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Glenn Kessler,
Ph.D. helps golfers, other athletes find joy in the game
(June 2008
Issue)
The grass is green, flowers have bloomed and here in New England,
it's finally time to head back outside and play. The call of the
"wild" affects all ages. You can hear it everywhere you go: the
cries of children on the playgrounds mingled with the cries of grown
men (and women) on the golf course. Of course, the cries from the
golf course are not always ones of joy, as any golfer can attest.
Frustration is a part of the game - from youth sports up to an
adult round of golf, players kick the dirt and mutter to themselves
after a missed shot. It's enough to wonder why we return.
For anyone who has consoled a child after a bad game or known someone
who has found themselves wanting to pitch the golf clubs into the
frog pond, Glenn Kessler, Ph.D., has the answer. A clinical psychologist
and executive director of Kessler Psychological Associates in Northboro,
Mass., Kessler is also the director of Next Level Performance, where
he provides sports psychology counseling for athletes. Last Summer,
Kessler published a book on the subject that is sure to make a big
hit come Father' Day, "Why Bad Golf Happens To Good People!: It's
Your Brain Not Your Game!."
New England Psychologist's Catherine Robertson Souter caught
up with him just before he headed out to play 18 holes at Torrey
Pines, the site of the U.S. Open in June, to talk about his new
book and the work he is doing with children's sports.
Q: Do you see adults or children golfers as part of your sports
psychology practice?
A: Well, it's a combination of adults and high school athletes.
Primarily the adults are looking to improve their golf game. It
comes down to ego, to winning a two dollar Nassau, a form of golf
game.
Q: And the high school athletes? Why do they see you?
A: To help them improve their performance but not just in golf.
I'm currently working with a track star and several tennis players.
I've worked with hockey and baseball players.
Q: Do you work much with high school or younger kids where the
pressure of sports is an issue? Where it's not just about improving
performance but backing off of needing to improve performance?
A: My theory is always that if you're having fun doing what you're
doing, you're going to perform better. With any athlete, I work
to help them learn to enjoy themselves. I had a high school basketball
player who said he gets upset when he takes a shot that doesn't
go in. I gave him an assignment to look up NBA statistics and he
came back a week later, smiled at me and said, no one has ever shot
100%. I said go out and have fun, you'll play better instead of
putting that kind of pressure on yourself.
Q: What about taking this training to younger kids?
A: I am involved in a project with a pro at a local golf club in
Concord, Mass. He has a junior golf program and wants to integrate
the mental component to teach kids ages nine-17. He and I are going
to run a pilot program and put together a manual so that anyone
can pick up the book and teach his kid how to play golf, including
the mental piece.
Q: Sounds like a good manual for volunteer youth sport
coaches, especially because there often isn't much training done
for soccer, baseball and pee wee football coaches.
A: Of the coaches I've come across, some are great and others are
living vicariously through their teams. They are falling back on
the coaching styles that they grew up with. I walk my dog around
the middle school near where I live and during football season,
I listen to the coaches screaming at these six-year-olds. I want
to walk around and hand out my business card.
Q: Maybe hand out copies of the new manual once it's ready.
In the meantime, tell us about the golf book that you wrote.
A: I took up golf 18 years ago with a friend of mine who's a psychiatrist.
Everyone told us it was a real mental game and he and I would joke
all the time that it wouldn't be a problem for us. I must have been
10 years into playing golf when I finally said, 'oh gosh, was I
wrong.' So, three or four years ago, I decided to undertake this
project. I read everything I could find on golf psychology as well
as sports psychology and sat down to synthesize everything I had
learned and what my experiences were and put it down on paper.
I started to write it as a narrative and Kirk Hanefeld, the PGA
Champions golfer who did the forward for the book, said no one is
going to read this, it's too much for people to absorb. They want
to be able to look at something and get what they need and put it
down. That's when I came up with the idea of taking a question and
answer approach. I also di-vided the book up by holes instead of
chapters. For instance, the second hole is mental skills. So, one
question is, "What mental skills will help your golf game?" Then
I review briefly what all the mental skills are. "How does one become
mentally tough?" Then a couple of paragraphs to explain what mentally
tough is. Throughout the book, there are exer-cises that one can
do both on and off the course, relaxation and imagery exercises.
Q: And the mental skills you are teaching can be applied off
the field too.
A: Absolutely. Sports psychology is really performance enhancement.
I did a workshop at a country club and a cardiac surgeon came up
to me and said he never realized that he uses the pre-shot routine
prior to surgery.
Q: A 'pre-shot routine?'
A: Remember Nomar Garciaparra, played for the Red Sox? He did his
little thing with his gloves? That was his pre-hit or pre-performance
routine. It's a way of cuing your mind and body to function without
thinking. The cardiac surgeon said that he never realized it before
but he goes through the same routine before going into surgery -
to get into the mindset, to go in and do what he needs to do. It's
a focusing technique.
Q: Why is this important?
A: If someone is out there to play competitively it is important
because it's their livelihood. For the average golfer, there are
two reasons - one is that they will play better if they can get
their mind around the game. In golf, 95% of mechanical errors start
with a mental error. But more importantly, people who are playing
golf on an amateur level are playing for enjoyment and fun and they
will enjoy their game much more. I was at a club for an hour and
a half observing people as they came in, listening to their comments.
I don't think anybody came in smiling. They were all focused on
the negatives. And how much fun do you have if you walk away and
all you focus on is what you did poorly?
Q: So, why do they come back? Why don't they all throw their
clubs in the lake?
A: Of course, there are those people who throw their clubs in the
water but golf is a game of intermittent reinforcement. I use the
analogy of a guy who goes to the race track, loses fourteen races
but wins the fifteenth. What does he remember? The fifteenth race.
So, they may complain but they remember one great shot and start
to think, 'so maybe if I had sunk that putt, I would have won that
$2 Nassau. I'm going to come back tomor-row and see if I can do
it.' That's why they come back for more.
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