratch beneath the surface, really go deep and kind of rewire all the things that you and I talked about earlier, and through that journey, he and I became really good friends, and he's you know, great friends with my husband and you know, our friends and family and all these kinds of things. And you know, after a few years, I was like, all right, I got to go back to reality. I'm going to go back into finance. And he's the one that kind of pulled me aside. And I was like, you know, I actually I have never taken on anybody, but I think you'd be really good at this. Would you be willing to learn? And I was like one of those things where like the cool kids talking to you, You're like looking behind, You're like, is he talking to me like me? But no, I mean he is so gracious and he is the one who saw some potential in me and brought me into his business and I owe everything to him. And it's genuinely the most rewarding job in the world because I get to help people not be miserable on the golf course. And I'm really passionate about it because of what I went through.

00:37:52
Speaker 1: That's amazing. I what what about?

00:37:56
Speaker 2: I imagine it's something that you get a lot of fulfillment also as like just helping people and helping them enjoy something that they love or.

00:38:05
Speaker 1: Supposedly love also go.

00:38:11
Speaker 2: It's what you know, was there a moment I imagine that you know, learning and learning how to coach. Was there a moment where you you just really were like, this is this is it for me? This is way better obviously than the finance world.

00:38:25
Speaker 3: M you know, I don't know if there's like a single moment, but there's just so many even little victories where you're you're with a client and like what you were talking about with your putting right, like you actually let them, like have them let go, and it's so psychologically scary to let go, but for them to really do it and like have that like light bulb that goes off for you to see that and like be there with them and be like you can do this all the time. And it's like, oh, like you know everything from that to like you know, when my players obviously they they win or something like that or but there's so many like micro achievements that happen that don't necessarily correlate with results that we really celebrate and I like to celebrate because you know, ultimately it's not just results that matter. There's so much stuff that goes into the pudding, and there's so many little victories that we have to celebrate, and I'd love to celebrate.

00:39:20
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean it's progress in golf especially is nonlinear. Also is like you can feel really good golf coming for months and not have the results, and that can make it frustrating. But it's like, I think, like one of the things that I settled on towards the end of my competitive career, but maybe I'll try and restart the competitive career in.

00:39:46
Speaker 1: The near future.

00:39:47
Speaker 3: Come out of retirement.

00:39:48
Speaker 1: Come on, yeah, come to the dark side. But like almost ten year retirement now.

00:39:53
Speaker 2: But one of the things I realized, like, which was it took me so long to get there, but was like, hey, like I can't worry about score. And I think this is something that people like struggle with, is like they get these numbers in their head and it's like I realize, like, if I play well, I'm gonna be fine, And I don't know what the number of me playing well is on a given day. Some days it could be seventy six, some days it could be sixty eight, But like the day that is seventy six, if you're if you have some number in mind, and you're and you're playing really well and you're four over par. It doesn't It means everybody else is probably playing really poorly too, and you just have to hang.

00:40:34
Speaker 1: It's it's wild.

00:40:35
Speaker 2: The mental aspect of the game of golf, Like I think it's what it gets almost more and more fascinating as you get older. Is like when you relive like some of those those things, and it's like, why was I thinking about this?

00:40:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, well, we definitely have more demons to fight the more the older we get, that's for sure.

00:41:02
Speaker 2: Hey, let's take a quick break from Ena and talk about our partner, groove It Brush. So groove It makes the top rated golf brushes on the market, and if you're playing trying to play high level golf, like Ena, having clean grooves is key. So groove It has two different types of brushes. They have the original groove It, which holds water. It's sprays and scrubs your clubs. It's a little bit bigger. I'm a big fan of the Mini g It's a smaller brush, doesn't use water, but it it. You see a lot of tour of players using it. It's got the you know clip. They clip it to their belt buckle when they're when they're on the range, but it can clip to your to your golf club. Makes it really easy to keep your grooves clean. Clean grooves mean better golf shots, and really this is a a great product to have on your bag. You can purchase these in almost all major golf stores as well as Walmart, but the best way to purchase it, I think is at groovetbrush dot com. Use the promo code fried egg for fifteen percent off any purchase. Go to groove it brush dot com use the promo code fried egg for fifteen percent off any purchase. I guess, like from like your side of things, when you're playing yourself and you're playing the we'll just say the US midam, how do you approach strokeplay and match play differently or is it the same approach for me?

00:42:43
Speaker 3: It's it's generally the same approach. I really ultimately just try to play every hole the way it's meant to be played for my game, which is not the same as somebody else's game. So I just am going to take a part the golf course the best way I can for me. Period.

00:43:02
Speaker 2: So if if the playing if you're playing partner. Like I think this is where people get wrapped up in match play too. It's like you're playing partners doing this, or they're you know, they could be making a mess of a hole and then you or they're playing great where they're they just keep making birdies? Are you just trying to state even keel Like if somebody hits one O B and you're in the middle of the fairway hitting your second shot, is it's just the same approach all the time?

00:43:30
Speaker 3: For me, it is I've found for myself that that's the best strategy. I really try not to pay attention to what they do. I mean, obviously, if you're like one down and there's a drivable par four and they drive the green and they're like ten feet, I think you probably have to review your strategy a little bit. But like outside of those really really random, like you know, very very unlikely scenarios, I'd rather just play my own game the way that because like, ultimately, if you've you know, done your practice rounds the way that you should, you've already figured out based on where the pins are and where the tea boxes are, how your game is going to best play that hole and whatever that other person does. Like it's not like they shot sixty five and qualifying and you shot eighty five. Like you're still shooting the same scores, right, So, like you play the golf course the way you're meant to play it. And if they're a bomber and they're going to take drive around every hole, like let them. But I still am shooting what I'm shooting, So like why does it matter?

00:44:36
Speaker 2: I think people also get lost a little bit in like what's happening and the reality of like how long eighteen holes is, yeah, and how like people can get out of the like if you you know, the common one is like somebody gets out hot against you and they're three up through five and they're playing just they're just playing flat out, like way better than you're playing. But the reality is like teen holes and like nobody birdies every hole, you know, like they'd be shooting, you know, not a lot of people go out and shoot sixty two. Now, that could happen and you could just have something, you know, and then there's nothing you could have done. But like you there's like that knee jerk reaction of like, oh I got to start pressing. Yeah, that's like the hardest place to operate from in golf.

00:45:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I again, I am a firm believer that's sticking to your strategy and playing you know, to your strengths is ultimately going to lead to long term success. Like listen, like sometimes you run into a buzz song like you can't if you played a great game and you didn't overly like like forcing when somebody's putting you under the gun and then short setting yourself or like making more air, Like that's so much compounding. What they're doing is so much worse feeling than if you played great golf on your own game and still lost because they just played ridiculous. And so for me, like looking at those two scenarios, I would so much rather live with. Okay, I stuck to my game plan. I stuck to like what is suitable for my game. I had a lot of discipline, And I ran into a bus saw today like she was making forty footers out of nowhere. How am I gonna compete with that? Like it was her day? Great? Hats off?

00:46:19
Speaker 2: Uh, you're so your your husband caddied now both times you've won the mid Am right Yeah ruh, yep, how is it.

00:46:27
Speaker 1: How's it having the husband on the back.

00:46:30
Speaker 3: He's the best. He's like, yeah, I think there's a reason he was such a successful trader. He's so emotionally even keeled, like if I'm up or down or angry or sad or like happy overly happy, like he's just and he's so he's so like all right, what are we going to do on this shot? Like he just helps me refocus and like keep my bottom line like really simple. And he doesn't get affected by noise very often, and so having there, having him there is just like this extra anchor of like stability and calm that that really is helpful for me. And it's funny because he's actually caddied for a friend of ours, and so he's got two USG victories and he's made five out of six PGA Tour cuts.

00:47:17
Speaker 1: Oh my god.

00:47:18
Speaker 3: So he's like he's a really good caddy.

00:47:22
Speaker 2: It's I got asked by a college coach head of a big tournament this summer if I knew anybody that could caddy for one of those kids who was very good player.

00:47:33
Speaker 1: And it's funny.

00:47:33
Speaker 2: It was like a lot of pressure, I you know, like you don't want to set up like somebody with bad Yeah. Yeah, it was like the worst thing you could do, and it's it's funny. I was like I was looking through and my favorite caddie I've ever that I have. He's my cousin and he played college baseball. He was a pitcher and and then he now is like a college or a high school baseball coach. And to me, what I liked about it is like he wasn't like the best golfer I knew, but a picture like understands like the idea of of kind of golf where it's like you're trying to execute a shot and the shot changes every time because they're trying to pitch into different places and put you know, in each situations unique and and like. But that even Keel, what you hit on I think is like, I mean, that's the number one trade of a caddy is you don't want like I've had my dad caddy for me and like I can feel the anxiety through through the bag.

00:48:38
Speaker 3: It's like your dies. Yes, you don't want somebody who lives and dies on every shot.

00:48:44
Speaker 2: But that even Keel is it's it's and like the way they that a caddy talks to you is so instrumental in those situations of handling stress.

00:48:54
Speaker 1: For sure. What would be your tips if your.

00:48:57
Speaker 2: Caddy, if you if you were caddying for someone, Well, if somebody said I'm cadding for somebody.

00:49:02
Speaker 1: In this important round, where are like two things that they should do?

00:49:06
Speaker 3: I would say, stay calm but optimistic, yeah, right, always see the possibility, right, And I would say, you know, the best caddies are very they anticipate, right, I think it's very like just be ready with a wet towel, like keep up and like be a calm presence, don't get overly excited or overly down or anything. And and it's you know, it's straightforward, but it's really hard.

00:49:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really hard to do that.

00:49:38
Speaker 3: It is.

00:49:39
Speaker 2: I I sometimes don't know if I if I would be any good or any bad, but I definitely feel more nervous when a caddy than me too.

00:49:48
Speaker 1: All Right, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask. I got to ask.

00:49:51
Speaker 2: Like, you know, you've made social media waves about your the amazing accomplishment of the second mid Am. But the fits, the fits who are all over I'm a little out over my skis here. I'm not really an expert on women's fashion, But tell us about the fits? How how how far planned out are you? Like? Were you ready for the whole whole week? What what goes into uh? You look, you know, you're you know by all types of purposes A one of the greatest ever at the at the women's golf fashion thing. What's tell us what goes into goes into the fits?

00:50:30
Speaker 3: So I definitely didn't have like a superscripted like championship outfit or anything like that. But I mean, honestly, I was at Bandon Dune's with my fam on a family trip the week before. I was at the Midam and I knew I was going to island, So I just stuffed like a month's worth of stuff into into one you know, giant suitcase, knowing I was going to do laundry like four times, and you know, I kind of like made do with what was left that was clean on the last day. I mean, but frankly, like my aesthetic is you know a little bit more classic with with maybe just a little bit of you know, edge. But but I love a classic look. Like I like men's wear. I like you know, plats, I like white legs, you know, the whole thing, and I just like to have a little bit of fun. And you know, I don't like, like, you know, there's this old saying in women's fashion like shrink it and pink it. You know, literally like they take men's stuff and they just make it smaller and they make it pink, and they're like, oh, this is going to sell, and it's not. That's not what we want. And I think that you know, women's fashion is having a little bit more of an awareness because it's such a bigger part of the game now. You know, women's golf is growing so much, which is amazing. So I hope that that grants take this now into account and and realize that it doesn't it's not just pink it and drink it, and people want to show some personality and you know, like be feminine but also like different, Right, we don't all want to look the same cookie cutter way that that everybody else, you know, all the other golfers look.

00:51:59
Speaker 2: Like I do. Uh, you know, I'm I'm not an expert, but I do feel that the fashion element of women's golf is kind of almost a hurdle to participation.

00:52:11
Speaker 1: Like my wife sometimes is like I.

00:52:13
Speaker 3: Don't know if I want to wear this, you know, yep, it sucks.

00:52:19
Speaker 2: How can people find you if they're if they're interested in the in the mental coaching and and and that side of what you do.

00:52:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, they can find me on Instagram Fearless Golf Coach or at Fearless Golf Coach and send me a DM or you know, look at some of my content. They're not great at posting. I kind of tend to just work with word of mouth. But but yeah, if they if they like what I'm talking about and feel it, then please reach out.

00:52:46
Speaker 2: It's great, awesome, Thanks Aina, and congratulations again.

00:52:50
Speaker 3: It's awesome being with you. Thanks so much for the time, Andy, great seeing you.

00:53:06
Speaker 1: All right.

00:53:06
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to another edition of the Friday Golf Podcast. Big thanks to our producer PJ. Clark for editing and producing this podcast. We will be back next week with another episode of the podcast and look forward to the off season where we get to do a little bit more widespread topics. So we'll see you next week and thank you guys for listening.

00:53:33
Speaker 1: As always,