Golf Flow

answer, “Because I like competition,” then push yourself and ask, “Why do you like competition?” Take a moment and write down the reasons with the intent of connecting with the internal motivations that the game nourishes in you. Next, see which of the following two psychological categories those reasons fall into.

Mastery Orientation
    The first achievement goal orientation is called mastery orientation. A mastery golfer is one who is driven by the love of the game, the challenge of the round, and the desire to improve. Mastery golfers become absorbed in the details of the game, and they launch themselves into exploring and understanding those details. Their motivation to play is often guided by the same simple and basic motivation that guided them when they first picked up a golf club as children: curiosity, interest, challenge, enjoyment, fun, excitement, and enthusiasm.
    Mastery golfers engage the idea of kaizen, and they view their work as long term and never ending. They not only accept the fact that golf is a challenging, fickle, unpredictable game; they savor it. They thrive on the challenges that are inherent and implicit to the game. They love the challenge, the eternal struggle, the fickleness and unpredictability, the high highs and low lows, and the sensitivity to marginal differences in their moods, bodies, and concentration. They love playing golf, rather than some version of golf in which every bounce goes their way, in which every well-struck shot results in a good lie, and in which the conditions are always consistent and perfect.
    Jack Nicklaus was the archetypical mastery golfer. I’ve profiled Nicklaus closely throughout the years. I’ve had the chance to dine with him, to play golf with him, and to interview him for this book. His ideas are mastery to the core. In
My Story
(Nicklaus 1997), he wrote,
Meeting such challenges is never easy, but to me the urge and the struggle to do so are what competing at sports is all about. That’s because, when I succeeded . . . the emotional high was the single biggest thrill of my life. And the reason, of course, is not that I have whipped up on all those other people, but that I have conquered the toughest opponent of all: myself.
    The reasons for playing that I hear from mastery golfers are typically consistent: love of challenge, opportunity to test themselves, and continual refinement of skills. Most want to take their learning, understanding, and ability to execute golf shots as far as possible. They genuinely want to know their own limitations and are willing to test those limits through relentless learning, practice, instruction, and competition.
    A unique characteristic of a mastery golfer is the view that there are two players in every golf contest: the golfer and the course on which he or she is playing. Except when dictated by common sense during head-to-head formats, mastery golfers do not compete against other golfers. They never obsess about a score or compete to impress or show off to others. Because the matchup is always the same—the golfer versus the golf course—the mastery golfer is buffered against external distractions and finds it relatively easy to get lost in the process of playing that course one shot at a time.

Ego Orientation
    The second achievement goal orientation is called ego orientation. In contrast to intrinsically driven mastery golfers, ego golfers play for extrinsic reasons that center on others. Usually this takes the form of wanting to impress or otherwise gain recognition from other people by shooting low scores or winning so that others will look at them in a more favorable light. Ego golfers enjoy playing well to the degree that others know that they played well. They don’t enjoy the game of golf as much as they enjoy the status or ego-fulfilling characteristics that come with playing golf. In many cases, ego golfers play golf to make themselves feel better (about themselves) and to show that they are better than others. Ego golfers value the attention, compliments, accolades, envy, and respect that accompany good golf as much as, and often even more than, actually playing good golf.
    Like mastery golfers, ego golfers also know that there are two players in every golf contest. But unlike mastery golfers, for whom those two players are the golfer and the course, the two players that ego golfers see are the golfer and other golfers. Ego golfers do not play the course. Instead, they constantly measures