Bend’s Todd Strible will be competing at the U.S. Mid-Amateur starting on Saturday.

Todd Strible wants to temper his expectations.

It’s not that the Bend golfer does not think he can perform well at the U.S. Mid-Amateur, which begins Saturday in Wisconsin at 7,004-yard Milwaukee Country Club.

It’s that the approach has served Strible well on the 48-year-old’s way to his first-ever appearance in a United States Golf Association championship.

“I seem to play better when my expectations are low,” says Strible, who moved from the San Diego area to Central Oregon earlier this year and recently bought a home in Bend.

Strible will be taking on some of the country’s best golfers, all mid-amateurs who are 25 years old or older.

The starting field will consist of 264 golfers, and the tournament will begin with 36 holes of stroke play at Milwaukee CC and Brown Deer Park, which hosts the PGA Tour’s U.S. Bank Championship.

Stroke play will cut the field to 64 golfers, who will play in six rounds of match play, ending with the 36-hole championship match on Thursday, Sept. 11.

“I know that there are a lot of great players out there,” says Strible. “I feel like if I play pretty well I can get through the stroke play and into match play. After that, you never know what can happen. It’s kinda luck of the draw and how you are playing that day against the opponent you are playing with.”

Strible, who is not a member of a local golf course but plays on Central Oregon’s Maverix Golf Tour, qualified for the U.S. Mid-Am last month with a 3-under-par 69 at the Oregon Golf Association Golf Course in Woodburn.

At the qualifier, Strible three-putted the first hole for bogey. But then he fired four birdies and never carded another blemish on a golf course he had never played.

He tied Jim Dunlap of Tigard and Eric Fiskum of Salem for co-medalist honors. All three earned berths into the USGA tournament.

“I had never seen the course, so I thought that was going to be a disadvantage,” says Strible, who will face the same situation this week in Wisconsin. “But realistically, sometimes I play courses that I’ve never seen pretty well. You don’t know where the trouble is, and you just kind of take it one hole at a time.”

Strible will be following in the footsteps of another Southern California transplant to Central Oregon. Brandon Kearney, who now plays on the Canadian Tour and still lives in Bend, lost in the second round of match play at the 2007 U.S. Mid-Am, which was played at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort on the southern Oregon Coast.

The tournament was eventually won by Trip Kuehne, a top contender in USGA events for years who is best known for losing to Tiger Woods in the championship match of the 1994 U.S. Amateur Championship.

Strible hopes that the Mid-Am is only the beginning of a successful career on the USGA circuit.

“Hopefully this is just the first step to maybe getting into more USGA events,” Strible says. “That’s kind of the way I am looking at it.”