“You’re a Human, not a Robot”

We all have expectations for both ourselves and the people around us, it’s part of being human. We all picture a perfect situation where every single goes our way, and yet it never happens. I find myself doing this a lot when it comes to competitive rounds in particular.

It’s impossible for every single shot to go exactly the way I want it. I either don’t execute it well, make the wrong decision, or something out of my control happens such as the wind picking up, taking a hard or soft bounce, hitting the cart path or a sprinkler head, the list goes on and on.

About 10 years ago, I remember sitting in the Welcome Center at Applecross CC, and Bob Heintz (worked for my swing coach at the time, played on tour in the early 2000s, now the assistant men’s golf coach at Duke) talked about what you can and can’t control in a round of golf.

His list of things you cannot control included, weather, course conditions, temperature, and score.

His list of things you can control included preparation and attitude.

I remember being confused as to why score wasn’t in your control. You are the one who makes the decisions and hits the ball…right?

Yes, but once the ball leaves the club face, it is vulnerable to all sorts of things that are outside your control, such as some of the things I listed above.

Something I have always struggled with is managing my expectations when it comes to competing in tournaments. There are days where you have your game, you are striking it well, you get one or two lucky bounces and a few putts to drop, and it’s just your day.

And there are other days where you get some unlucky bounces, not striking it the best, and you don’t make anything. Those are the days though where you have to face reality and trust you are good enough to still score well even if nothing seems to go your way.

Scoring is out of your control, yet attitude and preparation are in your control. So what does that mean?

Preparation is the easiest one to understand and do because it is simple. Before you play in a tournament, you have the opportunity to prepare and practice so you are ready for the tournament.

Attitude is a little more complicated because you can feel like you did everything you could to prepare, and you don’t feel like you are doing anything wrong when you are playing, yet sometimes things just don’t go your way. People love to say “That’'s golf”.

Attitude plays a big role when things don’t go your way. It can make your round go from a 78 to an 85 really fast. Attitude affects your decision making and execution of shots. For example, there are times where you simply hit a bad tee shot into the hazard. You have one of two options, you can either do everything in your power to save par, even if that means trying to hack the ball out of the hazard because you don’t want to take the penalty stroke. Or, you can take the penalty stroke, drop the ball, and have a clear shot to the green, hit the green, have a opportunity to save par but be ok if you make bogey.

The smart golfer choses option 2, try to save par, but doesn’t make a bigger mess doing it and accept the bogey if it happens.

Option 1 can go from attempting to save par to scrambling for double bogey very quickly.

The reality is, you will make mistakes in your round. You will plan your shot out exactly as you should, and execute it poorly. You will even hit the shot exactly as you pictured it, yet it takes a super hard bounce and shoots off the back of the green. This is why managing your expectations is super important, and why expecting everything to go exactly your way is a dangerous way to play golf.

Expect reality to happen, and be ok with making mistakes. As Coach has said to me before, “you’re a human, not a robot” .