Shedding light on the mental game

When you see an evening out at the golf club entitled “Five Shots Lower Without Changing Your Swing” it is usually enough to make any handicapper put down his remote control and go out into the night in search of a ticket.

It wasn’t always that way, though, as renowned mind coach Karl Morris recalled to The Irish Examiner this week ahead of his popular lectures to golfers of all abilities scheduled for Friday at Monkstown Golf Club in Cork and the following night at The Links Hotel, Portmarnock, Dublin.

“If we’d arranged one of these 10 years ago, we’d have struggled to raise a fourball,” Morris says. “Last year I did one for the GUI and 150 people turned up.”

Morris’s talk is worthy of a crowd as he tries to spread the word that having the right mental approach to your golf game is not just a concern for professional tour players. He should know, having worked with more than 100 of them on the PGA Tour, European Tour, Challenge Tour, LPGA Tour and Ladies European Tour, including Irish major winners Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke, 2010 Open champion Louis Oosthuizen, 2011 Masters champion Charl Schwartzel and former world number one Lee Westwood.

And his services are now being called upon in the amateur ranks with Morris increasingly being asked to work with many Irish golf clubs, including last year’s All-Ireland winning Senior Cup team in The Castle Golf Club.

The Castle’s team took a session with Morris at the GUI National Golf Academy before the finals in Kinsale last year, when they scored a 3&2 victory over Warrenpoint, with team member and two-time All-Ireland Senior Football winner Conor Deegan explaining the benefits. He recounted: “We talk more, we understand the game a wee bit better We’re talking about process, keeping in the game, staying in your bubble, all those good things.” Morris adds: “There’s a presumption that sports psychology is just for good golfers but even the rank beginner can better prepare himself.”

Which is why the GUI National Golf Academy is bringing him back to Ireland this weekend to shed some light on the mental game for golfers of all standards in a two-hour event specifically structured to arm them with the tools and techniques to banish the frustrations of playing bad golf.

“I’m not against science and technology in golf, it’s helped so many golfers through improved equipment and teaching aids, but I get the feeling we’ve become so wrapped up with how to improve our swings and so on, on the range that we don’t actually go near a golf course and prepare for the mental side of a round of golf,” Morris said.

“It’s about giving your brain a chance, whether it’s getting the best out of a lesson, a practice session or a round of golf. Graeme McDowell talks about how helpful it is when he’s practising because he admits his mind can wander and he can end up just bashing balls over and over. So it’s about bringing a better mindset and mental approach for how we deal with a bad shot on the course. When we’re on the range we just bash another ball straight away but on the course we might have five or 10 minutes between shots to deal with it. It’s also important how we deal with things at the end of a round, so we try and address all of that on the night.”

For more information on how to get tickets for either the Monkstown GC or Links Hotel, Portmarnock, events go to the GUI National Golf Academy’s website, www.LearnToGolf.ie, for further details.

LOWRY MAKING US INROADS

It’s good to see Shane Lowry’s defeats of Rory McIlroy and Carl Pettersson at last month’s WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship are giving him further inroads to US tour events.

The 2012 Portugal Masters champion made a splash in the golfing world when he got into the Match Play as an alternate and then defeated world number one McIlroy in the first round in Tucson, Arizona.

Seeded 16th and bottom in his bracket, Lowry then thumped Pettersson 6&5 only to come up short against Graeme McDowell in round three.

But it was enough to last week land a sponsors’ exemption into the PGA Tour’s Shell Houston Open next month. Lowry played the Puerto Rico Open on the PGA Tour two weeks ago, missing the cut, but now gets another chance to showcase his game in the March 28-31 event at Redstone GC, where Hunter Mahan will defend and McIlroy will also be in the field ahead of his Masters bid a fortnight later.

“Delighted to have been invited to the @ShellHouOpen Really looking forward to getting back over stateside,” Lowry told Twitter.

FROM TEE TO GREEN EXPLAINED

Ever wondered what actually happens to your golf ball once you wave it goodbye from the tee box? No, me neither, but a former NASA scientist did and he’s ready to share his findings with the world.

While Karl Morris preaches the mental approach to good golf, over in Scotland, the R&A is delving further into the scientific side of things at the end of the month when its Director of Research and Testing, Dr Steve Otto, will give a public lecture in the hope of helping golfers get to grips with the physics of the game.

The lecture will form part of Edinburgh International Science Festival at the National Museum of Scotland on March 30, when Dr Otto pours forth on “The Science of Golf from Tee to Green”, during which he will discuss “the fundamental physics of golf and discuss current research insights into shaft dynamics, metallurgy and ball construction”.

If that all sounds a bit in-depth, the festival has thoughtfully commissioned some visual aids, with video evidence to support Dr Otto’s lecture recorded down the road at Muirfield, this year’s Open Championship venue.

Apparently, at impact, a golf ball accelerates from zero to 180 miles per hour in less than 1,000th of a second. In that time, Otto contends, “where the ball will land has already been determined by the parameters of spin, velocity and the dimple pattern on the ball itself”.

He continued: “Even the best golfers in the world may not fully understand the details of striking a golf ball and there are many common myths and misconceptions surrounding the process. Golf is a fascinating game and people are always curious about the golf swing. In this lecture I will explore some of these myths surrounding it and show what actually happens when a golfer hits a golf ball.”

Hopefully that will not include video evidence of a bemused hacker swearing into the distance, wondering whether it’s gone left or right.

‘Open’ poster sparks much interest in Rome

Wandering through Rome ahead of the ill-fated Six Nations rugby clash with Italy at the weekend, there was much excitement at the poster headlined “Open”. Words such as “agility, lightness, surprise, direct involvement with the public and an avant-garde use of visual technology” suggested a hologram of the late Seve Ballesteros but further inspection revealed that “Open” was contemporary dance production.

Must have been Jose MariaOlazabal then.

STREELMANBAGS TITLE AT 153RD ATTEMPT

Kevin Streelman claimed a PGA Tour title at the 153rd attempt as he held off a bold final-day surge from Boo Weekley to win the Tampa Bay Championship.

Weekley, among the early starters after three average rounds, came from nowhere to shoot an eight-under 63 to take the clubhouse lead. In the end only fellow American Streelman was able to deny Weekley as he shot a four-under 67 to move to 10 under overall and take his maiden PGA title by two strokes.