Business and Golf are a lot alike

Expectations can be very dangerous things, whether it is in business or when playing a game of golf. In business, high expectations coupled with poor performance will generally lead to a stressful situation. In golf, high expectations combined with poor performance will lead to frustration, sometimes bordering on hysteria! It has been my experience that far to many golfers arrive at the golf course with high expectations and quite frankly, they have no reason to. They are typically too busy to practice, exercise or follow a stretching program, will arrive at the golf course 3 minutes before their tee time, take two or three “Zorro – Like” practice swings and then proceed to play poorly.

What compounds the frustration is they have typically excelled at other sports over the years or are successful in business and expect to perform at a high level on the golf course. The bottom line is – without practice, none of us have any right to complain and/or get upset about our play. I have learned this lesson, AGAIN, this year. I used to play a lot and reached a fairly high level but like anyone, when I neglect my game, I don’t play well. When you add to this an injury or diminished flexibility I was doomed.  Yet, I still expected to play well.  Doesn’t make much sense does it?

I see a different kind of irrational mentality on the lesson tee. A golfer will book a lesson and show up expecting to be “fixed” in 30 minutes. Of course, they have been playing for 20 years, have a few glaring errors in their technique which have been with them from day 1 and they don’t have the time or inclination to practice but they figure I can fix them right up! I can help them lower their scores in many ways but without at least a little bit of practice, their golf swings will remain more or less the same.

Without practicing you cannot improve and you should not EXPECT to improve. If you only showed up at your business for 4 hours a week, how would your bottom line look? Exactly! Show up at the golf course for only 4 – 5 hours a week, or less, and you can expect the bottom line on your scorecard to be a little scary as well! You will find that golf is a lot more fun if your expectations are in line with your “investment”.