This time John’s contribution was a phone call.
11th July 2011
Dear John,
We chatted on the phone about this round and so I have left it a few days to see if anything else needed saying.
I might be guilty of reading too much between the lines but it sounds to me that you feel slightly unworthy of your place in this team, that you think that you are flying a little too high, that you’re getting too old and that the role of captaincy is rather a false position for you because it should held by one of the better players but that you can justify it on the basis that it is little more than an administrative/organising role!
You went into the match on the back of a “disappointing” round on Saturday, and because of how I think you think of yourself in this team, for my money you were ripe for a back-to-back disappointing display to follow on Saturday’s. The conscious likes nothing more than to prove itself right about everything: “I played shit on Saturday, it’s all a flash in the pan, I’ll play shit again, they’re all better than me anyway, I’m not hitting it well enough etc”.
Before the round we talked about the first shot of the round and it seems to have paid off. Presumably you stuck with the routine and lo and behold you play well enough to be 4 up after 10 holes. In the context of the match as a whole it becomes apparent that you are going to have to win to secure the points. They come back really well to square the match with a birdie on the 17th.
This all adds up to a lot of pressure. You take on the second shot to the green with a 3-wood out of light rough into a headwind. Your striking hasn’t been at its best in the tricky conditions and you are only hitting every other shot but the pressure has eased slightly because they are struggling a shot behind. Nevertheless, the ball needs to be hit and you are the highest handicapper (and probably the oldest on an evening which would have been physically and mentally demanding). You put it just off the green and then had 2 putts to win in 5.
Shots like that 3-wood are an example of my method working at its best. My method is based on my belief that the sub-conscious is the mental home of “timing”. For a player to give himself the best chance of “timing” a shot he needs to make sure that he consciously gives the subconscious the information it needs (visualisation of the shot followed by the feel of the rhythm of the shot) in the most vivid form possible.
The pressure that results from a particular situation in a match is a conscious phenomenon and so it can be used by the player to increase the chances of the conscious information going to the subconscious being as vivid as possible. In other words, the higher the pressure the sharper your visualisation etc of the shot will be.
Looked at like this, you will soon come to welcome pressure because you will know that it will mean that you are more likely to play well. [It would be worth you thinking back to the match and thinking about how being 4 up with 8 to play affected your ability to zone-in, visualise etc, especially given the foursomes format. It may also be worth thinking about the foursomes format in terms of the method and whether there is anything that can be tweaked or added. (Mind you, I don’t think it would be a problem if both players were adopting the same method!)]
To finish, I want to stress again that there is nothing “magic” in my method; it just happens to be exactly how the brain and the body works when called upon to deliver an accurate force. This means simply that as long as you stick to the principles then “timing” will be at your beck and call. The aim then is to increase the percentage of shots that are “timed” in any one round. As the percentage goes up so your handicap comes down.
The only psychological part to it all is to realise that your old view of all of this will look to gain dominance whenever it can and that we need to be vigilant to keep it at bay. As I have said before, in terms of physics the only thing that stands between you and “scratch” is your view of yourself.
Regards,
Colin
