On Monday morning Louis Oosthuizen attended his final media briefing of the 2010 Open Championship. One of the questions was: “What exactly are you doing when you look down before each swing? Is it some sort of mental discipline?”
He replied: “Yes, I’ve got the ability to get away from the game when I play, especially when we’re playing slow or things like that. I think of all kinds of things. And it’s hard for me to then get back into the moment. I’ve got a little red dot on my glove. Whenever I look down and look at it, I know exactly, what’s my trigger, focus, forget about everything, just focus, hit the shot now. I mean, it worked great the whole week.”
Last week, as well, I hit it — I didn’t make the cut there, but it worked good. Every shot I hit, I was up for it. The last thing I wanted to do was hit a shot and then walking up and thinking, “What were you thinking?” things like that. To get the thinking errors out of the game was a big thing.
Karl Morris, Mind Factor Coach, explains: “Louis Oosthuizen was the deserved 2010 Open Champion at St Andrews. It was probably one of the most amazing examples of mental toughness in sport, let alone golf.
“Peter Alliss made the remark on commentary how Louis appeared to look at a big red dot on his glove before EACH shot and then go into a trance-like state! Well, he did!!
“About a month before the Open, I was called up by Chubby Chandler at ISM to work with Louis on his concentration and MIND FACTOR. We sat down for the first time in Manchester and talked. It was clear his routine was all over the place. He had all of the pieces he needed but in completely the wrong order.
“Most golfers just do NOT understand how important and how vital it is that you get your routine right. You need to know HOW to put the pieces together. Concentration is one of THE most misunderstood aspects of golf and life!
“Nobody ‘loses’ their concentration they just allow themselves to put it in the wrong place.
“One of the difficulties about golf is there are no outside agents which help you focus your concentration as for instance football, where the referees whistle will trigger the mind to focus on the game. In golf, it is essential you create your own ‘concentration trigger’.
“With Louis, the ‘RED DOT’ became his trigger point to go into a deep zen like, almost hypnotic state. In five hours, you need to be able to ‘switch on’ and ‘switch off’ to be able to maintain your focus at the RIGHT time.
• “Did you notice how Louis actively seemed to be smiling and enjoying himself? This was a specific step we discussed. The RED DOT became the focus point to play the shot and then he would ‘come out’ of that trance in between shots.
• “Do you think knowing HOW to concentrate and HOW to build a robust routine might just help YOU?
“All of the SECRETS to the kind of routines that Louis worked on are in the CD programme ‘The SECRET to CONSISTENT GOLF with the 7 Rituals of success’.”
For further information on Mind Factor products and services or to contact Karl Morris visit: www.golf-brain.com