Scadge
Head Pro
As mentioned in the Mental Side of the Game thread yesterday, I was by cooincidence booked to attend a Karl Morris talk with the Warwickshire County teams (accompanying my son, not earned in own right) and promised to write a review. I was keen to understand whether there were some nuggets for us mortals as well as the stellar squad of the future.
In terms of content, the two hour session was excellent. There were many nuggets of which a few struck a cord with me:
The importance of saving just one shot and the effect it has on momentum in a round.
That the thing in golf not entirely within your control is the shot phase (and even the greatest players at their peak hit poor shots) but you can entirely control the pre-shot and have clarity in what you are trying to do, and the post shot reaction with your body language and posture likely to influence your outlook (we all know the match play guy who maintains a great outlook and is almost impossible to crack).
He suggested that the mind likes to start afresh so the trouble with thinking about golf as 2 x 9 holes is it can be a long time to start again if for example you make a bad start (6 groups of 3 works better).
Does your practice increase your confidence. The example here was whether in a range bucket of 50 balls you have ever hit a good one on the 48th and thrown the other two away, or a duff on the 50th and then lent forward desperately trying to get another ball - but golf isn't like that because every shot counts. The key points were that you learn when your attention is focussed, practice needs to have consequences and putting pressure into your practice by for example taking 9 balls around a green with a range of lies and chipping and putting them out (only allowing yourself to do it once and keeping score - 20 is good) will increase your confidence in the on-course medal situation.
Karl was also an exponent of maintaining stats to ensure that this reinforced the consequences and the learning e.g. if you score poorly on the 4th and 5th set of 3 holes you might look at hydration, calorie intake etc. If you start poorly is this too much practice/not enough before you start.
Finally he gave very lucid examples of the way in which emotions are important in the way we store memories and the importance of celebrating the good shots and having an even temper towards poor shots if the aim is to stand over the next shot with a memory bank of great feelings towards the next shot.
In all there were between 80 and 100 people there and I think everyone would have got something out of the discussion. Karl is an engaging speaker with a great pedigree and I thought that he used examples from the game without doing the "my mate GMac" bit and mentioned useful contributions from other experts in the field like Bob Rotella without appearing to have swallowed the psychologists manual. All in all he was an entertaining, sensible good bloke putting across a number of ideas which he freely admitted some of us may have heard before but by my reckoning everyone would have got something out of.
My own club has previously held a similar session so it is no doubt affordable, if this sort of number of people are interested and I would recommend it to even the most discerning forumer.
In terms of content, the two hour session was excellent. There were many nuggets of which a few struck a cord with me:
The importance of saving just one shot and the effect it has on momentum in a round.
That the thing in golf not entirely within your control is the shot phase (and even the greatest players at their peak hit poor shots) but you can entirely control the pre-shot and have clarity in what you are trying to do, and the post shot reaction with your body language and posture likely to influence your outlook (we all know the match play guy who maintains a great outlook and is almost impossible to crack).
He suggested that the mind likes to start afresh so the trouble with thinking about golf as 2 x 9 holes is it can be a long time to start again if for example you make a bad start (6 groups of 3 works better).
Does your practice increase your confidence. The example here was whether in a range bucket of 50 balls you have ever hit a good one on the 48th and thrown the other two away, or a duff on the 50th and then lent forward desperately trying to get another ball - but golf isn't like that because every shot counts. The key points were that you learn when your attention is focussed, practice needs to have consequences and putting pressure into your practice by for example taking 9 balls around a green with a range of lies and chipping and putting them out (only allowing yourself to do it once and keeping score - 20 is good) will increase your confidence in the on-course medal situation.
Karl was also an exponent of maintaining stats to ensure that this reinforced the consequences and the learning e.g. if you score poorly on the 4th and 5th set of 3 holes you might look at hydration, calorie intake etc. If you start poorly is this too much practice/not enough before you start.
Finally he gave very lucid examples of the way in which emotions are important in the way we store memories and the importance of celebrating the good shots and having an even temper towards poor shots if the aim is to stand over the next shot with a memory bank of great feelings towards the next shot.
In all there were between 80 and 100 people there and I think everyone would have got something out of the discussion. Karl is an engaging speaker with a great pedigree and I thought that he used examples from the game without doing the "my mate GMac" bit and mentioned useful contributions from other experts in the field like Bob Rotella without appearing to have swallowed the psychologists manual. All in all he was an entertaining, sensible good bloke putting across a number of ideas which he freely admitted some of us may have heard before but by my reckoning everyone would have got something out of.
My own club has previously held a similar session so it is no doubt affordable, if this sort of number of people are interested and I would recommend it to even the most discerning forumer.
