How can you keep your confidence high after a tough round?
Maintaining a high degree of confidence after struggling on the golf course is a battle every golfer faces. It doesn’t matter if you are a professional golfer ranked No. 1 in the world or a high school freshman on the junior varsity team.
The key to rebounding after a bad day is to be proactive and “maintain” your confidence level. Being proactive means you prioritize confidence and constantly seek ways to strengthen your self-belief.
You view confidence as a skill that requires consistent attention, just like your putting skills or short game. Proactive confidence is stable. It allows you to keep believing in your abilities, relatively independent of results.
Unfortunately, many golfers have reactive confidence. When they are performing well, their confidence is high. Conversely, when these golfers underperform, they feel hopeless and unconfident.
When you depend on results or how you play on a particular day, your confidence will “rollercoaster” throughout your career, leading to inconsistent results and underperformance when it matters most. We recently received a question from a junior golfer who responded to our Golf Mental Game Survey:
“I have consistently placed in the Top-5 all last summer. I felt confident throughout the season. Heading into the most important tournament of the year, I was excited and expected a top finish again. But on the first day, nothing went right. I shot my worst score of the season. I felt so sad and disappointed. The next two rounds were awful. How can I stay confident after I played so horribly after the first day?”
It’s understandable to feel down and a little shaken. Your season was building up to an important tournament. However, a bad start doesn’t cause your confidence to vanish. It’s your thoughts and memories of the event. Take a look at the words you used to describe your play: “nothing went right,” “worst score of the season,” “next two rounds were awful,” and “played so horribly.”
These words and phrases are powerful. Any golfer who repeated the words or focused on these phrases would likely lose confidence. You can keep your confidence relatively intact if you change your focus and inner dialogue.
For example, after the first day, you can start game planning for Round Two. This gives you a sense of control over your situation, keeping your confidence high.
Secondly, while you can’t prevent thoughts from happening, you can consciously repeat a few positive cue phrases and redirect the tone of your self-talk.
Take, for example, Nelly Korda and her performance at the 2025 Chevron Championship. Korda, the Rolex Women’s World Rankings No. 1, opened the tournament with a 5-over 77, carding six bogeys to post her worst first-round score of the season. Yet, Korda maintained her confidence heading into the second round by repeating a personal, meaningful cue phrase, “have faith.
KORDA: “(My emotions were) very up and down. My word today was ‘have faith.’ That was my motto. I didn’t really have much, though, when I made two bogeys, but I just kept repeating it to myself.”
Korda’s strategy helped keep her confidence high, as she carded a 4-under 68 to work her way inside the projected cut line.
KORDA: “At one point, I was 7-over… I grinded a lot on the two birdies on my eighth and ninth holes, really helped kind of boost [my confidence]. Then, I knew that there were some gettable par-5s on the back nine and front nine. So, just a crazy day.”
To maintain confidence, speak confidently to yourself and focus on possibility, not negativity. While outcomes are not fully under your control, your confidence is… and when your confidence is high, your outcomes improve.
Don’t rely on a good round to feel confident. Instead, maintain your confidence by focusing on your game plan, using positive self-talk, and controlling your inner dialogue using empowering cue words and phrases.
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- Avoid Making Comparisons for Golf Confidence
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