Daily goals......self-fulfilling prophesies?

[David in FL]

Thought I'd share the results of a little experiment yesterday.

My usual "goal" at the beginning of the round is to break 80. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. It never ceases to amaze me how many different ways I have to shoot an 81.......

It was starting to annoy me (read, really pissing me off!) that I was missing my goal so often when I know that I'm fully capable of hitting it every time. The fact that I came close just didn't seem to matter, so I decided to change the goal . I play off a 6 and haven't ever managed to shoot an even par round in my life, but I decided that my goal yesterday wasn't to break 80, but rather to break par . My focus before the round centered around that goal, and rather than standing on each tee box planning how to par the hole, I planned how I was going to birdie each hole.

I didn't feel as if I played an especially great round, nothing out of the ordinary, and yet at the end of the day, I shot a 76 with one double, one 3-putt, and not a single birdie. I still missed my "goal"......and I missed it by a wider margin than usual, by 5 strokes rather than 1 or 2, but there was a 76 on the scorecard rather than an 80 or 81.

One round means nothing, but I've decided to change my expectations for myself going forward. I may be in for some disappointments because I'm likely to miss my goal by more than I did previously......but if the end result is lower scoring and a couple of strokes off the hcp, I guess I'll learn to live with the pain.

[Uber$winG]

This is how I approach the game…

I am teleologically committed to breaking par on the hole that I play.

I avoid thinking about the cumulative number of strokes I make (or that I am going to make) in a round; meaning, I don’t think about shooting in the mid-seventies or trying to break eighty. Instead, I focus on each individual hole as the only immutable reality in my immediate universe.

There was no hole I played prior to this one, and there is no next hole – this hole is the only hole – I think to myself, “Go low on this hole.”

If I get too wrapped up in what the final results of the round may be (like I’m three over making the turn, and now I need to make three birdies to get back to even), then I tend to loose focus on the singular process that can get me there.