Goals, Expectations, and Golf Handicaps

By Jack Moorehouse

The best way of shaving strokes is by improving your short game. It’s also the best way of cutting your golf handicap down to single digits. So if you're truly serious about cutting your golf handicap, you'll set a goal for yourself of becoming more precise in your short game and eliminating those costly errors due to unrealistic expectations.

Setting goals and expectations in golf is important. But the goals must be attainable and the expectations realistic. Achieving expectations in your short-game play is like taking individual steps toward attaining your overall goal of improvement. Each time you achieve an expectation, you build confidence and confidence is the cornerstone to dramatically improving your game.

Goals and Expectations
An expectation, as I tell players taking my golf lessons, is something your want to happen all the time. For the average player, a reasonable expectation is getting more pars or hitting more greens in regulation. Goals, on the other hand, are things like becoming a scratch player. Your short-game goals can be lofty if you wish to set the bar high. But setting lofty goals usually mean putting in hard work to reach your expectations first.

Here are some examples of short-game goals and expectations. Your goal on a chip might be to sink the ball or get it close enough to need only one putt. But your expectation is getting the ball on the green—anywhere on the green every time. Your goal for a bunker shot might be to get the ball out of the hole and close enough to the pin to sink the putt. But your expectation is to get the ball out of the bunker and anywhere on to the green in one shot.

Changing Your Goals And Expectations
You can break down your goals and expectations based on your distance from the pin. If you're 60 yards from the hole, your short-game goal might be to get the ball in the hole in three shots. Your expectation might be just getting the ball somewhere on the green. As you get closer to the hole, however, you can increase your goals and expectations. If you're within 10 yards of the hole, you can heighten your goals and expectations.

Goals and expectations are almost always adaptable and changeable Short-game goals and expectations, for example, can change as you move down the fairway. If you're 50 yards from the green and you flub your chip shot into a bunker, your goals and expectations will change based on your location.

The same holds true if you mis-hit a bunker shot. Your goal may have been to get out in one and get the ball close to the pin, but if you miss-hit the shot and just barely get out of the bunker, you'll have to change your goals and expectations. They key is minimizing the mistakes you make so you can easily achieve your expectations. Once you've done that, you can set loftier goals.

Setting Goals And Expectations
Setting goals for each short-game situation is important. But achieving reasonable expectations in each short game situation builds confidence and confidence is what you need to achieve those goals. If your expectations are too high, you may often miss them, wrecking your confidence and self-image. That's no way to improve your short-game skills or knock strokes off your golf handicap.

Work on your short game hard enough to achieve reasonable expectations. Practice at the range. Attend golf instruction sessions. Read more golf tips in magazines. Do whatever it takes to bolster your ability to achieve reasonable expectations. Once you've done that, you can increase those expectations until you eventually reach that loftier goal of having a single digit golf handicap.

Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book "How To Break 80 And Shoot Like The Pros." He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicap immediately. He has a free weekly newsletter with the latest golf tips, golf lessons and golf instruction.