How To Play Better In Tournaments As A Junior Golfer
In this video Connor Stirling Peterson reflects on his first junior tournament after a long break and shares nine practical principles for improving tournament performance. He emphasizes humility—recognizing you’re not as good as you think—and urges players to strip away ego and focus on objective self‑assessment. He advises golfers to identify the shots they can reliably execute, simplify their game plan, and develop repeatable pre‑shot routines and clear shot concepts for each club. Each hole is framed as an individual battle, requiring steady focus and a willingness to stay in the moment. He warns against testing new shots under pressure, recommending low‑risk experimentation only when the penalty for failure is minimal. Connor stresses the importance of cataloguing recurring mistakes, analyzing them after rounds, and deliberately eliminating them through targeted practice. He also highlights the need for fundamental fundamentals—alignment rods, consistent mechanics, and a solid practice regimen—to support tournament play. Finally, he outlines a cyclical preparation approach: use early tournament rounds to diagnose weaknesses, schedule multiple events, and iteratively adjust practice focus to steadily improve scores.
Chapters
All right, what's going on everyone? So in today's video, I'm going to be covering how to play better in tournaments. This is coming off of first tournament that I've played in, uh, this last weekend after taking almost a year and a half off from really any type of competitive golf just due to having my first child and just being kind of busy with that. And so I was reflecting a lot on a lot of stuff and I wanted to kind of share with you guys to kind of go through what I think are the probably the 9 most important things, 8 or 9 most important things that you need to focus on, mindsets you need to have if you want to be successful in tournament play. So let's go ahead and jump right into it. So these are just kind of main key ideas. So the first one is, and this is the hardest one as well, if you take away one thing from this call, this really going to be the thing you want to think about here is you're not as good as you think you are. And this might kind of seem like, you know, upsetting or whatever, but that's just the reality of it. All of us, none of us are as good as we think that we are. We are not as good as we would like to be. And that's just kind of is how it is. When you look back on a tournament and you say, oh, well, I should have shot X, Y, or Z, you need to get that language out of your head. You shot whatever you deserve to shoot. Because when we think about, yeah, there's going to be putts you'll lip out. Yeah, you're gonna have a day where you just, you know, you couldn't make anything. Yeah, you're gonna have a bad hole, whatever. There's also going to be things you got lucky on. There's putts you shouldn't have made. There's shots you shouldn't have hit close. There's balls you shouldn't have found. And it's important to really understand that, you know, when you're looking at tournaments, it's about where you at right now. And if you can objectively look at me, okay, cool, this is what I shoot in tournaments right now. What do I need to do to be able to perform better? Or how do I avoid those mistakes? What are the mistakes that I see myself making over and over and over again? How can I just simply avoid those mistakes? That's going to be where you want to put your focus. You don't want to have your ego caught up in what do you shoot in a tournament. You want to be able to look back on your tournament round and say, okay, cool, what were the mistakes that I made? How close was I to my scoring average? And then really use that to determine, okay, cool, where do I need to put my focus next. But it's just get your ego out of this. You need to be able to put yourself out there and see what's going to break. Now, next piece here is really understanding what shots you don't have. And so a lot of the times when I talk to junior golfers, they want to hit all the shots. You know, they want to, you know, draw the ball, fade the ball, hit low, high, and all that stuff. They want to be able to hit the flop shot, bump and run, everything. And that's just not how real golf works. If you are— have really spent any time around high-level, um, competitive players, that's not what you end up doing. You end up having a few shots that you're pretty certain that you can hit, and you just stay— you stick to those shots. Like, you know, when you're hitting your approach shots, we're moving the ball one direction. Like, we're curving the ball one direction off the tee, we're curving the ball one direction on our approach shots. If there's a shot in our, our bag that we don't have We don't hit that shot. Uh, you know, if you have a yardage that is uncomfortable for you, avoid it. Like, it's really, really simple, really straightforward. If you have a lie where you're like, well, this is the correct shot and here's the shot that I actually can hit, you hit the shot you can hit. And even if that leaves you kind of a mediocre result, you accept that and you say, all right, cool, I put myself in a bad position, give myself a shot that, you know, in order to hit the perfect shot, I don't have that one. If I keep having that all the time then I'll learn how to hit it. But until then, I'm good with what I have right now. So it's really important to just understand, like, tournament golf is about figuring out what you can do and what you can't do. What can you do under the gun? What can't you do? And so even if this is your first tournament ever, you can still look at that and say, okay, cool, I'm going to go out there. I'm going to see how I perform. And I'm just going to take note of the times where I really like crap the bed on something. And then in my next round, I'm going to be like, okay, well, just don't do that. Right? And I'll give you guys an example at the end here that happened to me. The next one is, is kind of the other side of that coin, but is simplify what you're going to do. You want to really make things easy for yourself. If you were trying to hit all the shots, what you're going to find is you're kind of uncomfortable with all of them, versus if you have a few really basic things that you do, then you don't have to think a whole lot. You know, if you only hit a fade off the tee, let's say you're right-handed, Well, you can just aim down the left side of the golf course, hit the ball reasonably decent, and know the ball is coming back some, some amount to the right. A lot of the time you're going to be in the fairway. You don't really have to think too much. Just get up there, line it up, hit it. You got an approach shot? All right, cool. Line up left side of the green, hit your approach shot. You know the ball's falling back some amount. And so that's where having good mechanics and understanding kind of those principles there that are going to allow you to hit that particular shot is really important. But if you're trying to do, you know, hit every ball straight, good luck. If you're trying to work the ball both ways, good luck. If you're around enough better players, what you're going to find is they're going to do really, really simple things. Even around the greens, you watch the best players in the world, they're not always hitting these crazy flop shots or putting tons of spin on the ball. They're trying to hit really basic kind of lower, you know, window shots And, and really also even look at it as like, if you're off the green, maybe you're on the fringe, you can probably putt it, and you're probably going to be better off putting it than you are going to be chipping it, right? And so it's, it's really understanding within tournament golf is how do I minimize all these mistakes that I could possibly make, and how can I make the things that I am trying to do extremely simple so I don't have to perform at a really high level in order to shoot a score that I'm happy with. Uh, the next one is, uh, something I haven't talked a ton about, but it's the fact that you need to have a method for how you hit your different shots. You need to have a thought process of, okay, here is how I hit a driver. Because you're going to have some point in tournament golf where you're, you're not sure, you're not hitting it well, and you need to be able to go back to some type of fundamentals. You need to go have some concept of, here is how I swing a driver, here's how I swing a golf club, here's what causes this ball to go right, here's what causes this ball to go left. And you have to have spent enough time in practice to really be able to have some confidence in that. You don't want to just have something your coach told you. You want to know, hey, when I have this feel, it allows me to hit the ball, you know, cut the ball more or cut the ball less, or draw the ball more or draw the ball less. You have to have those feels and you have to have your understanding of here's how I hit this particular shot. Maybe it's, you know, if we want to hit a fade, maybe it's I need to feel more laid off at the top, or maybe I need to weaken my grip a little bit, gets a little bit strong sometimes. So if I start hitting pulls, that's the problem. And if it's not cutting back enough, maybe I'm getting a little bit across the line, I I need to, you know, get a little bit more laid off so I can start this ball left and still have the fade. That would be an example of that. Your approach shots, same thing. You need to know exactly where you're putting the ball. You need to figure out exactly, like, do you aim straight? Do you aim slightly left? Do you aim slightly closed? Do you put the ball up in your stance, back in your stance? Like, you have to know all of these, um, these things. You have to know, you know, what's your pre-shot routine? Like, What is the process that you go through when you're hitting an approach shot? You know, if you have an approach, are you getting just the flag? Are you getting the flag and the front number of the green? Are you getting the flag, the front number, the back number? You want to know all that stuff. You want to know how you're going through that process around the green. Same things— how do I hit those shots? So that way, when you're under pressure, you can always go back to kind of those fundamentals. You can go back to how do I hit this shot is really basic. How do I set up? How do I set up to a putter? All those things are absolutely crucial. And you listen to the best guys in the world, that's what they're talking about. Same thing with the girls, that's what they're talking about. They're like, they're looking at alignment, grip, um, just making sure that their process is as consistent as possible. Because sure, there's different ways to swing a golf club, right? We have different opinions about how you might do this or that. That. But for those players playing at the highest level, they're trying to make things as simple as possible, and they're trying to make sure that they're doing it in a repeatable way. So this just kind of goes— PSA for all of you junior golfers: if you're hitting balls on the driving range without an alignment rod, you're not serious about playing college golf. You're not, you're not serious about playing golf at a high level. Those basic things are what every elite player does. So again, you need to understand How— what's my concept of hitting a driver, swinging a driver? What's my concept of, you know, swinging my irons? What's my concept of chipping around the greens? When I'm in a bunker, what's my concept there? How am I hitting that shot? When I'm putting, what's my thought process there? What— where am I trying to hit this ball to? Am I trying to hit it to the hole? Am I trying to hit it past the hole? What error am I okay with? You know, if it's a little bit short, am I okay with that? If it's a little bit long, am I okay with it? You need to know all that stuff in order to play golf at a high level. Because otherwise you're just out there like a chicken with their head cut off. You don't really have a plan, you're just kind of, you know, going to be going based off your emotions. Next one is every hole is a battle. Um, so a lot of the time I see junior golfers where they get out there and maybe they played poorly for a few holes and they just, they're like, whatever, you know, the tournament's over, it doesn't matter. Um, I just pretty much give up and That's a horrible attitude, obviously. I think everyone kind of recognized that. But it's also, you don't know what you're going to shoot, and it requires so much focus on each individual hole and each individual shot that you can't just say, oh well, you know, I'm going to shoot a bad score, so it doesn't, it doesn't really matter anyway. It's like, no, each individual shot needs to be, uh, thought out. It needs to be a battle. And this is one of the reasons why I'm a big fan of when you're prepping for events or just playing in general. If you can play in a foursome instead of one, like being by yourself, do it. If you can play slower, do it. And that might sound kind of weird, but the reality is tournament golf is slow. It's gonna be slower than normal, and you need to be very comfortable taking 2, 3, 4 minutes per shot to be able to say, okay, cool, like someone else is hitting right now. I need to be able— I need to get good at distracting myself. I need to get comfortable being here, being uncomfortable, and still being able to focus, hit my shot. I'll give an example. So one of the guys that I was playing with, uh, the first day, this tournament, um, he actually ended up winning it, but he was 7 over through 3 holes. So he goes ball out of bounds off the first tee, um, makes double bogey on that hole, ball in an unplayable lie. Let's take a penalty, move it back, chip out over the green, ends up making triple. And then third hole, shanks his tee shot, so that, that ball's gone. Hits his next one in the bunker on this par 3, pitches that out to like 30 feet, rolls in the 30-footer, double bogey. And so he actually said at the time, he's like, well 33 holes of golf to play. And from that point onward, throughout the rest of the round, proceeded to shoot 9-under. So he ended up shooting 2-under for the first day, and he was actually leading in the clubhouse. But it's so important to, to really see that, like, each individual hole is its own battle, and you don't know what's going to happen. So you have to just go and commit to, to that process. So for him, even on that next tee shot, he barely got it over this canyon. And then he hit that shot over the green, and then he hit a decent chip shot that got it close, made par. Next hole, hit a decent tee shot, hit it reasonably close on his second shot. We couldn't quite see it from the approach, but it was solid. He rolled in the putt for birdie. And then the next hole, he ended up chipping in just out of pure luck. And then, you know, he kind of took off from there. But the key thing is here is he didn't give up. And each hole he was paying full attention there. And that's just so important to, to really understand. If you want to play golf at a high level, you need to be taking each hole seriously, even if you feel like you're kind of out of it. Um, this is again, you can kind of see a theme here, but hit the shots you know you can hit. Don't add stuff if you can't. If you are in rough conditions, you're like, well, you know, it would be really great if I could hit this little stinger shot, but you don't have it in your bag, don't hit it. If you think, oh, it'd be really great if I could hit this, you know, 40-yard pitch shot over this bunker with a decent amount of spin to that tucked pin, but there's another option of just like chip it onto the green and have a 50-footer and you know that you can get it on the green, get it on the green. Like, that's, that's the way to approach tournament golf. You do not want to be creative. You don't want to be testing stuff out. You want to go in there with the stuff that you know you can hit and execute on that. And this is probably the last thing I'm going to kind of COVID here, is you want to make sure— this isn't quite the last thing, but you want to make sure that if you do need to test something out, if you have a feel that comes up, you're just like, ah, you know, I'm struggling with this ball flight, whatever, you don't want to change it until there's no penalty for changing it. So what do I mean by that? If you need to try out a different feel to see, I think that this is— I think I fixed it. Make that change on a swing where you have a lot of margin for error. So for example, if you've got a tee shot, it's like wide open, all right, cool, that would be a time to test that out. If it's a tee shot that's relatively narrow, kind of normal tee shot, you could hit it out of bounds, don't, don't screw with it. Like, make sure you get the ball in play, um, or do your best to keep the ball in play. If you've got a par 5 with an easy layup, okay, cool, that's the time to kind of play around with a different feel because then, yeah, if it works out, great, but if it doesn't you had a massive target. It's pretty hard to hit it out of bounds or something stupid on your par 5 approach shot or your par 5 layup. So know your, your kind of spots where you can mess around with something or where you really shouldn't. Uh, and, and I think this is really the, the place where I want to leave off on here is you want to catalog your mistakes and then make sure to avoid them. So if you look back on your round and say, okay, cool, this is the type of mistake that I see myself making, then we can go back and say, okay, cool, how do I strategically avoid that? How do I make sure that that doesn't happen in the future? And so if you're finding yourself in a situation where it's like, hey, a couple times per round I'll make poor contact on approach shot, maybe I'll like blade it or something like that, and I'll end up in a stupid spot under a tree and end up making, you know, triple or quadruple or something like that, it's like, okay, well, you can trace that back to saying, okay, well me hitting poor approach shots, not just like missing the green, but actually like not being able to make solid contact with it, costs me a sum amount of shots per round. If I can just make sure that I make decent contact, maybe I hit it fat, maybe a little bit thin, but just somewhat decent contact, then I'm going to be a much better spot. Well, next time you go out there, and if that's your only focus, it's not, hey, let me hit it as close as possible, let me like way outperform my last round, it's just like let me just try and hit this ball solid, and if I can do that most of the time, I'm going to score better. That can become— number one, it can really help you score better, um, but it's also going to be a lot kind of lower pressure on you to say, okay, if I just do the basics, I can perform well, rather than saying if I can, you know, way outperform what's normal or what I've been doing, then that would be amazing. It's like, of course it is, but that's not how things work. So I'll give you an example on this. Right now I'm struggling a little bit with my short game. And so I had a pretty decent round going the first, first day. I think I ended up being— I was 6 over through like the first 9, just like whatever, made double on the first hole. And, um, I think I did something else stupid on the front side, but it was just kind of a little bit of unfortunate golf. It was just, you know, missing greens, making bogeys, you know, whatever. And then come back on the, the back side, 2 under through 5 holes. Okay, cool, we got it to 4. Um, and I think I want to say it's like 146 won the tournament, so it was still like well within contention. It was in a pretty decent spot, and I managed to go— I was on the next par 5 hole, um, so the 6th hole par 5, and I was parallel to the green in 3 shots. So I missed the green, had to take a drop, but kind of this little awkward chip shot, but whatever. And I tried to hit a few shots that I just— I didn't have, um, around the greens. And when I kind of look at it in retrospect, I could have taken a 7-iron and just bumped it onto the green and then 2-bunted and made my bogey and caught the next hole. And I would have been frustrated that, you know, okay, now I just lost a shot, but it wouldn't have done what I ended up doing. So I ended up playing ping pong across the green and carded a 10. And so that was— that was pretty stupid. Um, rest of my round kind of, you know, worked out all right. But the second day, I was like, okay, cool, I did a lot of stuff that was really good. I drove the ball really well, I putted really well, my speed was really good, I didn't really miss many short putts. Um, I felt really good about that. My ball striking was, was really solid. If I could just not have some, like, catastrophically bad mistake around the greens, then I should be in a better spot. And then, so that's what I did the second day, is I just prioritized and said, okay, cool, Anytime I'm uncomfortable, it's like I'm just going to go to the absolute minimum. So if I'm, you know, if I can putt this, I'm gonna putt it because I know my putting's decent, right? Versus I know my chipping is a little bit suspect, right? If I have to chip, okay, well, let's just take a 7-iron or an 8-iron or a 6-iron and usually just bump it onto the green rather than trying to play the ball up in the air and, you know, potentially, you know, either blade it or chunk it or something like that where I'm essentially sitting in the same spot. And so that allowed me to play significantly better the second day simply because I was able to eliminate that error. Now, were there other things that— the other mistakes that I made the second day? Sure. And so I— and this is why it's so important with tournament golf is if you play one tournament, it's not that helpful, you know. And for me, I wish that I had more opportunities to play in tournaments. Just, you know, there's not as many opportunities with amateur golf as there is with junior golf. But it's, it's be able to put yourself in that position as often as possible. Because what I would want to do is say, okay, when's the next event that I'm going to play in? And say, okay, cool, looking at all these things, or what are the things in my game that I need to like sharpen up a little bit? And so if I were to look back on that, it's like, okay, well, I need to add some shots to my short game, otherwise I'm really just going to struggle on, you know, some of the par 5 scoring, and there's just gonna be stuff I really have to avoid way too much in order to shoot, you know, par or better. Um, so that would be one thing. And then kind of my middle distance cutting for me. I need to improve a little bit. And so if I could do those two things, and I can say, okay, let's go play another tournament, improve just a little bit, but see if I can just kind of clean up some of those errors and see, okay, cool, maybe we end up playing a little bit better. Not way better. I'm not going to go to the next tournament and shoot even par for two rounds, but I might be significantly better just by cleaning up my game just a little bit. And so continuing in that process is how I would approach that. And so if you're a junior golfer, at least say you've got 5 events you know, scheduled, or 10 events, you know, it's 10, 20 rounds of golf. And so instead of going into that season and saying, hey, well, I need to play really good and like win my tournament, look at your first event, or, you know, first couple rounds, first round, and say, okay, cool, I'm gonna go out here, see where my game's at. What are the mistakes that I make? Okay, I make these kinds of mistakes. Because realistically, like, you should at least be in the 70s. Even like, if you don't— if you hit a few greens and you don't do anything catastrophically dumb, you should be shooting like 77, 78, problem. Um, but you know, if you're shooting in the 80s, there's probably something like that you need to clean up. Maybe it's a tee shot, maybe it's 3-putting, whatever. Then you can go and say, okay, I need to get better at my lag putting, I need to get a more predictable tee shot. Go into the next round, say, okay, did that work? If it did, great, continue doing that, don't change it. But you want to approach it like that, and by the end of that season, or even in the middle of your season, you're going to be significantly better off because you're using those rounds you've already played to learn from them and say, okay, cool, what adjustments do I need to make in order to, to play better in competition? So hopefully this video was helpful for you guys. It was a little bit of a different take on kind of tournament golf and what you really need to focus on, some of the things you really need to dump down on, some of the things you need to avoid. Um, but I hope this is helpful to kind of give you some things to think about going into your next tournament and, you know, making sure that you can perform better. If you enjoy videos like this, go ahead and subscribe to the channel. And if you enjoyed this video specifically, please leave it a like. Helps it push it out to, to more people in the algorithm. So, um, thanks for watching, guys, and I'll see you in the next one.
