I coach high school golf here in the Salt Lake City area where I live. Those boys play golf fearlessly. They swing all out on every shot without concern for lurking trouble. It’s as if they don’t see the water hazard they need to avoid, or the bunker they need to carry. All they see are fairways and pins.

Playing this way can get them into trouble, too. Golf is a strategic game. Not every pin is meant to be fired at. Not every bunker is meant to be carried. Thinking my way around a golf course is a skill that has been acquired with age.

This interplay between aggressive and conservative, fearless and realistic is, I think, a key to golf’s mental game. Good golfers are constantly toeing the line between the two. Some might call it a tightrope walk. A delicate—and yes, fragile—balance between these two seemingly opposing philosophies.

If you look harder though, you see they’re actually not opposing at all. When properly understood, they coexist in a symbiotic relationship. Tiger Woods said it best, “I make aggressive swings to conservative targets.” If you grew up watching Tiger like I did you probably thought of him as the most aggressive golfer of his generation, maybe ever. But when you unpack this quote, you see there’s more to his game. To explain what I think he meant, and how we can apply it to our games, I’ll use a concept that was first introduced to me by Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson in their book, The Game Before the Game. I call it the box-line-box method.

The box-line-box method explained

Imagine you just hit a great drive down the middle at your local course (nicely done). It’s time to hit your second shot. Using the box-line-box method, you imagine two boxes. The first is directly behind your ball on line with your target. This is your decision box. The second is drawn around your ball. This is your execution box. An imaginary line is drawn between the two boxes. This is your transition line. You step over this line as you exit the decision box and enter the execution box before you hit your shot. 

In the decision box, you gather all the data you need to decide the shot you’ll hit. Your ideal state of mind here is optimistic realism. You believe you can execute good shots, but you’re realistic about executing hero shots. Here is where Tiger would, more often than not, choose conservative targets. Importantly, you don’t leave the decision box until you’re fully committed to the shot you’re about to hit. But remember, that shouldn’t take all day. Do your best to limit the amount of time you spend in this box—it’s better for you and your playing partners.

As you step over the transition line into the execution box, your mindset shifts. If you were a realist in the decision box, you’re a beast in the execution box. Here, you believe nothing can go wrong. You turn into one of my high school golfers. You think of nothing but how great this shot is going to be, how you’re going to execute your decision to perfection. You go through your (ideally brief) pre-shot routine, and you swing. This is where the Tiger Woods you grew up watching shows up, the guy who looked never looked scared even when everything was on the line and everyone was watching. 

Closing thoughts

Playing with optimistic realism in the decision box is not the same as playing scared. The scared golfer worries about hitting a bad shot, what his playing partners will think, etc. More often than not, the scared golfer doesn’t believe that he can, and will, hit good shots. The optimistic realist golfer believes fully in his abilities and that he will be able to execute the shot he chooses in the decision box. He’s just very realistic about what those abilities are and allows that realism to shape the decisions he makes.

What happens in the decision box lives inside your head. No one else can see it. This is a feature, not a bug. Protect it. Don’t let anyone else inside your decision box.

Using the box-line-box method does not guarantee that every shot will be perfect. Nothing in golf can do that. You control process, not results. But I promise that using this process dramatically increases the chances you’ll experience better results.

This method does indeed require a very delicate balance. It’s hard to switch from conservative to aggressive between the two boxes. Go easy on yourself. Find joy in the pursuit. Progress, not perfection.