This time I am going to re-state a sentence from your e-mail so that you can consider the effect of the words on your psyche: ” . . .and on Thursday I am in the 5 playing against the Glamorganshire in the Welsh Team Champs at the same venue – that’s singles off scratch. I hope I can take my form into this week!”
The last time you played in that competition you admitted to me that you felt that you weren’t worth your place. I think there is a hint of that bo****ks in your writing. There is no place for “hope” in sport and there is no such thing as “form”. “Form” is something invented by players to deflect responsibility: it’s not them, it’s their “form”.
You have been picked for the team because you are playing well and you are a good player. Your task is to . . .
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[10. The pursuit of pointless perfection]
According to your e-mail you scored thus: 0, 1, 0, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1 for 9pts on the outward 9. That means that you scored 18 points on the inward 9. You didn’t score on two holes on the inward 9 which gives you an average of 2.57pts per hole. So for 9 of the 18 holes you were quite a good bit better than par. Given your start, I would mark that down as a good recovery.
So, where to look? After giving it a lot of thought, I think you can safely put this round behind you. Overall, given the calamities, your scoring held up well. It may not have felt as if you were striking it that good but you must have hit quite a few decent shots to score 18 points on 7 holes. Also, you must be playing well throughout your game to score like that. It is important to face the fact that you scored well because, like my Dad, you have this sneaking suspicion that you are going to turn up one day and not be able to hit a thing. You need to realise that “form” is an excuse, it doesn’t actually exist. If you allow your muscles to relax then swing, then that ball will fly; there is nothing to stop it!
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[11. Reading between the lines]
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”.
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I have mentioned before about the importance of using accurate language. In your case this is mainly to avoid you being overly modest because there is a danger that your modesty will descend into despondency.
You write: “Confident with my bunker shots at the moment . . .”
Isolated as a statement like this, one can see straight away that the “at the moment” allows you to indulge the idea that just because you are playing well out of bunkers at the moment, things are bound to deteriorate at some point in the future because they always do.
I need to challenge this idea not because it is wrong in itself but because it does not apply to you anymore.
The idea that “form” varies wildly is borne out of experience of both your own play and others. But that was before you understood exactly how “timing” works.
Before you took on “timing” as the central objective of your play, you would hit . . .
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It is really heartening to hear you describing taking your “timing” from game to game rather than describing it as “form” (even if you did it just to keep me happy!). “Timing” is a concrete, physical phenomenon that is available for you to locate: even if it does seem terribly elusive at times. “Form” is an excuse that is used by those who are unwilling to take full responsibility for the outcome of their exertions: “weak-minded noodles” to borrow an expression from Jerome K Jerome’s “Three Men in a Boat”.
