Golf is a sport that continues to develop throughout the years. The development of the sport exceeds the fascinating technological advances of the clubs, balls and gadgets and has taken a new sector of people by storm. Every year golf seems to capture a new audience and more over a new generation of women have taken a liking to the sport. With all these great advances there still seems to be a question out there on why performance fluctuates so much?
This fluctuation can be seen by the avid sports observer on any weekend of a PGA tour event, yearly seasons and monetary winnings lists where seldomly does a golfer rule the sport for a long time how it is often seen in other sports. Our research focuses on a mental phenomenon that causes weekend golfers some of the same stresses. Opposite of a professional golfer, weekend golfers do not know the root cause of their inconsistent play, some blame the weather, while others blame new equipment, or old equipment. With every excuse a golfer gives, one has stood out to us more than others as it takes the mental aspect of the sport to another level. “I played bad because the person I was playing against was so good, (or so bad), that it affected my play”. This excuse seems to have merit within the golfing community as the many golfers we have spoken to on this journey seem to agree with the statements.
The theoretical framework this research will draw from is social learning theory and in particular the subfactor of self-efficacy, which is the degree of one’s feeling about one’s ability to accomplish his or her goals (Bandura, 1997). Does the self-efficacy of a golfer change because they are playing with a golfer of a substantial difference in skill level, and does this change cause a less than usual performance
