Satisfaction = (Performance - Expectation)

I first read the above formula in an article by Narayana Murthy a couple of years back. And since then, its significance has hit me over and over again. Of course applicable in day-to-day life (especially in one's relationship with his/her advisor :P), it comes to my mind most often in sports. As every sportsperson progresses in his career, he builds up a set of expectations that the public has from him. And, the satisfaction that the public derives from his performance is relative to these expectations. To offer a trivial example, consider the unlikely event that Roger Federer and Sania Mirza emerge the US Open champions in a little over a month's time (:)) ROFL! :))). Clearly, the effective performance, if I may coin such a term, of Sania would far outweigh that of Federer (still can't stop ROFL :))).

Let me stop dishing out such vacuous examples and tell you about what reminded me of this today. The World Championships in swimming are currently on in Montreal and just like last year at the Athens Olympics, Michael Phelps is again bidding to win a bunch of gold medals. He had managed to win 6 golds and a total of 8 medals at the Olympics. Now, coming into the World Championships, he decided to try out his hand in freestyle races - freestyle is his least favorite stroke. He even skipped one of the Individual Medleys, his pet event (not exactly sure which one). As expected he was totally routed in the freestyle sprints. His pace in the 100m freestyle was no match to traditional sprinters such as Schoeman and Neethling of South Africa (some other dude from Italy whom I've never heard of ended up winning!), and he finished 7th out of the 8 finalists. Having set sky-high expectations in Athens, the media is clearly unimpressed with this Phelps outing and they have stamped their verdict on this performance as a flop! This is a classic example of the subject of this post. Even though Phelps actually had the courage to skip the events he could have comfortably won and contested in events that he usually does not, all with the objective of emerging an all-round swimmer, no one cares two hoots. They expect some standard from Phelps and when he delivers below that standard, irrespective of what his intentions might have been, it leaves them disappointed. Anyway, I think I have belabored enough about the point I am trying to make. :)

The standout performance for the day was however by Tiger. He had shot a 1 under-par 71 yesterday at the Buick Open and was just on the verge of missing the cut. Today, he came back blazing and shot a 11-under 61! That was the previous best ever on this course and he came awfully close to scoring a 59 (he narrowly missed out on birdies on the last two holes), which is the lowest ever on the PGA Tour. Kinda sad that I could not catch the round on TV :( Anyway, I'm sure the rounds during the weekend will be telecast live and if he continues in the same rich vein of form, it should be a treat.

Cheers,
Harsha