Wrong thoughts lurk for the top golfers at every shot

Just look back at a famous moment in golf history, says sports psychologist Brian Hemmings. “Then you’ll see what I mean. 1970. Doug Sanders at The Open at St. Andrews.” You can see it in the old images that Sanders is less than a foot away from victory. A simple well needs to be put in. Sanders paces back and forth to study the slope of the green. When he is ready, he suddenly removes another piece of mud. And then, when he putts, he doesn’t finish his shot well. Sanders slides the ball right past the hole. Later the American would say that he wasn’t even nervous, but he was too hasty. In his head the audience was already going wild and he had already decided which stand he would bow to first. “I just had wrong thoughts.” Doug Sanders, who passed away in 2020, lost the play-off a day later against his famous compatriot Jack Nicklaus. He never quite got over it.

It’s just one moment of many in golf history. Wrong thoughts that even experienced players ran off. Sports psychologist Hemmings: „At the moment in his career he did not do what he normally did. He thought of the future. At such a moment it is about the process, not the outcome.”

Golfers have known for centuries: golf is a mental sport. The 156 players who will participate in the British Open, the last major of the year, at Royal Liverpool from Thursday, are under great pressure every stroke. After two days, the worst half can go home. After that, it’s all about the points, the money and the honour.

4.5 hours on the track

Why is golf so mentally tough? It’s a question that Brian Hemmings often gets. He has been active in the golf world as a sports psychologist since the 1990s. He worked for the English federation and with major winners like Justin Rose and Danny Willett. There are many possible answers to that question, says Hemmings. You can easily walk 4.5 hours on the track. The time you spend on the strokes is, depending on how you calculate, about twenty minutes. “So you have four hours to control your thoughts.”

Golf is also a very technical sport, but that is where the crux lies. Very small fluctuations in movement can have major consequences. The blade of your golf club needs to come through the ball only a fraction of an angle and it will end up dozens of meters from where you aimed. And that gets under your skin. “You can then start overthinking your movements in such a way that it gets in the way of your skills,” says Hemmings. Take Nick Faldo, for example, who was number 1 in the world in the 1990s. “He said that as a golfer you are so vulnerable that from one moment to the next you no longer know how to hit a ball well.”

Joost Luiten, who was the only Dutchman to qualify for The Open this year thanks to good performances, has just completed his first practice round at Royal Liverpool. This day it was about exploring the track, on Thursday he will certainly be in first place with some tension tee. At this level, he says, the mental aspect may outweigh the technique. “We can all hit a ball over 250 yards. But under pressure things go wrong more often with the lesser players than with the top. Golf is one high skill game. If your body is just a bit tense due to nerves, the club will come through the ball slightly differently. With major consequences.”

Luiten was out last year with a mental injury. He had fear of failure, he said NRC. Because of this period, he now has better control of the tension, because he can put things into perspective even better. “I know that if I win a tournament, my life will be no different.”

However, just a little too much pressure also got in the way of Luiten this season. He was at the top of two tournaments after three days. Especially a month ago in Munich he had the victory up for grabs, he was ahead by three strokes before the last round. “Sometimes it is easier to be two strokes behind. Then there is only one scenario: attack. Now all kinds of scenarios went through my head for 24 hours. But if I can choose, I prefer to be three strokes ahead.”

Nothing on your mind

Because of the mental aspect, sports psychologists and mental coaches can earn a good living in golf. To his own surprise, Brian Hemmings got into golf in the mid-1990s. The English federation was looking for a sports psychologist for two regional boys’ teams. “In other sports, sports psychologists were still looked at strangely: like, you only need them if you have a problem. But in golf I was welcomed with open arms. And they appreciated what I did.” Hemmings once bought an old book at an auction, The Brain & Gulffrom 1923, ,, It is already about the blank mind theory: the idea that you play best golf with nothing on your mind, not even technically.”

This book is in line with his own theory and approach. You have roughly two types of players, he says. Golfers who have explicitly or implicitly learned the game. The first group learned exactly what to do, how to hold hands, how to start the swing and so on. And you have the implicit golfers, who learned it by feel. Spaniard Seve Ballesteros was one such player. “So if it went wrong once, he didn’t think about all his moves, because he had never thought much about it. The explicit golfers do have that tendency. What I try to achieve, in conversations and with exercises, is that they don’t focus explicitly all the time, don’t focus too much on the technique,” ​​says Hemmings.

He cites the example of Adam Scott, a top Australian golfer. “He was known for his video analyses. He wanted to see and improve every detail. But recently he found out that he played his best game when he wasn’t involved in video.”

Luiten classifies himself among the emotional players. Of course he is working on technology, with the help of the so-called Trackman, a device that can follow the ball. “That produces a lot of data, but I only get one or two things out of it. I don’t really want to know the rest. That makes you way too aware of everything. That can work against you.”

Yet his mental dip, last year, also came because he lost himself in technology. That was in chipping, the short strokes of ten to thirty meters. “I used to walk up to the ball and chip it. Then it suddenly went less and I started practicing a lot. The result was a mental block. So just before you get to the ball, your brain can’t handle that tension and everything shuts down. Then you stop hitting. Then I had the chip yips. Those yips occur in people who train too much.”

The solution was partly in the technique, he started doing his hands the other way around when chipping. But with that he solved a mental problem. “Now I am no longer in the overloaded part of my brain with the chipping. Now I’m in the learning part of the brain saying, oh, this is interesting.”

The role of a caddy

Luiten used a mental coach three times in his career. He is mildly critical of their role. “I see so many mental coaches here on the tour, with colleagues. They’re just there, bitching. Then I better bring my wife. At least now I’m in such a position that I don’t need them.” Of course he got something out of them. He watches his breathing during tense moments and visualizes his shots. Before the rounds, he often prepares himself in the hotel with self-hypnosis. “Then you visualize the round. Then you try to experience the round as intensely as possible in a certain concentration and state of mind.” He smiles: “That offers no guarantee of success.”

The most important mental supervisor in golf can be the caddy are. Can. He or she can lower the pressure at the right time with a good comment. But he can also say just the wrong thing. So a difficult role. Brian Hemmings once heard from a player who always underperformed on the last day (‘money day’) that his caddy also acted nervous and rushed. “It was also money day for the caddy.” But the best caddies can reinforce a good feeling just at the right time. One of the better European caddies in the eighties and nineties was Dave Musgrove, says Hemmings. He was carrying Ballesteros’s bag and Sandy Lyle’s. “He didn’t take nonsense from players. He was very strict. Like: you have to do this here and otherwise you have to keep your mouth shut.” Ballesteros and Lyle won majors on it.

Luiten has brought back his experienced caddy Martin Gray, but he does not play a major role in this area, he says. “I especially need someone to carry the bag. Of course it has to click well, and we occasionally chat about things other than golf. Martin can do that well. But if he starts using the same trick every day, then I quickly say: I know that now.”

For Luiten, golf is ultimately a simple game. “You have to prepare well and go through your routines before hitting a ball. When the ball is in the air, we’ll see what happens. How it bounces, what gust of wind catches it. There’s nothing you can do about it.”