Robin Smiciklas is ready to tee off. With his legs braced in the fairway, he aims for the green. A moment of calm, of gathering. Then his left arm twitches. Once. Twice. Then even more violently. Smiciklas makes it happen. His concentration seems unbroken. Moments later he sends the ball on its journey precisely. “It’s often the case that a few more tics just have to get out,” he tells DW. “It took me a few years to get to the point where I didn’t let myself be disturbed by my concentration or what others thought of me at that moment,” says Smiciklas, who has Tourette’s. Since he was eight years old, the syndrome has caused his muscles to twitch suddenly. Despite this particular hurdle, he has been involved in the golf circuit as a professional for a year. “I’m happy with the season and have shown that I can play at the front,” he says. In two to three years, according to his master plan, he wants to be in the top ranks of the golf world.
“Can I do this?”
At 31 years old, Smiciklas is a late starter. Tourette’s held him back for a long time because his doubts were too great. “It was only now that I was in the mental state that I was strong enough to say that this is no longer a reason for me not to try.” He is now pursuing his path without funding, but with sponsors who are part of this “crazy story”.
When he became a professional, he also consciously decided to make his Tourette syndrome public. “Self-protection was a motive,” says Smiciklas. He has been used to strange looks since he was a child. If competitors and the public knew about it, there would be a few fewer, so he calculates. He also wants to get Tourette’s out of the “taboo corner”. “People often only know the extreme form of the syndrome from the media, with swear words and blatant obsessive-compulsive disorder,” he says. Society is hardly sensitized to the motor, non-verbal variant that affects him. “I want to change that.”
Positive effects through sport
A golf professional with Tourette’s – a crazy idea? Not at all, says Prof. Markus Raab, head of the performance psychology department at the German Sport University. Golf is a “discrete sport” in which the athlete can decide for himself when to hit, unlike in tennis, for example. “With Tourette’s, it’s not possible to suppress everything 100 percent,” he explains in an interview with DW, “but those affected have the opportunity to temporarily influence their tics.” Smiciklas also reports this, but he also knows the dark side. After a few successful rounds, the tics start to appear and hardly allow him to calm down in the hours that follow. Sport has always been a source of balance and confirmation for him.
“In this regard, the study situation is quite clear,” explains Raab. “If you don’t overdo it, exercise has positive effects on our motor skills, our perception but also our emotions.” This applies equally to people with Tourette’s and other psychological and neurological impairments.
In fact, there are athletes with Tourette syndrome who have made it into the world elite. Soccer goalkeeper Tim Howard, who played in the Premier League for Manchester United and Everton FC, kept goal for the US national soccer team for 15 years. Basketball player Mahmud Abdul Rauf is even more prominent. He played in the US professional league NBA for nine years and competed in direct duels with icon Michael Jordan. To this day, the syndrome manifests itself not only through twitching, but also through uncontrolled swearing, so-called vocal tics. He also suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder during his active time. Only when he felt his shoes were tied perfectly could he go onto the parquet. To complete his throwing training, it wasn’t the number of hits that mattered to him, but rather the “right” sound of the ball when it hit. The hundreds of repetitions made the now 54-year-old one of the best long-distance shooters in the league.
Creativity on the golf course
When asked about the “advantages” that Tourette’s gave him in sport, Smiciklas doesn’t have to think twice. “In difficult situations on the golf course, I have a certain creativity as to how I can still get the ball where I want it,” he explains. A consequence of his difficult time as a teenager, when he was always looking for ways to hide his twitching and make it seem like he was like everyone else.
Although Tourette’s is so closely intertwined with his personality, you can tell Smiciklas doesn’t want to bring this topic to the fore. His performance and promotion to the “Challenge Tour” is what he is focused on. If it works, Smiciklas’ idol Kobe Bryant would be right. The US basketball star, who died in 2020, once said: “The biggest dreams are not driven by faith, but by doubt.”