Golf is a well-known sport across the United States and the globe. While most people play golf as a leisure activity, it can also be played professionally and at academic institutions, though, in all forms of golf, the sport still caters to the elite to some extent. In this scenario, the elite refer to those who can afford the time and expenses that playing golf requires. Golf has existed for almost seven centuries now, and yet still presents a barrier between both men and women, upper and lower classes, as well as different races and ethnicities. These barriers, no matter how minute, produce consequences on and off the golf course caused by competition and other social factors, specifically at a collegiate level where golf teams are formed. 

 

As a mental game, the sport of golf often produces high anxieties in athletes at the collegiate and professional levels because it becomes a highly competitive sport. These kinds of anxieties, which can be present both during practices and tournaments, stem from various forms of competition that the sport has. Previous research has shown that golf encompasses both external, where different teams compete against one another, and internal competition, where athletes of the same team create competition between each other. Additionally, there are aspects of individual, or self, competition that affect both men’s and women’s anxieties differently on a golf team. These anxieties, in turn, have a strong effect on athletes and their performance, which can be difficult to manage both individually and as a team collective.

 

This research on a collegiate golf level aims to answer how college golf athletes manage their anxieties produced by varying aspects of external, internal, and self-competition. The goal is to find how these types of competition in an elite sport such as golf affect athletes’ performance levels on and off the golf course and further, how they create inter-and intra-team rivalries produced by anxieties from competitive situations. These questions will be answered through participant observations of team bonding events, team practices, and golf tournaments, as well as by conducting research-led, semi-structured interviews. Additionally, stratified random sampling questionnaires will also be sent out to both male and female athletes in order to compose a comprehensive analysis of the Whittier College’s golf teams.