[11. Reading between the lines]
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 . . .
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[20. Choking” ]
** [This is the moment you need to take from the round. My guess is that you were disappointed with the putt because you thought you had “choked”. You thought that you had buckled under the pressure of moving ahead of OP. You had putted really well up to that point, finally hitting your stride with four consecutive good ‘uns from the 11th to the 14th. Then you leave a putt 5’ short; and you would have felt it in the execution that your “timing” wasn’t quite there, that the stroke was a little nervy, that it reminded you a lot of previously fluffed putts. You would also have been reminded instantly of every other occasion in your sporting life when you have had to face the humiliation of “choking”. These are powerful memories and not easily overcome. The putting stroke is as delicate as they come in the sporting world, and is the place where any tightening of the muscles through nervousness will have unfortunate consequences.
Fascinatingly, it also happened to the golfers at the end of the tournament in Dubai. Cabrera-Bello could not hit a straight drive once he hit the front, but chipped and putted like an angel. Westwood drove and ironed beautifully over the same holes but tightened up on his last chip and couldn’t find the hole at all with his putting. Stephen Gallacher had a bit of both. Everybody who ever bothers to play sport, and enjoys the cut and thrust of competition, chokes. EVERYBODY. Everybody, but in their own way.
It would be an interesting exercise for you to go back over OP’s round and to try to . . .
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Secondly, in getting to understand exactly how these factors affect our play, we get to consider the idea of pressure and how our brains handle pressure, and the crucial role that the discovery of the exact mechanism of “timing” plays in this context.
The idea that encapsulates the difference between the two weeks is “pressure”.
- A fast green puts more pressure on ones accuracy
- Having an experienced “third” eases the pressure of being the “can-carrier”
- In terms of pressure, decent opposition playing well speaks for itself
- For me, there is such a difference in playing league matches as opposed to playing friendlies, even though I always play to win and we have no chance of winning the league.
But what is “pressure”?
“Pressure” is the emotion we feel when we want something to happen and it is . . .
