Golf is not a game for fiery locker-room speeches, but imagine what it would look like if it was. Player gets riled up in the clubhouse, storms past the green jackets on his way to the first tee and then … what exactly? Lag putts the Masters field into submission?
Motivation in golf is tricky. The problem with trying to summon the type of run-through-a-wall adrenaline that prevails in other sports is that adrenaline can put you in the next fairway over. You want golfers to care about the big tournaments, but caring too much presents its own headaches. The most successful players are those capable of walking the narrowest of tightropes—accepting a moment’s magnitude, but not getting swept up in it.
“I would say my first few majors when I turned pro, I don’t think I handled it my best,” said Jon Rahm, a winner of two majors. “I think wanting to win so bad to where I wanted to control everything a little bit too much, and it took me a few years to learn that I’ve just got to go out there and play and let it happen.”
For the last decade, the golf embodiment of wanting a specific outcome is Rory McIlroy at the Masters. Since 2015, he has needed only a green jacket to complete the career Grand Slam, and he has faced the added burden of scores of golf fans wanting it for him as well. Asked if that level of attention weighs on him, McIlroy said he tries to block it out.
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“It’s just narratives. It’s noise,” McIlroy said. “It’s just trying to block out that noise as much as possible. I need to treat this tournament like all the other tournaments that I play throughout the year.”
The “it’s just another tournament” refrain is a popular one during majors, and you can understand why McIlroy would want it that way. He handles most weeks of the year better than anyone, with two big wins already in 2025. And it’s not like his Masters have all been disasters. In his 10 bids for the career Slam, McIlroy has had five top-10s. But he’s also broken 70 only once in the first round during that time, with a scoring average over par. If it’s just another tournament, McIlroy doesn’t play it like one.
Sports psychologist Bhrett McCabe has long cautioned against trying to keep competitive emotions at arm’s length, as if the way to overcome new anxieties is to pretend they’re not there. That doesn’t work, he says. “ It is not the same as any other event. Why do we have to assume that everything we compete in is exactly like we’ve done in the past?” said McCabe, who is working with five players in the Masters field. “It reminds me of players preparing to play big games in other sports—the Super Bowl, the World Series and such. In those games, we don’t try to minimize it and act like it’s the same thing that we’ve done 10,000 times.”
The emerging Swedish star Ludvig Åberg was perceptive enough to recognize his first Masters would be different. He finished runner-up in 2024, in part because of how he adapted to the arena.
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“I approach it as one of the biggest events of the year. I do think it’s important to do that because I think if you don’t, you’re almost going to hit a wall in terms of when you actually experience it,” Åberg said. “I’m not trying to be delusional. I’m not trying to create it into something that it’s not. I feel like an important thing for me is to acknowledge that and be OK with it.”
So is the solution to stand over every shot thinking about its historical implications? Of course not. But as McCabe said, the mind is going to want to do something. And whether it’s a green jacket or a $5 Nassau at stake, the best solution is to lock in on something you can trust in moments of uncertainty.
“A certain swing feel or a mechanism we can trust,” he said. “An element we can focus on. That’s what I tell all my players. The Masters is big. It’s important. Let’s stop acting like it’s any other event. It’s not. But once we get on on the golf course, the single most important thing that we have is not a shot at the Masters. It’s the next shot.”
This article first appeared in Low Net, a Golf Digest+ exclusive newsletter written for the average golfer, by an average golfer. Have a topic you want me to explore? Send me an email and I’ll do my best to dive in.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
