The Problem With: “How did you play?” 

 

One of the first questions I hear teammates and parents ask players after a tournament round is, “how’d you play?” 

I love and hate this question.

I love it because this question invites conversation about the details of the round… when it is asked with genuine interest in how you played. 

I hate it because “how did you play?” is almost never asked with that intention. 

 

Why it’s problematic

When someone asks “how did you play?” most of the time, it’s code for “what was the score?” Or in golf: “what did you shoot?” 

In fact it makes my skin crawl when I hear a parent say “how’d you play?” and a player responds with a number. It doesn’t even make sense! 

Now, asking “how did you play?” is better than directly asking “what’d you shoot” but both questions are both problematic. 

It sets up such an unhealthy way of thinking about results, and creates so much pressure… low score = good… high score = bad… Kids are so much more than what they shoot, how many goals they scored, saves they made, or the score of the game. 

First of all, score isn’t controllable! An individual player can have an outstanding round, and still not get a “good” result. Plus, kids are so much more than scores and stats.

 

How to reframe the conversation 

One of my favorite analogies for golfers (which applies to any individual sport), is the following:

No one asks you to post a copy of your transcript on a bulletin board for the entire school to see, and yet, that is exactly what you are doing with golf when you go play in a tournament and your score is posted on a leaderboard. 

What you shoot is so personal, and it’s sometimes hard to separate you from your score. It’s really natural for what you shoot to feel like a reflection of yourself. But if we can change the conversation and focus on process instead of outcome, the conversation can become really positive and productive. Whether we have a “good day” or a “bad day” isn’t as important as the overall trajectory of our improvement.

 

Process vs Outcome

Anytime we focus effort on things we can’t control, it’s wasted energy. It doesn’t help our pursuit of any goal. So when parents or team mates ask, either directly or indirectly, “what’d you shoot?” it’s counterproductive to the bigger goal of getting better. 

If you want to help your junior golfer improve, help them learn to focus effort on the things they can control. When the round ends or the game finishes, don’t ask about the outcome, ask about the process… “tell me about what you were working on today, and how you did on those items?” 

Don’t get me wrong, outcomes matter, especially as kids enter the recruiting process. But all this focus on outcome takes away from the process and leads to a lot of stress, pressure, and burnout. 

 

How parents can help 

Parents are what I call “the first line of defense” — the people who receive the initial deluge of emotion after a competition ends — and can help reshape that post-game conversation. Your job isn’t to be the coach (it never is) but you can help encourage a more productive post-round routine. 

If you ask your kid “how’d you play?” make sure you genuinely mean that, and make sure your kid knows that you genuinely mean that. Reshape the conversation so that your child wants to tell you about how they played, regardless of the score.