Drop High Beta, Play in Alpha Flow State

From Pro Mindset® Podcast featuring guest Philip Moore, golf expert, author, custom club builder, and Effortless Senior Golf founder.

Phil Moore has been playing golf for more than sixty years. He has taught the game for decades, written three books on it, fitted clubs for players of every level, and built a reputation as one of the clearest thinkers about what actually separates golfers who play to their potential from the vast majority who never do.

His answer is not the swing. It is not the equipment. Nor is it the number of hours spent on the range.

It is the mind. Specifically, it is the brain state a golfer is operating in when they stand over the ball. In this conversation with Pro Mindset® Podcast host Craig Domann, Phil breaks down the neuroscience, the practical tools, and the pre-shot routine that has helped golfers who could not break one hundred go out and shoot in the seventies. Not because they became better ball strikers, but because they finally learned to think better than they swing.

"Everybody hits the ball better than they score. I have never run into anybody who actually thinks better than they swing. The mental game is always behind – that is what I help golfers fix."

Phil Moore – golf expert, author, custom club builder and Effortless Senior Golf founder

The Six Things You Can Actually Control

Most golfers spend the majority of their mental energy on things they cannot control. The wind. The slope of the green. What their playing partner just shot. Whether the last bad bounce was fair. Phil starts every conversation about the mental game with a simple framework that cuts through all of that. There are exactly six things a golfer can control. Everything else has to be released.

01

Shot Selection

Which shot you choose to play and where you are aiming. Conservative selection keeps the mind quiet. Aggressive selection spikes it immediately.

02

Club Selection

Which club gives you the best chance to execute your chosen shot with a relaxed and confident mind over the ball.

03

Intention

One single clear intention for where you want the ball to go. Not two. Not three. One. Multiple intentions guarantee mental interference.

04

Setup

How you address the ball. Your alignment, posture, and grip. The physical preparation that precedes the swing.

05

Swing Focus

What your mind is doing during the swing. Ideally, nothing. Trust the body and complete the backswing.

06

Your Response

How you react after the shot, good or bad. This is entirely within your control and determines your brain state for the next shot.

Everything outside those six things is outside your control. Where the ball goes after it leaves the club face. What your competitors are doing. The weather. The condition of the course. The bounce. Phil's teaching starts and ends with this framework because the golfer who is genuinely clear on what they can and cannot influence has already eliminated the majority of the mental interference that destroys rounds.

Alpha vs. High Beta: The Brain Science Behind Every Shanked Shot

Phil's understanding of the mental game has been shaped by decades of study, including the work of Sports neuroscientist Dr. Izzy Justice, who has analyzed more than 18,000 EEG brain scans of athletes during live performance across several major sports. The finding was conclusive: every great athlete performs their best, with motor skills fully optimized, when operating in alpha state. The average amateur golfer almost never gets there.

Brain Wave States and Their Impact on Golf Performance

Delta

Deep sleep. No thinking. Very low brain frequency. Complete rest state with no conscious activity.

Sleep

Theta

REM sleep and dreaming. The mind is active but not engaged in deliberate thought or problem solving.

Dreaming

Alpha

Flow state. Quiet, focused, fully present. Motor skills are optimized. Great athletes perform here. Around 8 to 10 hertz. This is where golf needs to be played.

Flow State

Low Beta

Active thinking and problem solving. Engaged but not yet in survival mode. Still manageable for pre-shot planning.

Thinking

High Beta

Survival mode. Overthinking, tight muscles, elevated blood pressure, dilated pupils, foggy brain, shaking hands. Most amateur golfers live here on the course. Performance collapses in this state.

Survival Mode

High beta is not just an uncomfortable feeling. It is a physiological state that makes it literally impossible to execute a golf swing with any consistency. When the prefrontal cortex is overactive and the mind is racing, the body tightens, rhythm disappears, and the golfer who hit the ball beautifully on the range twenty minutes ago suddenly cannot replicate a single movement from that session. Phil has heard this complaint thousands of times: "I am so good here but I can never take it to the course." The answer is always the same. Different brain state. Different body.

"Hal Sutton said that the quality of the shot is determined one hundred percent before you start to swing. For a player of his caliber, that is probably true. He is not going to interfere with the swing in that 1.2 seconds. He has already done his job."

Phil Moore – golf expert, author, custom club builder and Effortless Senior Golf founder

The Pre-Shot Routine That Gets You Into Alpha

Phil's teaching is built around a step-by-step pre-shot process that begins the moment you get out of the cart, not when you stand over the ball. By the time most golfers address the ball they are already operating in high beta without realizing it. The routine Phil teaches works backwards from the swing to create the brain state required before a single physical preparation begins.

01

Start Breathing Immediately

As soon as you get out of the cart, begin. Three inhales, five exhales. Breathe in through the nose, out through the nose. The exhale longer than the inhale. Drop the shoulders. Begin quieting the mind before you even look at the shot.

02

Make a Conservative Shot Selection

Aggressive shot selection puts you in high beta immediately. If the shot brings water or a bunker into play even on a good hit, it is the wrong shot selection. Choose the target that gives you the widest possible margin for error. A relaxed mind over a wide target is worth far more than an anxious mind over a tight one.

03

Create One Single Intention

Where do you want the ball to go? Not where do you not want it to go. Not what do you need to do with your swing mechanics. One clear destination. Visualize it. Feel it if you cannot see it. Jack Nicklaus went to the movies on every shot. You do not have to go that far. You just need one clear mental picture to hold.

04

Trust Your Body

Your body already knows how to hit this shot. It knows how to hit a seven iron into the middle of a green the same way it knows how to ride a bike or type or drive. You do not need to think your way through the movement. You need to get out of the way and let the body execute what it has already learned to do.

05

Complete the Backswing and Trust

Phil's single instruction for the swing itself: complete the backswing and trust. If you have any anxiety about the shot, you will not complete the backswing – that is the tell. The completion of the backswing with full rhythm signals that the mind got out of the way – that is the entire swing thought.

06

Repeat the Same Routine Every Time

Tiger Woods said he does the same thing over and over and over again on every shot. Every drive, every putt, the same routine. Consistency in the process is what allows the body to execute consistently in the result. You cannot have a different routine on pressure shots and expect the same outcome.

The Think Box and the Play Box

Craig connected Phil's framework directly to his own Pro Mindset® Performance Bubble™ concept, and Phil immediately recognized the parallel. All thinking belongs on one side of a line. Once you cross it, thinking stops entirely.

The Think Box

Where All Decisions Are Made

• Assess the shot, the lie, the wind, the distance

• Select the club and choose the target

• Create the single clear intention

• Visualize the shot shape and landing zone

• Do all your worrying and planning here

• Cross the line only when the mind is quiet and the intention is clear

The Play Box

Where Thinking Stops

• No swing thoughts once you cross the line

• No second-guessing the shot selection

• No outcome focus or score awareness

• Only the single intention and the trust in the body

• Complete the backswing and let it go

• The result is already determined by what happened before this point

The Craig Domann Connection: Craig's Pro Mindset® Performance Bubble™ operates on the same principle. A protected mental headspace where everything that helps you execute is inside, and everything that does not stays outside. The scoreboard, the outcome, what just happened on the last hole. None of it belongs in the Performance Bubble. The think box and the play box are golf's version of the same truth: process belongs inside, outcome belongs outside, and the line between them is where great shots are made.

"Get out of your mind and come to your senses. You have to learn to quiet the mind and have one single clear intention before you even start to address the ball. Without those two things, it does not matter how well your mechanics are set up."

Phil Moore – golf expert, author, custom club builder and Effortless Senior Golf founder

The Hardest Shot in Golf and How to Recover From It

Dr. Justice identified the hardest shot in golf and it is not the three-foot putt or the bunker shot over water. It is the shot immediately after a severe mishit. The brain spikes instantly into high beta after a bad shot and the neurological recovery time for an untrained amateur can be thirty minutes or longer. That is why a single bad hole can unravel an entire round.

The Tour players who win the bounce back award every year are not coincidentally the best players in the game. Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Scottie Scheffler. They win it because they reset fastest. The shot is gone. There is literally nothing to be done about it. The only choice is how quickly you return your brain to the state required to execute the next one.

The Bounce Back Principle: Jack Nicklaus talked about it often. As soon as the shot was gone, it was gone. He was already thinking about the next one. Scottie Scheffler shanked one out of a sand trap last year (2025), looked at it calmly, chipped up, and made the putt. These players have trained the recovery as deliberately as they have trained the swing. The skill of bouncing back is not a personality trait. It is a learned mental habit. Noteworthy: it is available to every golfer willing to practice it.

Neurohacks for Getting Back to Alpha

Phil does not just tell golfers to relax. He gives them specific tools, backed by neuroscience, for returning the brain to alpha after it has spiked into high beta. The body cannot lie about what state it is in. Elevated blood pressure, shaking hands, foggy thinking, and tight shoulders. These are the physical symptoms of high beta and they each have an antidote.

Controlled Breathing

Inhale through the nose for three counts, exhale through the nose for five counts. The longer exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system and begins the physical relaxation response. When you are relaxed you breathe this way naturally. Reverse engineering the breath reverses the stress response.

Drop the Shoulders

High beta creates tension in the neck and shoulders before anywhere else. A conscious shoulder drop signals the body to release that tension. Phil's mentor Brian Sparks would physically put his hands on students' shoulders to help them feel what relaxation actually felt like in their body.

Come to Your Senses

Listen to the birds. Feel the breeze. Notice the texture of the grass underfoot. Sensory engagement pulls the mind out of abstract worrying and into the present moment. Fritz Perls said it simply, “Get out of your mind and come to your senses.” It works because the senses only exist in the present.

Gratitude

Phil says he never plays a round anymore without feeling gratitude throughout it. How lucky am I to be out here? That feeling of genuine gratitude drops the body into the parasympathetic nervous system and relaxes everything naturally. It is one of the fastest and most underrated neurohacks available on a golf course.

Stop Caring About the Score

The very act of trying breeds tension. Outcome focus puts you in beta. Phil tells his students this directly and it seems counterintuitive every time: you are going to score better when you stop caring about the score. The round you stop tracking strokes and start focusing only on the process is often the round the number finally moves.

Let the Thoughts Pass

Bad thoughts appear from nowhere in the middle of a swing. Nobody knows where they come from. The key is not to fight them but to let them pass without attaching to them. Step away if needed, take a breath, reset the intention, and re-enter the play box only when the mind is clear again.

"The very act of trying breeds tension. The very act of trying puts you into a beta wave situation. You are going to score a lot better when you stop caring about the score."

Phil Moore – golf expert, author, custom club builder and Effortless Senior Golf founder

The Bottom Line

Phil Moore broke 70 for the first time at Griffith Park in Los Angeles using old Tommy Armour woods, a Bullseye putter, and balata balls that were not even perfectly round. The average golfer today plays with equipment that looks like it came from a science fiction film and scores no better than golfers did forty years ago. The equipment changed. The mental game did not.

His argument is simple and backed by sixty years of teaching: the mental game is the separator. Not the swing mechanics, not the launch monitor data, not the six-thousand-dollar custom-fit irons. The golfer who can quiet their mind, hold one clear intention, execute a consistent pre-shot routine, and bounce back quickly from bad shots will always outperform the golfer with better mechanics and more expensive clubs who cannot do those things.

Every golfer hits the ball better than they score. Phil has never met one who does not. The gap between the range and the course is entirely a mental gap. Closing it does not require a new swing; it requires a new relationship with your own mind.

Get out of your mind. Come to your senses. Complete the backswing and trust.

Listen to the full conversation here or here. Connect with Craig for coaching opportunities on how to build your Pro Mindset® Performance Bubble™ at Craig.ProMindset@gmail.com. 

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