How do you perform well in high pressure moments?

by Tim O'Connor September 27, 2025September 29, 2025

I turned on the Ryder Cup late on Friday morning. Within about five minutes, I heard the word “pressure” at least three times. I lost count when I watched in the afternoon.

Many Ryder Cup rookies have said the first tee is the most intense experience of their lives. Former U.S. Ryder Cup captain Paul Azinger said that during his first Ryder Cup, he was so nervous that it felt like his fingers were on fire, and he could feel his pulse in his eyeballs. Yipes!

The players feel the weight of their country’s hopes, and they know their teammates, friends and family are craving victory, and media and social media hounds say legacies are on the line.

Consider the first time that you’ve done anything that meant a lot to you, such as give a speech or presentation, go through an interview for a dream job interview, or try to win your first serious golf competition. (And yes, that! 🙂

So whether you’re a Ryder Cup player, a weekend warrior, or facing an exciting opportunity in another part of your life, how do you avoid being overwhelmed and literally and figuratively throwing up all over your shoes?

There’s all kinds of sports psychology techniques for slowing your racing mind and helping you maintain your focus, but most are useless when you’re really feeling the heat. Most of the time, many of these tips are just like swing tips—you just end up thinking which creates more thinking.

No mantra, breathing technique, self-improvement practice, or mental trick or affirmation will allow you to escape having crazy thoughts and overwhelming feelings when you’re having a big new experience. There’s not much you can do that guarantees you won’t screw-up royally. And you might, although usually never as badly as you think.

So what the hell can you do?

Honestly, the best thing to do is know that regardless whether you fall completely on your face and feel embarrassed that you botched the interview or your brutally high score is online forever for everyone to witness, you will not die. In fact, you will be better for it. Later on, you may see it as a gift.

But you must go through these scary experiences. You must cross the line of your resistance, take the risk, go to battle, jump into the fire. Experience is your greatest teacher. No amount of information will help you. Your greatest teacher is your own experience.

What surprises many people when they’re under the glare of the spotlight of an exciting new experience is that they feel things in their body that they’ve never experienced.

I recall standing over a shot on the last hole of a club championship in which I was contending for the first time. I had a strange metallic taste in my mouth and felt like electricity was radiating around my sternum. I ignored it and tried to think the right thoughts. Two shanks later, I made a quad.

As Azinger brilliantly articulated above, your body can be in an uproar in many different ways, including fast-breathing, tight stomach, shaking hands, profuse sweating, your heart beating like a rabbit, and so on.

We’ve all watched journeyman golfers with the lead late in a major. Almost invariably, they stumble while more experienced players hold steady. What’s the main difference? Usually, it’s experience.

Think of J.J. Spaun losing the three-hole playoff to Rory McIlroy in the PLAYERS Championship earlier this year. He wasn’t comfortable from the start. After that experience, he went on to win the U.S. Open.

You must go through these kinds of experiences and learn how your body reacts, and then you can respond. Most people think they thought the wrong thoughts. However, our bodies are our best clue to what’s going on, but we often don’t pay attention to our bodies.

Golf coach Sean Foley told me a story about feeling enormously tight before a big junior tournament. He went up to golf professional Ben Kern, his boss, for help. Sean expected Ben to share some wisdom, but Kern silently took his hands and shook them vigorously for about 30 seconds. During the round, Foley shook his hands when he felt tight.

In the 1976 U.S. Open, PGA Tour rookie Jerry Pate came to the last hole with a one-shot lead. He faced a 190-yard shot out of the rough to the green fronted by water. Pate thought he needed a four-iron to ensure he’d carry the water. His experienced caddie John Considine said five-iron was enough due to the combination of the flyer lie and Pate’s adrenalin. Pate hit the five to two-and-a-half feet and won by two shots.

Considine, known by other caddies as a “Cool-Hand Luke kind of guy,” had been in the fire enough times to skillfully to guide his rookie player.

When we tune into our bodies and feel what’s going on, we can settle ourselves down just by paying attention to the feeling. When we become aware that we’re feeling tight, our muscles usually relax. Or we can take action like Foley. If we’re aware we’re breathing or walking quickly, we can respond and slow down. Just having the awareness is a great start.

It takes guts to put ourselves in situations where we may fail, especially in a public setting such as a golf tournament. This is why many low-handicap golfers don’t play in tournaments, and it’s why many people don’t push themselves to see what’s possible in their careers, relationships, and other parts of their lives. It puts the image they wish to project to the world at risk.

Whether it’s in golf or in other parts of life, we need to have “a good relationship with failure,” as legendary coach Fred Shoemaker once said.

By putting yourself in the fire, you stretch yourself, reveal yourself to yourself, learn and grow.

That’s if you focus on what you can learn from the experience, rather than how you perform. That requires having the perspective that the greatest thing you can take from any experience is the learning. If you make it all about performance, you’re ratcheting up your self-created pressure.

Obviously, the players in the Ryder Cup want to win at all costs.

When they fail to convert a crucial point, they will feel terrible, even to the point of tears, but like Mark Calcavecchia, Bernhard Langer, Curtis Strange and many other Ryder Cup goats through the years, they eventually realize they are stronger for having had the experience.

My most recent book is Getting Unstuck: 7 Transformational Practices for Golf Nerds, which is now available in both soft cover and Kindle formats.

If you’ve ever considered mental game coaching, I’m inviting you to take the opportunity for a FREE 30-minute coaching call.

During this free session, we’ll discuss: