After finishing my final year at Simon Fraser University in June of 2023 where I spent 6 years on the varsity golf team, I took nearly 10 months off and returned to golf this past summer. Over the 10 years leading up to my break I had never taken more than 3 or 4 weeks off of golf training at one time. So when I returned to practice again in May, I was in uncharted territory.

I not only needed to knock off whatever rust had built up but also had to make sure my mindset aligned with what was realistic. I am no longer training 30+ hours a week and spend the majority of my time behind a computer. One of the key components of this mindset is expectation management.

In my experience, having well aligned expectations has a significant impact on both performance and enjoyment. I want to be clear from the beginning, I personally believe that having expectations that push myself to become better is a requirement for improving as an athlete, across sport; however, when I am in the heat of competition, my ability is fixed, and how I manage my expectations has a meaningful impact on the outcome. Today, I plan to discuss my experience with expectation management, how a misalignment in expectations can create issues and how I recognize and manage those misalignments.

Looking back over my past tournaments and training rounds, there are many examples of having misaligned expectations. 

One of those situations I had just begun training for competitive golf and was trying to break 80 for the first time. The challenge I faced was believing that I was already good enough to do this. In one round trying to reach this milestone, I was 2 over through 14 holes on a par 71 course and well on my way to breaking 80 with only 4 relatively simple holes to go. That didn’t matter, I was freaking out inside. The thoughts coming through my head sounded like: “I am going to fall apart!” and “I better not chunk this into the short bunker”. This is a textbook example of having a significant misalignment between my expectations and ability where my expectations were too low. I didn’t believe I was capable of playing the golf I was, in spite of having done it for the last 14 holes. While this is a significant misalignment, there are many other related cases where the misalignment is smaller but still has a negative impact. 

I have played great front 9s and started with a few birdies only to have a poor back 9 and shoot an average score overall. In my specific example where I was 2 over with 4 to go and freaking out inside, I finished double-double-bogey-double to shoot 80 (+9). While this obviously sucked, after the round, I was able to recognize that I did have the ability and was good enough to break 80. The next week, with appropriately elevated expectations, I was able to reach that elusive milestone with a 77.

Another case of having misaligned expectations is when my expectations are much higher than my actual performance. One such case of this type of misalignment was when I was playing a qualifier for my college team. We had multiple rounds of qualifying and it all came down to this final round between myself and two of my teammates for the last 2 spots. I believed I was good enough to earn one of those spots but on that day, I was not able to perform to my full potential.. As I hit poor shot after poor shot, I got frustrated and eventually became lethargic and disengaged. This didn’t serve me well in any way, I continued to play poorly and even got worse making a 9 on the 17th hole missing out on qualifying by more than 10 shots. In most cases, when my expectations are too high, I often notice it in the form of frustration that shows itself through a club slam or negative self-talk. 

Over time, I have developed strategies to try to recognize when there is a misalignment between my expectations and current ability and correct it mid round. In cases where my expectations are too low and I am getting ahead of myself or anxious of maintaining my performance, I try to recall past memories of playing great golf and engage in focused breathing to calm myself down. In cases where my expectations are too high and I get frustrated, I try to put the round into perspective and take a step back to reset and refocus before the next hole or next shot. 

One such example of applying these strategies come from the tournament captured in the cover photo of this blog. That photo was taken at a college tournament after the first 18 holes of a 36 hole day. I had just completed the worst round of my college career. At that point in the season, a round like that meant I probably wouldn’t get into the starting lineup for the rest of the year and understandably I was frustrated, but I had 18 more holes to go that day and in college golf, each individual 18 hole score can count towards the team score regardless of the previous round’s score. I wasn’t going to be able to magically elevate my skill set so I had to look at what I could change. I looked internally to my mindset and decided I needed to adjust my expectations. I didn’t have my best stuff that day but could still play great golf if I managed the ability I did have effectively. I decided to take a parody photo, posing with my scorecard pretending like I had just played a great round of golf. It helped me make a joke out of a shitty round, put the situation into perspective and try to have fun playing the sport I loved. The second 18 was unsurprisingly better.

Over the years, I have developed the skill of recognizing when there is a misalignment between my expectations and current ability, helping me to make adjustments mid-round, play better golf and have more fun doing it. One of the keys in doing that is having a very strong understanding of where my current ability truly is… in a future blog post, I plan to discuss precisely how to do that. Hint: Awareness + Stats!

Thanks for reading along this week!

Better today, 
Ryan Stolys