You might hate golf. Maybe you hate the idea of watching it on TV even more than my sixteen-year old.

If so, bear with me. Although the storyline is Rory McIlroy’s 2025 victory at The Masters, this isn’t really about golf.

This is about a person who has fully embraced the fact that what happens between his ears has at least as much impact on results as his raw physical abilities.

On Masters Sunday, the golf world saw a riveting competition and the crowning of a new champion. I saw a masterclass in managing the mind.

Background

For those completely unfamiliar with the game, there are just a couple things you need to know:

In men’s professional golf, there are four major championships: The Masters, the U.S. Open, the Open Championship (the British Open, to us Americans), and the PGA Championship.

Like tennis, winning them all in a single year is called a Grand Slam. Unlike tennis, no golfer has ever done it.*

Completing the Grand Slam in golf is so difficult that only seven women and five men in the long history of the sport have won all four majors over the course of an entire career, let alone a single season.

Rory McIlroy just became the sixth.

Setting the Stage

The thirty-five year old McIlroy, of modest upbringing in Northern Ireland, was a golf prodigy. He played his first professional tournament in 2007 at age seventeen. He won his first PGA event in 2010.

Then, over just four seasons from 2011 through 2014, he won three of the four majors—the U.S. Open in 2011, the PGA in 2012, and the British plus a second PGA Championship in 2014.

With the career Grand Slam just one win away, he entered what would become a decade-long drought. The Masters eluded him. It tormented him.

• In 2011, he set a three-round scoring record, then blew an eight-shot lead on Sunday to finish fifteenth.
• In 2014, a second round seven-over-par derailed his chances.
• In 2021 and 2023, he missed the cut entirely.

Not only was he unable to win the Masters in that eleven-year span, he did not win any major championships. Questions about his ability to perform under pressure intensified.

Against that backdrop, April 2025 in Augusta, Georgia, marked the eleventh Masters in a row with the golf world asking “Will this be the year Rory finally wins it? Will he ever win it?”

I’m sure Rory was asking himself the same questions.

Roller Coaster

It was a very promising start. McIlroy began his final round Sunday with a two stroke lead. It was erased after the first hole with a jarring double-bogey.

Oh no. Not again.

The rough opening seemed to provide a healthy gut-check though, and Rory rallied back. He birdied the third, fourth, ninth, and tenth holes to regain a five shot lead.

Do I let myself believe I’m going to win this thing?

Victory seemed well within his grasp, and his relief was palpable.

But then came a bogey on eleven, entering Augusta’s infamous “amen corner.”

On thirteen, his second shot found the creek. The gallery gasped in shock. Another unforced error. Another devastating double-bogey, his fourth of the tournament.

The commentators, armed with AI-enabled databases of every golf statistic in history, immediately broadcast the fact that no one has ever won the Masters with four double-bogeys.

Then another bogey on fourteen. Just like that, his commanding lead had evaporated.

This can’t be happening.

But again, he rallied. A birdie on the fifteenth put him back in a tie for the lead with the charging Englishman, Justin Rose.

Rose finished with a stunning birdie on the last hole, but McIlroy answered.

He knew his second shot from the seventeenth fairway was good as soon as he made impact, and he finally allowed some emotion to show, yelling “Go! Go!”

It went. His ball landed softly on the green and rolled to within two feet, a phenomenal shot. A birdie put him back in the lead. One hole to play.

Maybe I still have a chance.

On the final hole, perfectly positioned in the fairway—a shot he could place safely on the green 95 of 100 times—Rory inexplicably hit it wide right into the greenside bunker.

This is a nightmare.

Talking to Ourselves

I am, of course, speculating as to his internal dialogue, but thoughts like these would be perfectly normal under the circumstances, nearly inevitable.

It’s not that people like Rory McIlroy don’t have them. It’s what they do with them that is unique.

In those circumstances, could you muster the mental fortitude to dismiss the inner critic and instead tell yourself, “You’re one of the best bunker players in the world. You got this.”?

I certainly couldn’t. I have a hard time forgiving myself for typos in my weekly newsletters. (If you find one, don’t tell me.)

A good—but not great—bunker shot left him with an eight-footer for the win, but his putt slipped just left of the hole.

He had gotten his chance to end it, and he had failed.

You’re rubbish. You deserve to lose.

(Further speculation on negative self-talk of a Northern Irishman.)

Sudden Death

Refusing to submit to the inner emotional turmoil, Rory walked with his head held high to the scoring room, stopping to kiss his wife and young daughter on the way—not a distant, distracted greeting, but a real connection.

He appeared to let it all go instantly. The shared joy felt real.

How did he do that?!

I asked myself, how capable am I of being fully present with my family after an even moderately stressful day of work?

With regulation play in the record books, he had just a few minutes to gather himself for a sudden death playoff with Justin Rose on the same hole he had just botched. This time, there would be no second chances.

With his tee shot on the first playoff hole rolling within a few yards of his earlier effort, he faced another “simple” wedge shot almost identical to the one that had cost him victory just moments ago.

Justin Rose hit first, his second settling about fifteen feet from the pin.

Then somehow, under unfathomable pressure, with the specter of another crushing collapse looming, carrying the burden of—his words—”fifteen years of pent-up disappointment,” Rory McIlroy found himself and delivered a brilliant effort that rolled within three feet.

The crowd erupted.

It still wasn’t over. Rose would again play first, his putt difficult—though very makeable for a pro. But not this time.

One three-footer left to become just the sixth person ever to complete the career grand slam.

Just ten months earlier he had missed two putts of similar length on the final three holes to lose the PGA Championship. So many situations just like this. So many crushing disappointments.

With everything on the line, he stepped up and executed the exact same routine as for every other putt in the tournament, every putt in practice, and every putt in his mind.

The past is history. There is only now. There is only this putt.

With every reason not to, Rory trusted his process, trusted himself, mastered his mind, and delivered the ball confidently to the bottom of the cup.

On his seventeenth attempt, Rory McIlroy was finally a Masters champion.

Release

Then the floodgates opened. He raised open arms to the sky, the tension draining out of his face, dropped to his hands and knees and sobbed. His chest heaved uncontrollably. His tears flowed freely.

It was a powerful, moving moment, because it was so real, so authentic, so universally human.

Through all of this, Rory McIlroy was not suppressing these emotions. He was managing them.

He was using every tool in his toolbox to regulate the flow of this intense emotional experience—not trying to stop it or shut it off, accepting the reality of the excruciating pressure, not resisting it, but never letting it spike too high.

This skill is not innate, and he did not develop it overnight.

The Other Kind of Practice

Like many elite athletes, Rory McIlroy realized years ago that mastering the tools for managing his mind and regulating his emotions was just as essential to winning as his physical fitness, his driving ability, his iron play, or his short game.

We must practice the mental and emotional skills just as much, if not more, than the physical and cognitive skills. For many complex reasons, we tend to resist this fundamental truth.

But the most successful elite athletes are so committed to getting better that they give up their resistance and their stories of “I shouldn’t need help.”

For McIlroy, help on the mental game comes from legendary sports psychologist Dr. Bob Rotella. Rotella’s clients, including McIlroy, have collectively won over seventy-five major championships.

And I would bet they have been happier doing it.

Four Tools From Dr. Bob

“Dr. Bob” operates in the context of sports, especially golf, but his principles are universal. What can we learn from them?

Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect

The title of Rotella’s book, the top-selling work on sports psychology of all time, conveys a foundational idea that applies to work and life as much as golf.

Step one is accepting that perfect is impossible. In all our endeavors, we must accept that reality is messy, unpredictable, full of setbacks, and inherently imperfect.

You cannot allow yourself to be knocked off balance when things don’t go as planned. Problems are not anomalies. They are normal.

I’ll be honest: I can get derailed for hours by a minor mistake. Athletes like Rory McIlroy have minutes or seconds to accept catastrophic errors.

It’s far more impressive than the 330 yard drives.

Visualize Success

Elite performers visualize the level of execution they want to achieve over and over again in vivid detail.

They know how powerful the mind is, and thus they intentionally direct its otherwise chaotic and often unproductive activity, transforming a liability into an asset.

Before going into an important presentation, sales call, or crucial conversation, do you envision it going fantastically well?

Or do you allow the default imaginings of worst-case scenarios to take over?

Which do you think is more helpful?

Positive Self-Talk

Imagine your most embarrassing mistake at work. Now imagine doing it in front of ten thousand screaming fans with another few million watching the tight shot of your facial expression in 4K resolution on the live broadcast.

Could you muster the mental discipline, in that moment, to say something kind and affirming to yourself?

Could you bring to mind your many past successes, or would you invalidate them and over-weight the negatives?

Instant Amnesia for Mistakes

Having just hit one of the worst shots of your life, with the biggest potential consequences you have ever faced, could you instantly put it out of your mind and focus on the present?

In that moment, could you pick up your little girl, kiss her on the forehead, and really be there as if she were the only other person in the world?

Can you let things go quickly? Or are you still ruminating over the time that cranky third-grade teacher made you feel stupid in front of the whole class? (Maybe that’s just me.)

And sure, learning from mistakes is essential, but you replay the tape objectively and dispassionately after the match, not on the course.

Process Over Outcomes

As he stepped up to that final putt, Rory McIlroy might have been tempted to think “If I make this, I win. If I miss, I will probably lose.”

That’s normal, but it’s a recipe for losing.

Instead, the focus must be on the process, which is why professional athletes develop meticulous routines.

In business, a thousand external factors beyond your control can influence your results. But if you focus on your process, on consistent, high-quality execution, learning, and continuous improvement, over time the odds will tilt in your favor.

The Most Important Game of All

The ability to manage the mind and regulate emotions powerfully influences performance in every domain, but it has an even broader and more important impact.

It completely governs your lived experience.

Rotella reminds his players that golf is supposed to be enjoyable. The difference between frustration and fun is largely between your ears.

Likewise, in work and in life, your mental game can be the difference between suffering and thriving.

You can either let your mind and emotions run amok and be defeated by life’s inevitable disappointments, or you can get yourself a good coach (like us), commit to the hard work and practice, and master it as Rory McIlroy did so beautifully on Sunday at the Masters.

Until next time,

Greg

*Tiger Woods came closest with the “Tiger Slam,” winning the U.S., the British, and the PGA in 2000, and the Masters in 2001, and is thus the only person to hold all four titles at once.

To me that counts, but I don’t make the rules.