Pressure: How to Perform When It Matters Most

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Understanding why pressure affects us, recognising our personal tendencies under stress, and using breath and awareness to stay composed when the stakes are highest.

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What We Can Learn from the Ryder Cup

The Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup are where we see golf played under the heaviest pressure the game can exert. In 2023, we witnessed Carlota Ciganda, in front of her home fans with the Solheim on the line, watching her opponent Nelly Korda stick it to 7ft — only to follow her to 2ft, then repeat the feat on the next hole to win the crucial point. We had Jon Rahm, desperate not to lose the opening singles match, laying a 75ft lightning-fast putt stone dead to force a half. Extraordinary feats under the most intense conditions imaginable.

How golfers demonstrate such poise in the face of so much adversity remains a mystery to the typical club golfer, for whom a five-footer for a crucial half can be enough to thwart success. So, how do they do it?

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The Relationship with Failure

The first point to make is what we might term a ‘relationship with failure’. Through sheer experience, elite professional sportsmen and women develop a natural immunity to the fear of failing — one which allows them to compete in conditions that would make ordinary folk melt. Any competitive game has the capacity to evoke powerful emotions, and golf is no different. No one wants to feel they are the kind of player who bottles it. Our mettle, our mental fortitude is on the line.

Accept the fact that in any sporting contest, a successful outcome can never be guaranteed. Reassure yourself that whatever happens today, you’re going to be OK. Developing a stable relationship with failure is the biggest single step to improving your performance under pressure.

It is obviously harder for amateurs to develop this extremely stable relationship with failure, but so long as we commit to accepting any outcome before we start, we have taken a vital first step. After all, it’s the golfer who can’t cope with the idea of failing who will put themselves under the most pressure.

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Know Your Tendencies Under Pressure

A second essential lesson if we are to perform under pressure is awareness. When the chips are down, we enter a hyper-aroused state and our individual, personal tendencies emerge. Some of us speed up. But more common is the tendency to slow down, to take extra care, to ‘try harder’. As something becomes more important to us, we want to do whatever we can to ensure a successful outcome.

Golf is about balance. Technically we talk about steeps and shallows, path and face, the need to balance them out. But this applies to our mental state too. The golfer who speeds up under pressure needs to learn to slow down; the golfer who tends to slow down needs to give themselves permission to freewheel, to go with gut instinct. But until we have an awareness and understanding of our tendencies, we cannot take the ideal balancing action.

Think back to the times when you played under pressure. What happened? How and why did it go wrong? If you’re struggling to form a clear picture, monitor yourself the next few times you feel stress levels rise. Consider your grip pressure, your pace of play, your breathing. These are the clues that reveal what happens to you personally when the heat is on.

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Dealing with Tension in the Body

Tension begins through a build-up of thoughts. Just like an empty motorway suddenly filling up with cars, we grind to a halt pretty quickly. When we begin to struggle, there is an increase in brainwave frequency. As our mind gets busy, the clear and simple messages from brain to body — which had been flowing — start to get interfered with. Confusion leads to tightness, and crucial technical elements like rhythm and sequencing evaporate.

A tense mind is not just a busy mind; it is also a forgetful mind. The muscles rely on receiving messages via the neural pathways we create. Once those pathways gum up, the body ‘forgets’ how it needs to move. There is a famous Tai Chi saying: ‘Tense muscles are weak muscles... and they forget.’

Tension is often created through the perception that golf is difficult. You can address this by simple reframing. Change your personal par on a tough hole to make the challenge feel within reach. Widen your target from a pinpoint to a channel or corridor. Work on shaping the ball rather than hitting it dead straight — a straight shot, as Jack Nicklaus once called it, is ‘a fluke’; a shaped shot gives you a much wider arc of success.

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Using the Breath to Stay Present

In our constant search for better golf and lower scores, we inevitably turn our attention to the 1.5 seconds it takes to swing the club. But what if there is something you can do in those long interludes between shots that could have a massive effect on your execution?

The way we breathe has the capacity to affect performance profoundly. Ancient disciplines like martial arts, tai chi and yoga have recognised this for centuries. Elite golfers including Jordan Spieth, Bryson DeChambeau and Madelene Sagstrom have worked seriously on this area.

Breathing keeps us present. Golfers are notorious time-travellers, projecting forward to the hope and fear of shots to come, or back to things we wish we’d done differently. Breathing is something that can only happen here and now. When we place our attention on the breath, we create a resting place for the mind in the present moment.

When we bring our attention to the breath our mind calms down, the brain gets quieter, the mind-body connection becomes stronger, and our ability to create the movements we want is greatly enhanced.

In practical terms, focus on three areas. First, posture: stand in a way that allows your lungs and diaphragm to do their jobs properly. Second, draw deeper, longer breaths from the belly rather than the shorter, tighter breaths from the chest that arouse feelings of stress. Third, slow it down. Most of us breathe too shallow and too fast at the best of times, let alone when we are facing a tricky pitch over a lake.

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Key Takeaways

•  Golfers who perform well under pressure have developed a stable and comfortable relationship with failure. Commit on the first tee to accepting whatever outcome the round delivers.

•  Our individual tendencies are revealed under pressure — some speed up, most slow down. Awareness of your tendency is the first step to balancing it out.

•  Tension is a build-up of mental activity to the point where the neural pathways from brain to body gum up. Reframing the difficulty of the task can drain it away.

•  Using breath consciously between shots anchors you in the present, quietens the mind and strengthens the mind-body connection.

•  Better breathing comes from improved posture, breathing from the belly rather than the chest, and slowing your breathing rate right down.

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