Mentally handling a sliding scale of expectations as you improve?

[edingc]

I have a handful of books dealing with the mental aspect of golf on the way (two Rotella books and a few others), but thought I'd throw this question out to everyone.

How do you/did you handle a sliding scale of expectations as you improved? 

I played nine holes tonight, and the entire round was a struggle. It felt like a horrible round all around as nothing was working for me, and it was a huge grind. I didn't hit many good shots, maybe two or three all round. It was incredibly frustrating. 

The reality is I shot a 44 (+8) on the front from the longest tees at my course (6,300-ish yards) with four pars.

Four months ago, I would have been over the moon with a 44, which is a score I had rarely touched (maybe twice?) in my entire golfing career. But, as I've committed myself to getting better this season, my scores have come down quite a bit further than they ever have before. My goal for this year, assuming my past experience, was to break 90 and break 40 for nine holes. I've broken 90 10 times now this season, broken 40 twice and shot even 40 twice more.

I'm doing my best to not be "that guy" who gets visibly frustrated over a bad shot when he's largely playing better than most, but it's mentally becoming very tough to get through rounds without getting frustrated when my expectations start to get too lofty. 

I understand golf is a long game, and that improvement is generally slow, small and maybe not all that apparent at first glances, but how did you handle the additional expectations that come when you started to play better golf?

 

[GolfSpy MPR]

Great topic.

I suppose that, big picture, the answer always remains similar. Golf always has misses, but as we improve, what counts as a miss changes.

I'm thinking here of the one-handed follow throughs and club drops on TOUR, when you watch the ball sail wildly...um, on to the green, leaving a (maybe unlikely, but still makeable) birdie putt. So relatable, right?

You're a step ahead of me, but we're both about the level where we get the (very) occasional "nice shot" when we're thinking, "Nope, not what I was hoping for there at all."

Two things that help me: first, golfing with my son, when he reminds me that I don't let him drop his club in exasperation (as I'm dropping mine). Second, having a way of living in which golf has its proper place. You'll always here about certain events (often tragedies) "putting things in perspective." It's a healthy thing to cultivate that perspective as a normal part of life. It makes a par putt that didn't break even though IT CLEARLY SHOULD HAVE much less a factor in whether I'm happy with my day.

[THEZIPR23]

This is a good topic. 
 

The article below was not written with this topic in mind but #1, #3, #6 are great tips/reminders. We play a crazy game and the most frustrating thing about it is that the mental aspect of it may be the toughest part. I have “quit” a couple of different times in my life due to it not being enjoyable. The last time I came back I decided that it didn’t matter what happened on the course I was going to give it 100% and I was going to enjoy the hell out of it no matter what happened. 2 1/2 years later that is exactly what I have done. I still get mad but it’s short and brief and then I move on. If I play terrible on the front 9 I aim for improvement on the back. To me if you remember these points you will continue to improve and enjoy it;

1) it’s a game, have fun and enjoy it.

2) allow yourself 5-10 seconds to be mad and then move on and attack the next shot.

3) Set goals for yourself and do whatever you can to achieve them but don’t EXPECT anything.

4) stop and smell the roses. Look around, take in where you are, we are lucky that we get to do what we truly love.

5) read  @GolfSpy MPR comments about where our place is and what golf actually means in the grand perspective of everything.

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/six-lessons-from-a-season-watching-really-good-golfers?mbid=social_twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&utm_brand=gd

[golfertrb]

This is a great topic and MPR and ZIPR have given great answers and perspectives but I thought I would add a few of my own:

When I was a younger man golf had a place that was unhealthy. I had aspirations to take my game to the next level (though I knew I had a higher calling than golf) and when I didn't play well, I would absolutely crater. If I had a good round, I had a good day, week, etc but the reverse was also true. I played more than I should, bought more than I should, spent more than I should. I had more physical ability than I do now by a large margin but I emotionally and mentally I was weak. Over the years, my priorities got somewhat better and I even quit playing for a few years due to prioritizing. I didn't play at all from the end of 2010 through the summer of 2013 and when I started playing again, I was a much happier and healthier man and my golf game showed it. I didn't compete anymore except with myself and I began to enjoy the game much more. I was cruising along until I was in a car accident in December of 2014 that ultimately required two back surgeries including a fusion and for several years I couldn't have cared less about playing golf, I just wanted to have a normal life and not be consumed by pain. 

When I really started playing again in 2017, I was so happy to be playing again when I wasn't sure I'd be able to that I just can't be upset. I'm upright, I'm outside, pain is tolerable most of the time, and after I bought equipment that was better suited to my current game, I have had as my wife of 28 years said on Tuesday, "the summer of my life." I am grateful to be playing and I'm going to enjoy it for as many swings as I have left. Do I still hit bad shots? Oh yes! For sure! But I really enjoy making par from a place I have no business making par from and when everything is clicking I can go really low. I have worked more on the mental side of things and how I have done that is by working on the process vs the outcome. I focus on the strike and making the move I want to make or hitting the line I wanted to or the target I was aimed at vs how close I am or if the putt went in. I can only control the process not the outcome; I tell my boys this all the time. We all have bad bounces and get penalized more than we should but we also get incredible breaks and wonderful bounces we don't deserve - that's the GAME of golf. I have shot some incredible rounds this year and what struck me about the lowest round was how much lower it could have been and I just thought that's the beauty of golf - it can always be better or so much worse   It's a wonderful game and I'm SO grateful to be able to play it.

[Kenny B]

Ben Hogan (and probably others) said that golf is a game of misses, and the guy who misses the best is going to win.

That may be true for the golf elite, but for me it's not necessarily my misses, but what I can do with the next shot.  I know that I will have lots of misses.  It feels so good to hit a shot perfectly, but it doesn't happen very many times during a round.  I look at the next shot after a miss as an opportunity to hit a good recovery shot.  I may not, but as all the pros say, you have to focus on the shot at hand and you can't do that by thinking about the last shot.

If I can take care of the next shot, then I can have a decent round.  By figuring out why I miss certain shots, work on improving those shots next time, and making good recovery shots when I do make a miss, then the score will take care of itself.  Shot improvements = lower scores.  Focus.

[yungkory]

1 hour ago, THEZIPR23 said:

This is a good topic. 
 

The article below was not written with this topic in mind but #1, #3, #6 are great tips/reminders. We play a crazy game and the most frustrating thing about it is that the mental aspect of it may be the toughest part. I have “quit” a couple of different times in my life due to it not being enjoyable. The last time I came back I decided that it didn’t matter what happened on the course I was going to give it 100% and I was going to enjoy the hell out of it no matter what happened. 2 1/2 years later that is exactly what I have done. I still get mad but it’s short and brief and then I move on. If I play terrible on the front 9 I aim for improvement on the back. To me if you remember these points you will continue to improve and enjoy it;

1) it’s a game, have fun and enjoy it.

2) allow yourself 5-10 seconds to be mad and then move on and attack the next shot.

3) Set goals for yourself and do whatever you can to achieve them but don’t EXPECT anything.

4) stop and smell the roses. Look around, take in where you are, we are lucky that we get to do what we truly love.

5) read  @GolfSpy MPR comments about where our place is and what golf actually means in the grand perspective of everything.

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/six-lessons-from-a-season-watching-really-good-golfers?mbid=social_twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&utm_brand=gd

#3 has been what helped me the most. I was focusing too much on everything, and not specifically enough on one thing. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I have everything figured out now that I've finally gotten down to single digits and broken 80, but I know for sure that managing my expectations while trying to improve on my weaknesses has played a huge part.

Evaluate your game and take note of what you do best. Then, come to terms that no matter what, you're not going to be 10/10 in that area every round, you'll probably never be 10/10 in ANY round ever. That's just golf. Not even the tour guys can hit every fairway and every green, so don't expect to be able to do it yourself. Now, figure out what you struggle with most, and set a specific goal and work towards improving that. Similar to "managing your misses" but you're managing your biggest weakness. If you can turn that weakness into just being marginally worse than what you do best, you will see improvement.

[RickyBobby_PR]

Golf is hard and even the best in the world have bad shots, bad rounds, bad years.

Dr. Rotella’s books are great and the forget the last shot and focus on the shot at hand is a great approach.

I try not to have expectations for what my round should be. Also I forget about my round once I leave the course

[edteergolf]

Handling mental things can be tough.  The best way to overcome them is to be properly prepared.  Let's look  at flying a plane.  I'm no pilot but have had 11 hours of instruction several years back and have friends who are pilots.  My question to them is how do you  handle all situations your face while piloting.  Long story short, systems and checklists.  We know all the situations that can be and will be faced when flying a plane.  Not only are there systems/checklists for all the normal things but for all the emergency things like losing an engine.  How many times have you simulated in practice things going wrong and have followed a system/checklist to get home alive.  That round may not reach our expectation but it will likely be survivable and a better score than if you just get mad, frustrated, & confused.  

See, many mental struggles simply reveal that we aren't properly prepared.  We haven't prepared for playing well.  We haven't prepared for playing poorly.  Most don't even know the true dimensions of their shot cone or the true carry distances of their clubs.  How do you make targeting decisions without that most basic pieces of information?  That is like sitting on a 3000' runway in 757 believing you will be airborne before the end of the runway.  The guy in the Cessna 172 has certainty & confidence that his plane will take off safely.  

So, if I'm playing and trying to meet an expectation or goal and don't really know my game, the correct targets, the proper plays off the tee, etc. then I'm going to succumb to a great deal of mental anguish.  How about the player who knows how his ball flys when hitting it well and when he doesn't, who knows there is a correct target in all circumstances, has a system for when his ball finds trouble off the tee, has a system to calculate the playing distance when faced with wind, and has simulated all his decisions and flights in multiple environmental conditions. 

Now, somebody is going to bash me and say this is just a game and that most players don't have time to do this work.  Well, I don't have the time or the money to be a pilot, but if I take a flying lesson there is no room for any other behavior but following the checklist, constant monitoring of the planes systems, knowing the wind, how fast the plane can go, will go, or the speed to safely land and the winds that I can handle during landing.  

At the end of the day, chose to do the work and simulation required by your expectations so that you don't succumb to the mental struggles and not enjoy the game.  

[tony@CIC]

8 hours ago, THEZIPR23 said:

This is a good topic. 
 

The article below was not written with this topic in mind but #1, #3, #6 are great tips/reminders. We play a crazy game and the most frustrating thing about it is that the mental aspect of it may be the toughest part. I have “quit” a couple of different times in my life due to it not being enjoyable. The last time I came back I decided that it didn’t matter what happened on the course I was going to give it 100% and I was going to enjoy the hell out of it no matter what happened. 2 1/2 years later that is exactly what I have done. I still get mad but it’s short and brief and then I move on. If I play terrible on the front 9 I aim for improvement on the back. To me if you remember these points you will continue to improve and enjoy it;

1) it’s a game, have fun and enjoy it.

2) allow yourself 5-10 seconds to be mad and then move on and attack the next shot.

3) Set goals for yourself and do whatever you can to achieve them but don’t EXPECT anything.

4) stop and smell the roses. Look around, take in where you are, we are lucky that we get to do what we truly love.

5) read  @GolfSpy MPR comments about where our place is and what golf actually means in the grand perspective of everything.

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/six-lessons-from-a-season-watching-really-good-golfers?mbid=social_twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&utm_brand=gd

I like #6 winning and whining don't mix. 

[palvord]

11 hours ago, edingc said:

I have a handful of books dealing with the mental aspect of golf on the way (two Rotella books and a few others), but thought I'd throw this question out to everyone.

How do you/did you handle a sliding scale of expectations as you improved? 

I played nine holes tonight, and the entire round was a struggle. It felt like a horrible round all around as nothing was working for me, and it was a huge grind. I didn't hit many good shots, maybe two or three all round. It was incredibly frustrating. 

The reality is I shot a 44 (+8) on the front from the longest tees at my course (6,300-ish yards) with four pars.

Four months ago, I would have been over the moon with a 44, which is a score I had rarely touched (maybe twice?) in my entire golfing career. But, as I've committed myself to getting better this season, my scores have come down quite a bit further than they ever have before. My goal for this year, assuming my past experience, was to break 90 and break 40 for nine holes. I've broken 90 10 times now this season, broken 40 twice and shot even 40 twice more.

I'm doing my best to not be "that guy" who gets visibly frustrated over a bad shot when he's largely playing better than most, but it's mentally becoming very tough to get through rounds without getting frustrated when my expectations start to get too lofty. 

I understand golf is a long game, and that improvement is generally slow, small and maybe not all that apparent at first glances, but how did you handle the additional expectations that come when you started to play better golf?

 

My goodness, @edingc. This topic is just incredibly appropriate for me right now going through the Cobra Connect Challenge.

At the beginning of this year, I set the goal of trying to drop my handicap from a 14.7 to a 10.  (Aggressive, I know) I was stupidly thinking that since I had dropped 5 strokes off of my handicap in 2019, it would be a reasonable expectation to repeat the same. 

Well, that obviously hasn't happened even though I am playing better golf in 2019 than in previous seasons. The only thing that really has helped me not succumb to inner demons of rage and frustration was something from a Golf Sidekick video.

He broke down the practice time needed for someone to maintain a scratch handicap, let alone a tour level handicap. Knowing that I haven't been able to put in that amount of practice time this season has helped me keep my frustrations at bay. 

Also, I work very hard celebrate little victories or successes from the round more than dwelling on anything that went poorly. It's not easy to do, and sometimes the victory is the fact that I was able to play golf. I try to keep that perspective of being happy at having the privilege to play and that helps me sometimes manage my frustration.

[edingc]

Wow, guys. The response was great to this. I really appreciate everyone's insights, and it definitely helped me waking up at 5:30 AM and getting the opportunity to read some of them before this morning's round.

11 hours ago, GolfSpy MPR said:

It makes a par putt that didn't break even though IT CLEARLY SHOULD HAVE much less a factor in whether I'm happy with my day.

Definitely something my wife had to remind me of earlier this season. I let a bad round really ruin a day, and she was not happy about it. I don't blame her. You're right. Golf is a just a game. There are worse things in life than being able to play it!

9 hours ago, THEZIPR23 said:

3) Set goals for yourself and do whatever you can to achieve them but don’t EXPECT anything.

It's a great point. I really need to remember this. There are just too many things going on in the game of golf to "expect" to score a certain way. Thanks for reminding me of this.

9 hours ago, golfertrb said:

I have worked more on the mental side of things and how I have done that is by working on the process vs the outcome.

It's awesome that you've been able to come back from such a bad injury. That's an outlook changing event for sure. I love the idea about of focusing on the process. I really do try to enjoy my practice times and when I have a bad round like last night, I'm all the more eager to fix what went wrong.

9 hours ago, Kenny B said:

By figuring out why I miss certain shots, work on improving those shots next time, and making good recovery shots when I do make a miss, then the score will take care of itself.  Shot improvements = lower scores.  Focus.

Focus is so important, shown on a single hole today. I lost my focus after a poor tee shot on a par 3 and ended up three putting for a double bogey. Certainly an avoidable three putt.

7 hours ago, yungkory said:

If you can turn that weakness into just being marginally worse than what you do best, you will see improvement.

You are so correct. Focusing on my driving, historically the worst part of my game, has really improved my scores. Generally, as my driving goes, my round goes.

3 hours ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

I try not to have expectations for what my round should be. Also I forget about my round once I leave the course

You and @THEZIPR23 make a great point about expectations, and I'm going to try to apply that to my rounds going forward.

1 hour ago, palvord said:

He broke down the practice time needed for someone to maintain a scratch handicap, let alone a tour level handicap. Knowing that I haven't been able to put in that amount of practice time this season has helped me keep my frustrations at bay. 

Do you have the link to that particular video? I love Golf Sidekick, but I don't think I've seen that one.

2 hours ago, edteergolf said:

So, if I'm playing and trying to meet an expectation or goal and don't really know my game, the correct targets, the proper plays off the tee, etc. then I'm going to succumb to a great deal of mental anguish.  How about the player who knows how his ball flys when hitting it well and when he doesn't, who knows there is a correct target in all circumstances, has a system for when his ball finds trouble off the tee, has a system to calculate the playing distance when faced with wind, and has simulated all his decisions and flights in multiple environmental conditions. 

I've really been trying to focus on all of the factors and really focusing on each shot. Between shots I might let my mind wander, but I'm letting that happen only so I can really, really focus when it's time to commit and hit a shot.

I've kind of buried the lead here, purposely, but this morning I had the best driving round of my life, had no wasted shots, left just a few putts on the lip, had a wonderfully stress free, boring golf round, and tied my personal best of 82! So thank you to everyone who has contributed here, it really did help. 

[cksurfdude]

#1. Be patient.

I constantly remind myself of this .. not just round to round, but .. even hole to hole and shot to shot. Breathe. 

 

What's working for me (please note I'm a rank amateur duffer and not a mental game coach!) - and as others have previously explained quite eloquently - is primarily...

* Focus on process.

Great, but...??? To me, it means having a solid pre-shot routine and applying it to each and every shot - full swing, short game, putts. The routine can be different for the different shot types.

Try to correlate whether you fully applied your routine with whether you hit the shot you'd intended, or not. (NOT what the outcome of the shot was.)

You should find that the higher your "process score" ... the higher the number of "good" shots; where "good" is defined NOT by the outcome but by how closely the _execution_ of the shot matched your _intention_ of it.

* Shift "expectations".

Instead of counting fairways and greens .. and pars .. try counting the number of times you struck the ball solidly and it flew as per your shot plan. Yeah stats are important but maybe get a shot tracking app or device to let you completely focus on playing the game of golf.

[palvord]

On 8/4/2019 at 10:37 AM, edingc said:

 

Do you have the link to that particular video? I love Golf Sidekick, but I don't think I've seen that one.

I've kind of buried the lead here, purposely, but this morning I had the best driving round of my life, had no wasted shots, left just a few putts on the lip, had a wonderfully stress free, boring golf round, and tied my personal best of 82! So thank you to everyone who has contributed here, it really did help. 

I'll go back through them to try and find the link for you. It could have been a throw away comment in a video, but I'll look.

Congratulations on the personal best! That is fantastic work!

[alfriday101]

Read Fred Shoemaker's book "Extraordinary Golf."  And I mean really read it and think about the things he talks about.  Ponder the questions asked.  After a few months, reread it and do it again.  

 

He asks the big questions.  Your answers will put golf into perspective for your life.  

[TR1PTIK]

On 8/3/2019 at 8:09 PM, edingc said:

How do you/did you handle a sliding scale of expectations as you improved? 

It takes some time for sure. I still struggle with this at times, but it's been much better this year. It's certainly still frustrating, but I seem to get over it much faster.

Every golfer will have a bad round (or multiple bad rounds), and it's important to remember that progress in anything is not a linear movement. Progress consists of peaks and valleys. If you were to chart your scores from the past year, you'd likely see that they are all over the place, but throw in a trend line and you'll notice that there is definite movement down. As long as that trend continues, you should be able to shake off any bad scores fairly quick.

EDIT:

Here's what some of my scores look like from this season when placed on a graph with a trendline. You can clearly see a rocky start to the season and a few hiccups along the way, but the overall trend (green dotted line) is down. If you think about your progress like this, it becomes much easier to move on from a bad shot or even a bad round. 

Edited August 6, 2019 by TR1PTIK

[edingc]

1 hour ago, alfriday101 said:

Read Fred Shoemaker's book "Extraordinary Golf."  And I mean really read it and think about the things he talks about.  Ponder the questions asked.  After a few months, reread it and do it again.  

 

He asks the big questions.  Your answers will put golf into perspective for your life.  

Thanks for the suggestion. I just ordered the book, along with a couple more.

1 hour ago, TR1PTIK said:

Every golfer will have a bad round (or multiple bad rounds), and it's important to remember that progress in anything is not a linear movement. Progress consists of peaks and valleys. If you were to chart your scores from the past year, you'd likely see that they are all over the place, but throw in a trend line and you'll notice that there is definite movement down. As long as that trend continues, you should be able to shake off any bad scores fairly quick.

I did plot mine and, you are correct, both my 9-hole and 18-hole scores are trending downward. More substantially since a couple small swing changes at the beginning of July. Nice reminder to do that every now and then.

[edingc]

I finished Rotella's Golf is Not a Game of Perfect last night (it's a quick read and cheap used -- I highly recommend it) and one paragraph near the end of the book specifically addressed this topic:

Quote

The first thing to do is to throw away your expectations as soon as you step onto the golf course, and just play. It's very difficult to do. But I have never worked with a golfer who could play anywhere close to his potential unless he shed his expectations before the first shot.

Thanks to all of the great advice in this thread and in the book, I now have a clearer picture and plan of how to handle my game moving forward. 

[MaxEntropy]

Great thread. It is certainly something I struggle with. As I play better/more consistent, my expectations can get out of whack. My last 4 nines were 39, 40, 42, 43. I now expect to score in that range even though I know a 52 could be right around the corner, so I need to remind myself I am a bogey golfer and to have realistic expectations and that the law of averages is not in my favor.