How does ‘process’ lead to winning golf? Harry Higgs explains

When it comes to developing sustained success at the golf elite pro level, many pros use the P word. They say it over and over again – on good days and bad. As long as they can improve significantly process and stick with it, good golf will follow. There is not so much about trying to play good golf as sticking to a plan that will eventually get you out of it.

The theory is that golf is too fickle to master. It also includes a lot of randomness and luck to let any outcome define your game. That is why the players try and perform the best practices in the hope that they will bring the best. Small things can be big things: visualization, a consistent game day routine, even going through a common golf checklist in a certain order to reinforce some consistency in every shot in the round, when those shots and conditions can be very different.

When professionals are creative and stick to the process, it paves the way for great opportunities for great success. Harry Higgs did that along with anyone – well, anyone not named Scottie Scheffler – in 2024. Higgs started the year ranked 421st in the world, a long way from his peak of 91st in 2021. He had played and left the PGA. Visit and return on the Korn Ferry Tour. Worse, he had worked hard in the spring without much to show for it.

Higgs missed four straight cuts and followed them up with T43 and T50 finishes before arriving at the Kansas City stop on the program. This is where his best golf came and he found himself in contention. He had designed a simple and effective technique for this game in the course that week that got him very focused, and he explained it in a recent episode of the No Laying Up Podcast.

“I felt myself coming,” Higgs told manager Chris Solomon. “I just remember going to first base on Thursday and being like ‘Oh, s—.’ You are ready to win. You are ready to compete to win this the competition.

“In that case, okay, so let’s focus on a few things this is not the case that. Let’s keep going and saying I will win, I will win, I will win. Let’s focus how about meI will give myself the best opportunity victory.”

The HOW of the Higgs process. From his retelling, it has come down to four parts, which we have listed below and have been pieced together a bit.

1. Do not shoot without a clear intention.

Simply put, know what exactly you are trying to do with the ball.

2. Don’t hit a shot without practicing matching that target.

Practice exactly that goal in the form of movement. Deliberate throwing!

3. Accept the result, after shooting.

Whatever happens, happens. Go ahead and accept it.

4. Walk with your head held high.

With that acceptance, feel confident in your game and how it plays. Go with that confidence.

“I could just look in my yard book – yes, I did it, walk away, look again, yes, I did it, walk away – and do it for four days,” Higgs continued. “I was very lucky to win that golf tournament. I took out the 72nd hole the fourth place. And in the end he won. Obviously, next week, I might do the same thing.”

Those who followed Higgs’ run this summer know what happened next. He wrote it a week later in Knoxville, Tennessee, stuck to the same process, and won again. Yes, he admitted, it was much easier to stick to that routine in the second week when it gave him the win last week. Naturally. But he did it in the playoffs, too, a situation he didn’t really want, especially when he let go of the ropes to get into that playoff to begin with.

But this is where the back part of his process really came into play. Higgs could bogey or bogey as he moved between shots, playing the same par-5 over and over again until he made it. But he had reached a level of acceptance that would not allow a poor shot to affect what was left of the tournament.

“I was completely at peace whether I won or lost this golf tournament,” he said.

You can listen to Higgs discuss his process, mental health on Tour, his thoughts on the future of the PGA Tour and more in the podcast below.