Too Many Swing Thoughts Kill Your Golf Game: A Warning from Hai Phong

I believed in textbooks for five years – World Cup 2026 shattered all of that. But it wasn't until I stood on a golf course in Hai Phong, watching a friend hit a shot with his eyes glued to the clubhead instead of the target, that I understood: it's not just football. Golf also has 'textbooks' that need to be shattered.

The story begins with an article on GOLF.com by coach Jamie Mulligan – the man who coaches Patrick Cantlay and Nelly Korda. Mulligan makes a shocking claim: the more you understand your swing, the more opportunities you have to interfere with it and mess it up. It sounds absurd, but looking back on nine years of observing the sports industry, I realize this isn't the first time a 'truth' has been turned upside down.

Context: When Information Becomes a Burden

Imagine a typical amateur golfer. He has a smartphone, YouTube, and thousands of instructional videos on how to grip the club, how to rotate the hips, how to keep the head still. He can watch Tiger Woods' swing in 240 frames per second, analyzing every millimeter of movement. Information has never been more abundant.

But according to Mulligan, this abundance is precisely the problem. He argues that many golfers understand their swing so well that they interfere with it during competition. They stand on the tee, heads full of thoughts: 'Keep the arm straight,' 'Rotate the shoulders more,' 'Don't roll the wrists early.' And the result is a worse shot than if they had thought nothing at all.

This is not new in sports. I have witnessed the same thing in track and field. In 2026, I was a 400m runner, and in an important semifinal, I told myself: 'Longer stride, stronger arm drive in the final 200m.' The result: a cramp at meter 350 and a last-place finish. The fall of 2026 didn't stop me – it redirected my entire track. But it taught me one thing: when you think about movement, you lose movement.

Core Analysis: The Mechanism Behind Interference

Mulligan doesn't just offer empty advice. He builds a theoretical framework based on the distinction between 'developing a swing' and 'playing a shot'. This is the key point that many amateur golfers overlook.

In the development phase – on the practice range, with a coach – you need conscious thought. You need to analyze, adjust, repeat. But when you step onto the course for competition, you need a completely different mental state: focus on the target, not on the body. You see the landing spot, you feel the height, you trust what you have built.

It sounds simple, but I have seen how it breaks down. In the summer of 2026, when COVID-19 postponed every tournament, I livestreamed commentary on classic matches. I realized something: the best commentators don't describe every movement of the players. They describe intent, context, and outcome. They focus on 'what' and 'why', not 'how'. Golf is the same.

Mulligan offers the formula 'See it, feel it, trust it' – see it, feel it, trust it. These three steps are not a technical checklist. They are a psychological process for shifting from 'analysis' mode to 'execution' mode. And according to him, the best golfers are those who know when to switch modes.

But this is where I must challenge myself. If you are in the process of changing your swing – for example, fixing a persistent path/face error – then 'trusting the swing' may only produce a more consistent version of that same error. Mulligan's article implicitly acknowledges this by placing technical work on the practice range, but it never states the boundary clearly. That is a blind spot.

Contrarian Angle: When 'Less' Is 'More'

The most interesting thing about Mulligan's article is not the advice, but the latent contradiction. He is a PGA Professional specializing in biomechanics, using 3D motion capture, force plates, high-speed video, and launch monitors in his daily work. He makes his living from measurement technology. Yet he says that the more you understand your swing, the more harm it does.

How to reconcile this? The answer lies in the distinction between coach-facing diagnostics and in-round cognition. Measurement technology is a tool for coaches to understand problems and design practice. But when the golfer steps onto the course, those numbers must stay in the practice room. This is a boundary the article does not draw clearly, and that is precisely why it creates an apparent contradiction.

I have seen the same thing in football. Coaches analyze video, track GPS, measure workload. But when players step onto the pitch, they don't think about 'number of sprints' or 'distance covered'. They play football. If a player thinks about data during competition, he has lost before the ball rolls.

There is another aspect the article does not address: the time cost of commitment. Mulligan encourages 'full commitment' – select the target, choose the shot, commit to the intention, then let muscle memory take over. But this process, if fully executed, can take time. And in a sport struggling with pace of play, that is worth considering. Patrick Cantlay, one of Mulligan's students, has been publicly criticized for slow play. Is there a connection between the 'deep commitment' philosophy and slow pace? There is no timing data to prove it, but it is a question worth asking.

Takeaway: Sport as a Common Language

What I take from Mulligan's article is not just advice about golf. It is a cross-disciplinary principle: in any sport, there is a time to learn and a time to compete, and confusing the two is the cause of many failures. Every number has the ability to lie; my job is to catch it in the act. And this article, despite lacking quantitative data, has caught one truth: information is not always power. Sometimes, it is a chain.

So the question for every golfer is not 'What more do I need to know?', but 'What do I need to forget in order to play better?'. That is an absurd question. And as I have learned, absurdity is a window, not a hole.