{"id":704683,"date":"2026-05-30T23:05:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T23:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/704683\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T23:05:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T23:05:15","slug":"how-do-players-manage-new-expectations-a-mental-game-coach-explains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/704683\/","title":{"rendered":"How do players manage new expectations? A mental-game coach explains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"first\">One of the hardest things to do in pro golf is to win a golf tournament, but that just leads to another tricky dilemma: managing expectations after you\u2019ve checked off one or two of those life-changing victories.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s one thing sports psychologist Julie Elion helps several players on Tour with, including Wyndham Clark, whom she worked with when he won the 2023 U.S. Open and, more recently, last week\u2019s CJ Cup Byron Nelson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Elion joined the latest episode of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=42I2rGeXnzk&amp;list=PLpgUQxr_0sWfqfaRqvDpm2mZJ_T2_T6qK\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">GOLF\u2019s Subpar podcast<\/a> to discuss her work with Clark and the power of a strong mental game in golf. (Her new book, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Winning-Your-Mental-Game-Twenty-Five\/dp\/1668202050\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Mastering Your Mental Game<\/a>,\u201d will be available next week.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Subpar co-host Colt Knost brought up names like Ben Griffin and J.J. Spaun during the interview. Both players had big 2025s but now had to live up to lofty expectations this season. How do players manage that? She said it\u2019s not that different from Clark after he won the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cFrom my point of view, [Clark\u2019s] world got so big and complicated, but in great ways too \u2014\u00a0sponsors and chit-chat and media,\u201d Elion said. \u201cSo it was helping him manage that. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s always so easy to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Spaun has recently admitted it\u2019s been a struggle to manage expectations. After <a href=\"https:\/\/golf.com\/news\/jj-spaun-us-open-win-behind-scenes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">winning the 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont<\/a> and earning a Ryder Cup spot in the fall, Spaun missed four cuts in seven events to begin this season. But he turned it around by winning the Valero Texas Open before the Masters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI was riding on so much confidence and so much self belief right after the U.S. Open \u2026 then when I had kind of like this physical end to the season and now it\u2019s like a new start, like I\u2019ve put way too much pressure on myself that I needed to be [one of the best players] in the world that tees it up every week that needs to show up and needs to play well and needs to contend,\u201d Spaun said after his victory in Texas. \u201cThat\u2019s an uncomfortable position for me because I\u2019ve never been there, but it was more of like the complete opposite mindset that I had last year, where last year I kind of accepted playing with nothing to lose. I felt like that helped me free up myself mentally.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He said at the Texas Open he was able to get back to what worked before, understand he didn\u2019t need his best to win, accepted the outcomes and moved on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think the biggest lesson for me this week was learning that like I don\u2019t have to be perfect to win golf tournaments,\u201d Spaun said. \u201cI don\u2019t think I was perfect at the U.S. Open, I don\u2019t think I was perfect when I won here in 2022. But I\u2019m proud that I was able to hit the shots that I wanted to hit when the moment needed it. That proved to me that like wherever I feel like my golf swing is or wherever mentally, if I\u2019m not confident in being able to hit certain shots, that I pulled it off today and down the stretch when it mattered. That\u2019s all that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the hardest things to do in pro golf is to win a golf tournament, but that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-704683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}