Mental Game

Playing With a Lead or Behind

Manage your mind whether ahead or chasing.

Why it matters

Being ahead and being behind both change how people play, and usually for the worse: a lead makes players defensive and tight, a deficit makes them reckless. The scoreboard does not change the odds on any individual shot, and playing as though it does is how leads get lost.

How to do it

With a lead, keep taking the shots you would otherwise take. Freezing up is how a lead becomes a tie.
With a lead, do tighten on genuinely marginal decisions — but only those. There is a difference between playing sensibly and playing scared.
Behind, be patient. Strokes come back over holes, not on one hero shot, and the hero shot usually makes it worse.
Behind, take the good risks when the miss is cheap. That is a real adjustment and it is not the same as forcing.
Either way, run the same routine. The routine is the thing that should not know the score.

Common mistakes

Playing not to lose when ahead.Defensive play is still a change of strategy, and an unrehearsed one. Keep playing your game.

Forcing low-percentage shots when behind.They are still low percentage. Patience and the occasional good risk closes gaps; desperation widens them.

Watching the scoreboard mid-round.Check it when the format requires and otherwise not at all. It cannot improve a single decision you are about to make.

Key points

With a lead: keep attacking smartly, do not freeze.
Behind: take good risks, stay patient.
Play your game regardless of the card.

The drill

Drill · Play the hole, not the board — 1 competitive round without checking the leaderboard until the end. Play a whole round — a league night, a doubles round, anything with a score that matters — without looking at where you stand until it is over. Notice how many decisions you would have made differently, and whether any of them would have been better.

Watch: 3 things ALL 1000-rated disc golfer do! — Kellan McCann