Standing on the fifth tee and not sure of his way around, Vijay Singh turned to his caddie for directions. After pointing out the way forward, the caddie started to ply him with additional information like the boundary wall on the left and the rough on the other side. Vijay cut him short. “All I want to know is where to hit it, not where I shouldn’t be hitting it,” said the Fijian. This is a peek into the thinking of a man who was on the top of his trade when he turned up at the DLF Golf and Country Club in Gurgaon some years ago for the BILT Skins event.
Follow through: Jeev Milkha Singh. By David Cannon/Getty Images
Our own Singh had a great year in 2008, winning in Austria, Singapore and Japan. Jeev Milkha Singh was striking the ball like a world-class golfer but there was more to it. Jeev spoke about an interesting line of thought that had taken his fancy after a practice round at the Augusta National Golf Club. It was all about sticking to your routine as you go about advancing the golf ball through the maze, and giving no thought to the final outcome. In fact, if you were in with a chance to clinch the big prize, you would say, “Hogwosh, I don’t care,” and just go about your business as cool as an icicle. You would shun the urge to win and if you managed to do that successfully, chances were that you would actually find yourself to be the last man standing. Jeev called it “reverse psychology”. Complicated, but it worked for him.
So, working up a sweat, smashing golf balls on the practice range is not enough. Success depends on the ability to deal with situations, more so when you find yourself in a position to bag the silver. Getting ahead of yourself can prove fatal. Calling the Ferrari dealer before you have the cheque in the pocket is a no-no. The problem with golf is that unlike football, hockey, tennis or cricket where you react to a projectile headed in your direction, here the ball is sitting there, waiting to be hit. You have to put it in motion, impart the correct amount of speed and propel it in the right direction. When you have time to do all of this, it is not necessarily a good thing because it gives the mind room to create mischief.
“You can call it what you want but Jeev is right. The idea is not to waver from your process and routine. In that way, golf and shooting are similar. You zero in on your target and press the trigger. Nothing else should matter,” says Tarun Jain, a Gurgaon-based mental game coach who counts Chiragh Kumar, No. 1 on the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI) in 2011, among his pupils. As for the Vijay Singh episode, explains Jain, he doesn’t want any negative feedback that could instil fear. Good thinking there.
“The guys who come to me are looking for results but they don’t know how to get there. So I’ve developed a software where I look at an individual’s scores and various other stats and figure out what areas to work on,” he says. Of course, there are different personalities as a result of differences in upbringing, learning and environment, so that needs to be taken into account as well. “It’s a school of life.”
There’s more. Jain, 42, says reality is all about logic, structure and, finally, flow. “Most people have these three components in the wrong sequence or one odd of them missing.” Apparently, Punjabis have better structure so they are aggressive off the tee, while those who come from the southern part of the country are endowed with logic which makes them good around the greens. Imagine the untapped talent pool in Madhya Pradesh. Hang on, Mukesh Kumar, one of the country’s most prolific winners, is from Mhow. There you go!
Actually, Delhi is not doing too badly either. Take Chiragh Kumar, 29, who turned pro in 2006 after winning the team silver at the Doha Asian Games. A handful of “frustrating years” later, he scored his first win at the PGTI Players Championship in Golden Greens (Gurgaon) in 2010, piping Mukesh to the post. It’s been a turbo-charged ride to the top thereafter. “I started playing better golf, and consistently. What also helped was that I peaked at the right time so I had 10 top-10 finishes in 2011 and won a big event with the BILT Open,” he says.
After a short stint in 2008, Chiragh has been working with Jain, who’s played a few years of pro golf himself with mixed results (“too much logic”), since 2010. “I went to him with an open mind and I feel I’m getting to know myself better. You do get upset when you are down and out and as you play more, you learn to deal with it. We are human, after all.
“Most of us can make 5ft putts. The (mental) ability to be able to do it time and again when you have to make that putt to win marks out the champions.” Chiragh will be fighting to suppress the human elements as he takes on the Asian Tour this year.
Prabhdev Singh is the founding editor of Golf Digest India and a part-time golfer.
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