You're Reading: Avoiding a Common Cognitive Bias When Playing Golf
Golfers are humans, which makes them no exception to a common decision-making flaw. That flaw is “Resulting.” Resulting is a term used in poker and popularized by Annie Duke in her book Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts. Ultimately, it is a golf (and life) mistake you should avoid.
Don’t worry: you do not need to be a poker expert or even a fan of the game to recognize the pitfalls of resulting. Naturally, the focus here at Golf Surfer™ is on golf and playing better golf. Therefore, it’s only natural that in this post, the goal will be to first understand how resulting relates to the game of golf and then how to reduce mental mistakes caused by it.
As Annie Duke describes, resulting “is our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome.”
In other words, if a result is good, say making a birdie, then we assume that the decision making was inherently good. The birdie could have been the result of an overly aggressive attempt to drive the green that fortunately avoided both the water and out of bounds.
If a result is bad, say making a double bogey, then we assume that the decision making was inherently bad. Golf is a game in which good shots or good course management is not always rewarded. If the player appropriately decided to punch out from the woods and then missed her approach en route to the double bogey, she may decide to not punch out or fail to fully commit to the punch out when facing a similar situation in the future.
These are incidents of resulting and will distort the accuracy of one’s beliefs.
Being a professional poker player with career winnings amounting to over $4 million, Duke sees poker as a perfect laboratory for optimizing decision-making.
Of course, the challenge with separating how well a decision was considered and then made from the outcome that follows it exists not just in poker but in all aspects of life, including sports and golf.
In the game of golf, whether it be during practice, during a round, or after a round, we are constantly making or analyzing our decisions – this analyzation will, in theory, lead to future decision making that will impact our ability to shot lower scores.
Consequently, the better decisions we can make, the more our games and our scores should improve. Resulting serves as a logical fallacy or irrationality that is best to overcome.
The reason resulting can ruin our decision-making process can be frustrating and it primarily stems from uncertainty.
If there was no uncertainty in golf or in life, being successful or achieving success would be much simpler. Under this scenario, as long as a problem or choice was considered carefully and thoroughly enough and a sufficient amount of data could be researched to support a well-educated decision, there would be no doubt as to what the correct decision would be.
To be clear, this is not to say that everyone would just achieve success. Still, effort must be applied to first pick the correct alternative and then to execute on that decision.
Unfortunately, a world with no uncertainty does not exist. Therefore, a well-thought-out decision offers no guarantees that the preferred or expected result will occur. As with any future event, all we can do is pick the option with the best likelihood of a successful result.
When playing golf, we are faced with this same uncertainty of outcomes and are forced to make shot selections and read the conditions; ideally, we make decisions with truly the best chance of leading to lower scores and not those influenced by resulting.
It should come as no surprise that golfers make improper decisions with some frequency, even on the professional level at times. There are four scenarios in which resulting creeps into golf.
Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. However, failing to recognize the responsibility luck had in delivering a successful outcome could be treacherous.
For example, most golfers know that a proper putting stroke is one that is straight-back-and-straight-through. This is not to say that you cannot make a putt without this picture-perfect putting stroke. In fact, it may be challenging to even perceive that your stroke is outside-to-in and imparts left-to-right sidespin on your putt, especially if you are preconceived to believe that you are performing a straight-back-and-straight-through putt.
Unless your goal is to attempt trick shots or make the game more challenging for yourself, the less variables, in this case sidespin, present when reading a putt, the better.
Unfortunately, golfers who fall prey to resulting may follow the following chain of thought: “Great, I made the putt! I had a good read and made a good stroke.”
This is all well and good to attribute the holed putt to skill. However, the problem occurs after missing putts and attributing it to a failure in reading the putt or speed.
One could argue that the stroke and way the ball rolls is irrelevant on the putting green. After a while, the golfer will just get used to accounting for the sidespin when reading putts so missed putts would then be due to an improper read not the stroke.
There is some truth to this, but as golfers, we are always looking for ways to improve. Eliminating sidespin, which could realistically be affected by moisture or debris between the putter head and the ball, is beneficial.
This truth becomes all too real when attempting putts within 5 feet under pressure, even in your casual round with your buddies. All you want to do is hit the ball straight to the back of the cup. It gets a lot more nerve racking and impossible when you really do not know where straight is.
Like the first scenario, the outcome is still good. However, the mistake made here would be if golfers attribute the success to luck rather than skill. Consequently, they will have less trust and confidence in repeating that same shot or even selecting it in the future. Either way, course management and decision making will suffer.
It is certainly more difficult to find an example for this scenario as golfers will either know for certain the role of luck in situations where it is plainly obvious (e.g., hitting a tree back into the fairway or smashing the flag stick to sink a putt) or be inclined to take credit for successful outcomes where the role of luck is more ambiguous (e.g., missing a landing spot on a chip and ending up right next to the hole).
Fortunately, I guess, for this reason, it is rare that golfers will make the mistake of believing a good shot was all luck when it was largely skill.
Anyway, a possible example could be golfers who never take out their driver because they are convinced they are unable to hit the club. They might pull out the driver once during the middle of the round and even hit it well, but still revert to 3-wood under the belief that that they were fortunate with that drive and that that is the only good shot they will get in a round.
The caveat here is that it may very well be the case that avoiding driver is the better option. Depending on the player’s driving distance and length of the golf course and if they truly are struggling with the physical swing required to hit a diver (not just the mental aspect), hitting driver may be detrimental to better scores. In this case, though, if the goal is to get better, one should get comfortable hitting driver perhaps with a session at the driving range.
To fit this scenario, a golfer would need to have a poor outcome such as a double bogey, have exercised good course management, have bad luck be largely the cause of the double bogey, and then blame his course management decisions for the ensuing big number.
Similar to the rarity for golfers to assume luck and not their own skill after a good shot, it is more common for golfers to blame bad outcomes on bad luck than on their own faults. After all, many golfers are great at making excuses.
Thus, it may be unlikely that when there is even a hint of bad luck that a golfer will believe the bad result was actually his or her own fault. Note that this would not apply when skill is clearly to blame (e.g., chunking an approach shot to the green from a clean lie in the fairway).
Still, there are situations where this scenario of resulting does crop up. Imagine that on a par 4 or par 5 where there is some danger off the tee, such as out of bounds left, a golfer makes the decision to hit driver.
In making the decision, the golfer considers the option of hitting a shorter club to avoid the danger left, but knows his miss with the driver is a slice not a hook (or a hook not a slice for a left-handed golfer) and that his accuracy with 3-wood is not much better. Furthermore, leaving a lengthy second shot on the hole is not ideal.
Despite the careful analysis and the low-odds of hitting driver left, the golfer does indeed go out of bounds, leading to a double bogey. For all intents and purposes, this is bad luck. Trusting that the statistics with the different options were correct, selecting driver was the alternative that had the greatest chance of success.
However, if he falls victim to resulting, the next time he approaches that same hole or a hole that presents a similar obstacle, he will abandon his driver, limiting his potential.
Unlike the last two scenarios and more like the first, this flaw from resulting is probably much more familiar to most golfers.
In essence, here we are blaming bad luck for a bad golf shot when in reality it was skill or something else in our control that was the real culprit.
A great example of this scenario is going long over the green and into trouble and then blaming something other than ourselves for it.
Granted, it is certainly possible that bad luck was to blame, assuming that the ball hit a sprinkler head on the edge of the green or some other comparable unfortunate event. Also due to luck, the green could be fast and firm and very-well protected with trouble in front, and due to one’s age or other constraints, the golfer cannot get the ball high enough or impart enough spin to hold the green.
Here, a golfer’s skill or decisions were not necessarily to blame – nevertheless, on a side note, it would only benefit the golfer to not dwell on the unfortunate circumstance that just occurred and instead focus on the shot at hand and to recover the hole.
However, more likely is that improper course management and club selection was made. In situations where going long is imperative to avoid and being short is safe, even with a back pin, unless you are very confident with your approach shot, failing to choose a club that will keep long out of play is the player’s fault and not luck’s.
Golfers who exercise resulting will make this same mistake again and again until finally realizing, if they do, that they should consider not attacking a back pin with a penalty area lurking right behind the green.
After reviewing the four different scenarios that exist for resulting, you may recognize a theme here that the real harm of decision-making mistakes caused by resulting are realized not on the decision on which resulting is exercised but on future decisions.
Referring back to Annie Duke’s book, she described the Learning Loop: belief >> bet (decision) >> outcome >> belief and so on. Essentially, our beliefs form our decisions. The outcomes from those decisions feed into our future beliefs which then influence our decisions and future outcomes in the cyclical process.
Duke explains that in this loop it is critical to ignore experiences that were not dependent on something in our control, luck. Failing to do so will result in flawed or biased beliefs which will lead to misinformed or miscalculated decisions and ultimately, on average, bad outcomes.
The best way to avoid the decision-making flaws from resulting is to honestly and open-mindedly analyze your decisions on the golf course. Try to remove ego or other biases from the equation.
Another tip is to ask your playing partner’s opinion. It is always easier for others with no emotions hindering them to judge a situation than for the person directly involved. Those third-party judgements are usually more accurate.
Second, if you really want to ensure that you are making course management decisions in your golf game that are best geared to lower your scores, work with real data. Know your exact tendencies with each club and consider the strategy that is optimized based on those tendencies.
Golf Surfer’s™ article on conditional probability will be a great resource in this regard. In addition to the informative content, use our Conditional Probability Calculator to drill down into your course management as much as you want.
In Duke’s book, she poses the challenge of naming one’s best and worst decisions from the past year. What she finds is that people identify their best and worst results rather than the actual decisions behind those decisions.
Try it yourself. I think we usually remember the outcomes, particularly those that are at the extremes of good and bad, and possibly the decisions associated with the more memorable outcomes. Therefore, it should be rather easy to pick a best outcome or result and a worst outcome or result, but not so easy for the decisions.
You may be different, but the fact that we are not as conscious of our decisions highlights how resulting is likely part of our lives.
Of course, it is possible that one’s best and worst results were preceded by one’s best and worst decisions, respectively. It just may not always be the case.
To make this a golf-related challenge, think about it in relation to your golf game and your best and worst golf course decision. The decision could even have been on the practice tee.
On a similar note, to conclude the article, I will attempt to find situation from professional golf that match the four scenarios of resulting described above.
Certainly, there are a plentiful of lucky shots that have been struck throughout the history of professional golf. However, many of those shots do not count as an error due to resulting as there is no debate to the role that luck played.
All the shots in the below video from the DP World Tour are examples of luck which would be very hard to feed back into the learning loop we described as revised beliefs. It is very clear cut that skill is really not to thank.
Instead, there are two examples that could fit this resulting scenario, one each from Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler.
For Rickie Fowler, the shot is at the 2015 Players Championship in the 4th playoff hole played on the iconic island green No. 17. He stiffed his approach but, as the shot is in flight, NBC’s Roger Maltbie can be heard: “This is right of the hole. Oh, no, no. This is dangerous.”
It was truly an incredible shot in that moment (not to mention the other 4 birdies he captured during the week on the 17th). The only thing is that perhaps he played too boldly and close to the water.
Next is Mickelson with his shot through the trees on the 13th hole at Augusta National in route to winning his third Green Jacket. The shot is a perfect illustration of Phil the Thrill. In the moment, he was tied for the lead and could have certainly punched out and played the par 5 as a three-shot hole. His decision was obviously much more exciting and worked out just fine in the end, but perhaps enjoyed a bit of good fortune.
It is hard to critique the best players in the game especially when the result is favorable. As far as finding a good balance between a good shot that could have been a bit lucky, though, these two are not bad examples.
If you find yourself to be so inclined, watch below Mickelson’s defense of his shot at Augusta as the “percentage play.”
Thankfully, the PGA Tour and Hideki Matsuyama made this category easy to pick. If you pay attention to the PGA Tour, you are probably aware of Hideki Matsuyama’s humorous tendency to react poorly to a swing right before his shot ends up close to the hole.
The PGA Tour had fun with this in the YouTube video shown below. Granted, there are other golfers shown, but Matsuyama has by far the most appearances.
Maybe the shots really are just luck and the pros know better. From an outside perspective, though, it sure looks like these shots had a large bit of skill involved. Furthermore, now that Matsuyama is a major winner, it is hard to say that resulting has hampered him much.
Here, we can look to Tom Watson’s approach to the 18th hole at the 2009 British Open Championship at Turnberry. Needing par to become the oldest major open champion at the age of 59, his approach took an unfortunate bounce and bounded over the green, leading to bogey and eventually a loss in a playoff to Stewart Cink.
One could certainly argue that this shot does not belong in this list as it was largely seen as bad luck that the ball took the bounce that it did. However, it really highlights the reality of links golf where you are penalized for good shots and sometimes rewarded for bad shots. Talk about messing with your decision making.
Another example is from Mito Pereira at the 2022 PGA Championship and his tee-shot into the water on Hole No. 18 that dropped him from contention. Many people might have criticized his decision to select driver. Driver was actually a good selection and it was not Pereira’s decision making that was flawed.
This one is a major challenge in trying to find a matching situation in the realm of professional golfers.
For the most part, professional golfers know when they themselves are the reason for the poor shot. This is part of what allows them to constantly seek improvement and reach greater levels of ability.
If you really wanted to, perhaps you could deem that there are situations where professional golfers wrongfully blame things outside their control. Take a look at the video below and draw your own conclusions.
Now that you know about resulting and how it can impact your game, you can make the steps to avoid allowing it to negatively influence your golf game. Eliminating it entirely will be a challenge and may not be truly feasible. At the very least, being mindful of the issue should give you an edge in your mental game.
