How to Handle a Playing Partner Who's Getting Under Your Skin

Adaptability · Sep 16, 2026

Somewhere around hole seven, it stops being about your golf and starts being about them — the unsolicited swing tips, the slow walk to every shot, the loud conversation on your backswing. Your scorecard hasn't even suffered yet, but your patience already has.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: the round doesn't go sideways because of what they're doing. It goes sideways the moment you let THEIR behavior become the thing you're focused on instead of your next shot.

Here are some ideas that I work on with coaching clients:

Remember You Can Only Control You

You have zero influence over how fast someone else plays or how much advice they offer you didn't ask for. What you do control completely is your own pace, your own routine, and where your attention goes between shots. Spend your energy there instead.

This is decision making in its purest form — deciding, shot after shot, what deserves your attention and what doesn't. Their pace is not yours to manage.

Reframe the Interruption Instead of Absorbing It

A slow partner isn't wasting your time — they're giving you extra time to prepare. A partner offering advice isn't attacking your golf — they're just talking, and you don't have to take anything they say into your next swing. The event doesn't change; only your read of it does.

Choose what you'll think about between your shot and your walk to the next one, and don't leave that choice open for whoever's playing next to you to fill in for you.

Build a Reset You Trust More Than Your Irritation

Have a small physical cue — a breath, a tug on your glove, a look at the horizon — that you use every time frustration with a playing partner creeps in. The cue doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be automatic enough that you don't have to think your way out of irritation in the moment.

This is exactly the kind of habit a golf app built around the mental game is designed to reinforce — not eliminating the annoying partner, but shortening how long they live in your head.

The Takeaway

You're never going to control your playing partners, and trying to is a losing game. Control your own pace, reframe what their behavior means, and build a reset you can trust more than your frustration. The round is still yours to play well.

Be sure to check-out my new YouTube Golf Channel, it has lots of free tips and videos to help you play your best.