This mental game mistake you make is something pros struggle with, too

Annika Sorenstam played one of the great rounds of golf in 2001 at the Standard Register Ping, when she became the first LPGA Tour player to shoot 59 in competition. It was an accomplishment she was proud of, but Sorenstam recalls a lingering thought as she left the 18th green that day. “I did have a putt for 58,” Sorestam said during a press conference at her namesake LPGA tournament in 2025. “Why didn't it go in? You become your score sometimes. That's what we live for.”

Tour pros who are out there putting for their livelihood have more of a reason to be score-obsessed than the average golfer. However, judging oneself by what’s written on the scorecard is something that both pros and amateurs struggle with. Even if you did plenty of things well throughout your round, there’s a common tendency to overlook them and hone in on what number you shot. That quickly leads to focusing on what you did wrong to earn that score. This line of thinking tends to be negative, and many find it unhelpful in the pursuit of better golf. It’s natural to lock in on score, but for many, it’s not the way to unlock your best golf.

“There are so many days you walk off the course and you're always like, I could have done that better or I could have putted better. Even if you walk off and you're a couple under par, you feel like, I could have holed that putt,” LPGA Tour winner Linn Grant said in conversation with Sorenstam during the aforementioned 2025 press conference. Grant won the tournament that week, her second LPGA title. “You're never really truly 100 percent satisfied. I think that's what's really tough about this sport, to feel like you can always do more than you do and you can always do it better. I think it's an ongoing process for me specifically. I think for everyone, I guess.”

If you’ve found yourself caught in a similar mental rut of judging your game only by your score, and leaving rounds only thinking about the shots missed that could’ve gotten you to a better score, there’s something you can do to reframe your thinking.

Performance gurus Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott have worked with many LPGA and PGA Tour players, including Sorenstam. They say that a lot of amateurs struggle with only focusing on the score because they don’t have something else to focus on. The first step in separating yourself from your score is to create “a game within the game to pay attention to.” They call it a playing focus or a playing promise. Examples of a playing focus would be: Take a deep breath before each shot, or hold your finish for two seconds on each shot.

So, instead of arriving at the course with the goal: Today I’m going to break 90, have a focus that’s unrelated to score. Throughout the round, check in with yourself to see if you’re sticking to it: Am I taking a deep breath before each shot? At the end of the round, be honest with yourself about how well you did or did not execute your playing focus throughout the day.

Nilsson and Marriott have found that players they’ve worked with can implement this thinking relatively easily. You’ll leave the course less frustrated, because you won’t be harboring resentment over your score and the putts that didn’t fall. And you might just find that ignoring the score can result in lowering it.