SPORT

Jack Nicklaus said 90% of the game of golf is mental. And one only has to watch the PGA tour each week, where 125 of the world’s finest golfers tee off, to realise this.

If you analyse the knowledge and skill each of the players possess and displays, the difference between the top 10 and the bottom 10 players is not great. They all swing the club well – or else they wouldn’t be where they are today – but it is that extra something that gives the top players that added edge.

And increasingly players are realising this. While the game of golf has a proliferation of training aids to improve your swing and putting stroke, the aids to help your mental game are becoming just as popular - if not more so.

Google “golf swing training” and you’ll get 690,000 hits. Google “golf mental training” and you’ll get a third more hits. In fact “golf psychology” will net you around 1.2 million hits. The point here is the mental side of golf in now big business. There are enough books, CDs and mental measurements to sink a battleship!

Many of the books on mental golf revolve around the four “Cs” of sports psychology: control, concentration, commitment and confidence. While they make a good read, these books cannot make you understand how strong or weak you are in any of these areas.

If golf is 90% mental it makes sense to measure our mental abilities (as they relate to golf) in these areas first. Over the past few years sports psychologists have developed mental measurements to help individuals understand their personality and behaviours, and how they can adjust, or build in, coping mechanisms to improve their on-course performance.

As an organisational psychologist, I have often thought how easily we could adapt the results of assessments we use in the business arena for employee selection and development to golf. Bugger! Someone has beaten me to it and they have done a great job.

Bobby Foster, formerly a teaching professional and golf coach at the University of South Carolina, has adapted the DISC Behavioural Style Model to the game of golf. He wanted to build a profile system to give golfers a framework for understanding the "whats and whys" of their mental golf traits, and the DISC-based golf profile does just that. He also wanted to provide improvement ideas tailored to each person's individual golfing personality and deliver ideas they could implement right away.

As Foster explains, "Far too often, golfers improve their ball striking and short game abilities by practicing and working with instructors, but these improvements don't carry over to the golf course. Most players realise this problem is ‘in their heads’, but they don't really know where to start in improving their mental games. Our profile puts golfers ‘inside their own heads’ and they gain a clearer understanding of what really goes on in their golfing minds.”

Touring professionals work with sports psychologists and coaches on the mental aspects of their games, but most of us weekend hackers don't have those opportunities. Foster’s profile enables golfers to coach themselves and also equips golf instructors to better understand the minds and learning styles of each student. It takes about 15 minutes to answer 17 multiple-choice questions on the online questionnaire. Your personalised profile will detail your mental tendencies in these five key areas of the game: