Psychology of Golf

I used to play golf, this was a few years ago now. And I must say I consider Mark Twain mostly correct when he called golf "a good walk spoiled". One of the problems with the game, besides the fact that I sucked at it, is the way The Swedish Golf Federation has the handicap system set up. As soon as you beat your current handicap you get a new one, reduced with whatever number of strokes less you got compared to your current handicap, times some factor, initially 0.5. So, effectively, your current handicap becomes a record of that one time when you played your best game ever. But in your mind your handicap is the lowest expectation of what you should manage to play to. Not playing to your handicap will be considered a failure. So golf becomes a game of playing and failing, and failing, and FAILING!

Most of the time will be spent feeling worthless. But now and then you will actually manage to play to your handicap, which is a zero outcome, it’s expected. Rarely, you will manage to beat your handicap, which probably will make you feel a bit happy. Of course that feeling will be immediately erased next time you play, replaced with the feeling of worthlessness, because now you have a new handicap. Depressing.

Now, people say that as you get better the curve levels off somewhat, i.e. the conversion factor becomes smaller. But I never made it that far, so I never saw that side of the game.

OK, enough of a segue, this is what I want you to read: Psychology of Tests, Testing and TDD