About a year ago, we decided to build our own mental performance assessment.

We’d been working for elite golfers for about a year, and wanted to create something as a baseline measure for where they were.

How mentally resilient are they? What specifically are they struggling with? Is their mentality something that fuels their performance? Or does it threaten it?

Jackson Koivun, a barely 21-year-old in only his third tournament as a professional golfer, just won. Something the majority of PGA Tour pros never do. If you know anything about golf, you know that’s not how this is supposed to go. Even the best college golfers usually take some time to struggle as a pro before even MAKING it onto the PGA Tour, much less winning.

But, Koivun has been one of the most dominant college golfers of all time.

And he won yesterday with one of the most dominant golfers of all time (Scottie) clipping at his heels.

Here’s what he said about his greatest trait as a golfer.

A college coach sent us this clip. We joked that this is a mandatory question they need to ask every potential recruit. I can’t think of a BETTER (😉) answer.

Maybe this is good media training. Or maybe he means it. Which leads to an interesting question.

Can you actually measure mental performance?

Not talent. Not athletic ability. Not results.

Mental performance.

At first, we thought we'd be building an assessment that would start off as a fun conversation starter with every golfer interested in working with us.

As we built it, we found ourselves rethinking almost everything we believed about how athletes grow.

The more athletes we coached, the more patterns we noticed.

And the more patterns we noticed, the more one thing became clear:

Most athletes aren't struggling because they're incapable. They're struggling because they don't understand what's happening inside of them.

A few weeks ago, we got a call from a PGA Tour golfer. They’d gotten our number from another pro golfer we work with. They’d never reached out to a “mental guy”. In fact, they’d never really believed in it. But they were at a low point and ready for anything.

Sidenote: When Kevin or I are working with an athlete, we never call ourselves mental coaches. We get a chuckle out of all the different things we’ve been labeled. If people make us put a name to it, we say we are “performance coaches” when we are around athletes. We typically leave it open for people to explain what they feel like we are. The way we see it, we just help leaders (Coach, AD, Athlete) try to become the best version of themselves. Nevertheless…

So we sent them this assessment referenced above. The results showed he was really struggling in the Fear area.

So we had a 90-minute call. That’s it. First time we ever spoke. We went through our “Addressing Fear” exercise together. We cautioned that this isn’t a simple “one-time” fix. It’s a journey over the course of years.

But this golfer jumped in head first. Did everything we asked. They were extremely open, honest, and self-aware.

But, despite our warnings, this golfer went out the next week and finished T3 and had their best statistical performance in over three seasons!

Now, we don’t claim that his success that week was 100% due to our conversations with him. But we tell this story for a specific reason.

Sometimes, what unlocks athletes to perform at their best is not all that complicated. If you’re an athlete reading this who’s struggling — your issue might be smaller than it feels.

It’s simple, easy stuff you can do if you just know what to target and how to do it. And honestly, that’s a big reason we are building our Game Within Course for athletes to go through this.

It’s not that complicated! Imagine if every athlete could do this when they were 11, 12, or 13 instead of having to unlearn and re-learn years of bad habits by the time they’re competing at an elite level.

And that’s a lesson we’ve learned in building these assessments. If you know what you need to work on, you can improve fast!

So, in that spirit, for this week, we thought we’d share five lessons that we’ve learned in assessing and coaching athletes on mental performance.

One of the biggest surprises?

Very few athletes actually have a confidence problem.

Most have an identity problem.

After a great performance, they believe they've finally figured it out. After a bad one, they wonder if they're good enough.

Neither conclusion is true.

Performance gives you information.

It does not give you identity.

When athletes stop asking performance to tell them who they are, they become free to learn from it.

Almost every athlete we’ve talked to has a very clear picture of what they should be doing around their performance.

They’ve at least heard the answers and been taught it at some point.

Stay present. Trust the process. Focus on the next play. Compete freely.

Most athletes’ problems aren’t with information.

It’s in the execution.

They’re able to tell themselves the messages they’re supposed to.

But actually doing it day in and day out is a completely different thing.

Most athletes don’t need more help KNOWING. They need help DOING.

If there's one characteristic we've seen over and over again, it's this.

In fact, the ones who grow the fastest usually aren’t the most physically talented. They know this and are looking for every edge.

But they're almost always very self-aware. There seems to be a link between self-awareness and talent.

Talented athletes seem to be less self-aware.
Self-aware athletes seem to be less talented.
This is an over-generalization, but we’ve seen it over and over again.

They’re honest about what they’re good at and bad at and have a clear sense of where they need to improve; they just don’t always know how.

They can admit what needs to improve without making it a statement about who they are.

When we first started this project, we thought we were measuring one thing. Instead, we realized mental performance is made up of several connected pieces.

Fear. Purpose. Drift. Competitive Joy.

And again, it’s not about knowledge in those areas. It’s about living your athletic life in a way that builds daily reps toward improving in those areas.

Just like you would at any physical skill.

What are the reps you’re building to be less fearful as an athlete and play freely?
What are you doing every day to live out your purpose?

We can’t just rest at knowledge. It has to extend to the things you practice, just like you do any sport.

This might have been our biggest takeaway. Very few athletes struggle with everything.

Almost every athlete has one or two areas that quietly shape the rest of their performance.

Some athletes struggle with fear.

Others with purpose.

Others with drift.

Others with seeing performance clearly.

The challenge is, most of us don't know which one is holding us back.

The goal of mental performance isn't becoming fearless, or perfectly confident, or mentally tough all the time.

The goal is understanding yourself well enough to keep growing. And the goal of our growth is Competitive Joy. A state of being that fuels our performance.

Awareness always comes before improvement.

And the better you understand yourself, the better you'll understand your performance.

Next week, we're doing something we've never done before.

For the past several months, we've been quietly building and refining what we call the BETTER Mental Performance Index.

It's an assessment designed to help athletes better understand where they currently are across the four areas we've been writing about:

Next Tuesday, we're going to share it with you.

You'll be able to work through the assessment yourself, discover where your biggest opportunity for growth might be, and begin building a clearer picture of your own mental game.

Because before you can improve your mental performance, you have to understand it.

We'll see you next week.