Golf Digest senior writer Alex Myers is on a one-year mission to see how good he can get at golf through daily training, practice and playing. Read more from his “Late Scratch?” series here.
Through six holes of my 2026 golf season, I was two under par and feeling on top of the world. After an offseason spent working on my game in a wide variety of ways documented in this space, I was finally reaping the fruits of that labor. And in that glorious moment, I was sure this was the new normal. SPOILER ALERT: I was sorely mistaken.
In the 20-plus rounds since that time, I’ve never gotten back to that point. And following a disappointing performance in the 2026 HGGA Championship, AKA my annual buddies golf trip, I found my Handicap Index had ballooned back to where it was late last season.
How could I be doing all these different things and still have the same handicap? Especially when I firmly believe I’ve improved as a golfer during this time? The problem—at least, in part—lies within a changed mindset.
Somewhere during the fall and winter, my golf expectations shifted. Given how much more work I put into my game during the offseason, it’s only natural I would expect to shoot lower scores. But I think my expectations really ratched up during that quick start at Griffith E. Harris Golf Course in April.
I didn’t keep up that blistering pace that day, but I did shoot a great score that brought my handicap down to a career-low and sent my confidence soaring into the clouds. It turned out to be both a blessing and a curse.
“Expectations are a wild thing because they can be motivating and focusing, but they can also, and almost always do cause more problems than they will solve,” mental coach Josh Nichols says.
When I started this “Late Scratch?” project, I worried about becoming too score-focused and, sadly, that seems to have become the case. Particularly on my golf trip when scores actually matter (a little) more.
I arrived in Myrtle Beach with the lowest handicap I’ve ever had entering the event and it definitely got into my head, especially early in rounds. With a much smaller margin to play with when it came to net par, I still expected to shoot around that. So when I’d make a couple early bogeys, I’d feel like I had no chance of competing with those getting a lot more strokes and I’d start pressing. Which only made my scores worse.
Meanwhile, in any previous year, I would have been satisfied with these scores, especially considering some poorer-than-normal course conditions due to a drought in South Carolina. And had I managed my mental game better with some of those slow starts, I could have shaved off a few more shots.
What I also remember about that fast start during that round in April is that our group was waiting on every shot. But when I got over my golf ball, I was quickly pulling the trigger. That was not the case on my trip as various swing thoughts consumed me before I took my backswing. Those could certainly be traced to doubts over my mechanics, but also to lofty expectations of hitting perfect shots you’ve pulled off on the range.
“We’ve got to understand that expectations do not help us in the game of golf,” Golf Digest Best Young Teacher Will Robins says. “They raise that level of tension, they get you to slow down and start trying.”
This is accentuated during important rounds like actual tournaments, or, yes, buddies trips.
“The biggest thing I want you to do when you get to the golf course is, first of all, get rid of expectations,” Robins continues. “Get on that first tee and just go for it. Stop taking so much time. Stop trying so hard.”
Robins has never competed for our coveted green jacket (Congrats to Tim Quinn on winning it for the first time), but I see his point.
My heightened expectations weren”t just affecting how I played, but they were taking away from the enjoyment of my favorite week of the year.
There’s a key distinction here between lowering expectations and getting rid of them altogether. I remember excitedly talking to Quaker Ridge head pro Mario Guerra in November about a great stretch of 12 holes in which I expressed shock at playing under par. Mario’s response was that I “need to change my mindset” when things like that happen.
But he wasn’t telling me to expect those things to happen beforehand, just not to be surprised if they did happen. You don’t want to be in a situation like I found myself in during that April round and start freaking out because it’s so foreign. Our Drew Powell, a former Duke golfer and a current plus-handicapper takes this one step farther.
“Expectations will kill your score, but it is very difficult to convince yourself that an important round is not, well, important,” Powell writes. “One strategy I have learned to use to relieve expectations is to trick myself into thinking that I have nothing to lose. I do this by telling myself, ‘Well, you’ve never done ___ before, so at the end of the day, the worst thing that will happen is you still will not have done it.’”
Whether you wind up shooting a personal best or simply recording another ho-hum round, however, you should stay consistent.
”You have to recognize, OK, what’s my process? Whether or not you expect yourself to play well, whether or not you do play well, whether or not you get to practice more or less, whether or not your practice is paying off or not, you have your plan for the next time that you go out and that’s going to be your process,” Nichols says. “And then you will evaluate how you played. So it’s lots of neutral language, lots of it, ‘it’s gonna go how it’s gonna go,’ or ‘let’s see how it goes.’’
There’s a reason why “Trust the process” is such a popular phrase. While you can’t control results, you can control your process. And if you continue doing the right things, the results you want should follow. Eventually. Hopefully.
One more thing I’ll add about expectations and that’s the focus on the expectations others have for you. Or, at least, the expectations you think people have of you. As the low-handicapper on my trip and as the “Golf Digest Guy,” I always feel a bit of extra pressure to perform well.
But after not performing well this year—and my friends barely seeming to notice—I realize more than ever that worrying about that stuff is stupid. As Luke Kerr-Dineen wrote last year, “No one cares as much as you do.” And he had author and high-level amateur golfer Jon Sherman explain it this way.
“Psychologists call it the Spotlight Effect,” Sherman says. “We’re always worried about what other golfers think of our game more than the reality of how much they’re actually paying attention. People are never paying attention to you as much as you think.”
Overall, expectations do a lot more to hurt your golf game than help it. Start cutting them out, and you might just start cutting down your scores as well.
