Introduction
Three main things make golf a mental challenge (Moran, 2012): Because golf is challenging, it takes at least five hours to complete a round or match. Unfortunately, many club-level and informal golfers need to rise to this challenge. Instead, they let themselves get annoyed by people ahead of them who seemed to be moving slowly. When golfers are frustrated, they usually play worse.
Also, golf is challenging on the brain because each player has to be in charge of their own game. Golfers cannot be replaced if they don’t do well, which is possible in team sports like soccer or hockey. Third, the fact that golf is a “stop-start” is a big distraction. It means golfers have little time to hit the ball. The rest of the time they spend doing things that don’t matter, like walking, talking, looking for balls, wishing they had done something differently, feeling regret, anger, frustration, or having trouble focusing.
Background Information
David is a 23-year-old amateur golfer who plays on an international level. He has a “plus-two” handicap and is considering becoming a professional golfer. He has been on the men’s senior elite golf team for the past three years but has yet to win a major tournament. Still, he has been a “runner-up” in these events four times. At first, the fact that he had not won a tournament did not bother him, and he could comfort himself with the idea that he would win one soon. In the last six months, though, he has started to wonder why he always seems “second best.” Because of this worry, he gets very nervous about “closing out” games against opponents in match play and playing the last few holes in stroke play. David sometimes gets so nervous that he can almost feel the club shaking when he chips onto the green or lines up a putt. Even though he tells himself there is nothing to worry about, he still wonders if he is mentally strong enough to play professionally. He knows a lot about the psychology of sports and wonders if he has the “yips.”
Description of the Case
David contacted me because he could not win a major tournament in three years. Naturally, David was struggling with his self-confidence when we first made contact. He felt he had put much time and effort into training and practise but had seen little to no results. He also complained about his declining ability to focus for extended periods during drills and warm-ups. Consequently, he frequently doubted his ability to win tournaments.
Theoretical Framework
Awareness and agency are the cornerstones of successful sport psychology consultation (Hemmings & Holder, 2009). That is the fundamental idea driving our consultancy. This strategy is composed of three parts. The first distinguishing feature of our approach is that it is athlete-centric in its approach to intervention. As a second point, it is founded on the Boulder Science-Practice Model, which is used in various contexts, including clinical psychology (Comas-Diaz, 2006). Through the Scientist-Practitioner Model, psychologists can use findings from empirical studies to inform their clinical work while also incorporating insights from their clinical work into future research.
That is why it is essential to do both: research can help shape best practices, and excellent practices can help shape new studies. Finally, the high-performance environment informs a pragmatic approach to applied practice. By understanding the complexities of the high-performance environment, the role of organizational culture in sports and the needs of athletes and coaches for long-term support have been illuminated by experiences at the Olympic Games, national championships, and as advisors to professional and elite amateur teams. (Fletcher & Hanton, 2012)
With an athlete-centered approach, the consultant’s job isn’t just to teach mental skills; it’s also to help the client become more independent by giving them a toolkit of mental skills and teaching them when and how to use it. In my opinion, the key to a successful session is helping the client become more self-sufficient as time progresses (Campbell & Moran, 2014). In terms of theory, this procedure is based on studies of self-confidence and metacognition (Brick, MacIntyre, & Campbell, 2015). Self-confidence and metacognition are, at their most basic, an athlete’s knowledge of and control over how they think (Kitsantas & Kavussanu, 2011).
During a marathon, for example, when a runner starts to feel tired, he or she may consciously focus on his or her breathing. In short, I used a theory-led, evidence-based practise paradigm along with practice-based evidence when it was needed.
Needs Assessment
Through these initial three meetings, I aimed to gain David’s trust. I used this foundation of trust to probe his background in professional competition. That understanding mainly focused on the athlete’s mental approach to the game. Moreover, that is on top of in-depth interviews with athletes to determine their specific requirements, objectives, and areas of expertise. At the beginning of my time working with David, I employed the Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS; Thomas, Murphy, & Hardy, 1999). The TOPS is an 8-scaled self-report questionnaire that measures many cognitive abilities and processes relevant to training and competition.
David’s TOPS results showed that he struggled with maintaining focus, negative thinking, and emotional regulation.
Due to these first results, I was eager to investigate David’s current training and practise methods. As a sport psychologist focusing on golfers, the topic of training and practice’s impact on performance fascinates me. From what I have seen, even the most accomplished golfers often need to put in the time and effort necessary to improve their game through practice, and this can hurt them in two ways. To begin, a golfer may not acquire the abilities necessary for competition success through inefficient practice. Second, the best practise should help the golfer increase their self-assurance, emotional stability, and ability to regulate their learning and performance. On the other hand, David came across as “less assured.” However, I thought David needed more time to track his development, analyze his backlash, and reinforce his learning.
David’s self-evaluation places him below average in a few areas.
Intervention
There were two primary goals for the intervention. In accordance with our guiding principle, the aim was to help David achieve a higher level of meta-cognitive awareness. He could gain confidence in himself and have more satisfying emotional experiences by broadening his awareness.
Second, I wanted to give him the tools to sharpen his mind so he could play better golf by focusing better and expanding his mind with the right kind of self-confidence while out on the course. David’s interviews revealed a man obsessed with results who has a minimal definition of success. He had a very narrow concentration while evaluating his performance in practise or competition, focusing on exact results or particular golf swings. As we talked, it became clear that he had no idea how to measure success in any other way. In addition, David said he became impatient and furious whenever his performance dipped, both in practise and in competition, and that this trend had intensified over the past three years. One of the intervention sessions focused on goal setting and strengthening David’s knowledge and ability to guarantee that he can more successfully monitor his performances, his practice, and his confidence levels considering some of this information and talks.
Following his golf sessions, David has begun keeping a diary. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that all David did was keep track of his putts made per round along with his fairway and greens in regulation totals. That is precisely how he feels after that. It would be helpful if David kept a more detailed golf diary that included statistics and additional observations about his games. There was a strong emphasis on David keeping track of his round’s successes in terms of nice shots (and also shots that did not work out). The point was for him to give himself more time to reflect on the positive aspects of his round. This golf diary was meant to document an overall shift toward a more methodical approach to rating play. Example: He was advised to keep track of details about each time he went to practice. In this section, he might discuss his practise sessions, such as what he worked on and for how long, and his overall thoughts on how practical each session was.
This methodical plan helped David keeps track of his progress and figure out where he was strong and where he was weak. As part of this data collection process, he was encouraged to focus on his pre-performance process, its significance, and how it might help him focus and control his emotions. As David analysed his habits (particularly his pre-shot ritual), he discovered that he could modify them to suit the varying demands of the tasks he faced throughout a tournament. This was a significant shift from his previous focus on the outcome of his performances, which he categorized as either a bad round or a good round. His enhanced awareness of goal attainment due to the interventions strengthened and supported his process orientation.
References
Brick, N., MacIntyre, T. & Campbell, M. (2015). Metacognitive processes in the self-regulation of performance in elite endurance runners. Psychology of Sport & Exercise doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.02.003
Campbell, M. & Moran, A. (2014). The practice of applied sport, exercise and performance
Comas-Diaz, C. (2006). The present and future of clinical psychology in private practice. Clinical Psychology: Science & Practice. 13, 273-277.
Hemmings, B., & Holder, T. (2009). Applied sport psychology: A case-based approach.
Kitsantas, A. & Kavussanu, M. (2011). Acquisition of sport knowledge and skill: the role of self-regulatory processes. In B.J. Zimmerman & D.H. Schunk, D.H. (Eds.). Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance. Routledge; London
Moran, A. (2012). Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction (2nd ed). London:
psychology: Irish and international perspectives. In G. Cremades & L. Tashman (Eds.) Becoming a sport, exercise and performance psychology professional: a global perspective (pp. 186-192). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Pres Routledge.
Thomas, P.R., Murphy S.M., & Hardy, L. (1999) Test of Performances Strategies: Development and preliminary validation of a comprehensive measure of athletes’ psychological skills. Journal of Sport Sciences, 17, 697-711 Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.
Introduction
Three main things make golf a mental challenge (Moran, 2012): Because golf is challenging, it takes at least five hours to complete a round or match. Unfortunately, many club-level and informal golfers need to rise to this challenge. Instead, they let themselves get annoyed by people ahead of them who seemed to be moving slowly. When golfers are frustrated, they usually play worse.
Also, golf is challenging on the brain because each player has to be in charge of their own game. Golfers cannot be replaced if they don’t do well, which is possible in team sports like soccer or hockey. Third, the fact that golf is a “stop-start” is a big distraction. It means golfers have little time to hit the ball. The rest of the time they spend doing things that don’t matter, like walking, talking, looking for balls, wishing they had done something differently, feeling regret, anger, frustration, or having trouble focusing.
Background Information
David is a 23-year-old amateur golfer who plays on an international level. He has a “plus-two” handicap and is considering becoming a professional golfer. He has been on the men’s senior elite golf team for the past three years but has yet to win a major tournament. Still, he has been a “runner-up” in these events four times. At first, the fact that he had not won a tournament did not bother him, and he could comfort himself with the idea that he would win one soon. In the last six months, though, he has started to wonder why he always seems “second best.” Because of this worry, he gets very nervous about “closing out” games against opponents in match play and playing the last few holes in stroke play. David sometimes gets so nervous that he can almost feel the club shaking when he chips onto the green or lines up a putt. Even though he tells himself there is nothing to worry about, he still wonders if he is mentally strong enough to play professionally. He knows a lot about the psychology of sports and wonders if he has the “yips.”
Description of the Case
David contacted me because he could not win a major tournament in three years. Naturally, David was struggling with his self-confidence when we first made contact. He felt he had put much time and effort into training and practise but had seen little to no results. He also complained about his declining ability to focus for extended periods during drills and warm-ups. Consequently, he frequently doubted his ability to win tournaments.
Theoretical Framework
Awareness and agency are the cornerstones of successful sport psychology consultation (Hemmings & Holder, 2009). That is the fundamental idea driving our consultancy. This strategy is composed of three parts. The first distinguishing feature of our approach is that it is athlete-centric in its approach to intervention. As a second point, it is founded on the Boulder Science-Practice Model, which is used in various contexts, including clinical psychology (Comas-Diaz, 2006). Through the Scientist-Practitioner Model, psychologists can use findings from empirical studies to inform their clinical work while also incorporating insights from their clinical work into future research.
That is why it is essential to do both: research can help shape best practices, and excellent practices can help shape new studies. Finally, the high-performance environment informs a pragmatic approach to applied practice. By understanding the complexities of the high-performance environment, the role of organizational culture in sports and the needs of athletes and coaches for long-term support have been illuminated by experiences at the Olympic Games, national championships, and as advisors to professional and elite amateur teams. (Fletcher & Hanton, 2012)
With an athlete-centered approach, the consultant’s job isn’t just to teach mental skills; it’s also to help the client become more independent by giving them a toolkit of mental skills and teaching them when and how to use it. In my opinion, the key to a successful session is helping the client become more self-sufficient as time progresses (Campbell & Moran, 2014). In terms of theory, this procedure is based on studies of self-confidence and metacognition (Brick, MacIntyre, & Campbell, 2015). Self-confidence and metacognition are, at their most basic, an athlete’s knowledge of and control over how they think (Kitsantas & Kavussanu, 2011).
During a marathon, for example, when a runner starts to feel tired, he or she may consciously focus on his or her breathing. In short, I used a theory-led, evidence-based practise paradigm along with practice-based evidence when it was needed.
Needs Assessment
Through these initial three meetings, I aimed to gain David’s trust. I used this foundation of trust to probe his background in professional competition. That understanding mainly focused on the athlete’s mental approach to the game. Moreover, that is on top of in-depth interviews with athletes to determine their specific requirements, objectives, and areas of expertise. At the beginning of my time working with David, I employed the Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS; Thomas, Murphy, & Hardy, 1999). The TOPS is an 8-scaled self-report questionnaire that measures many cognitive abilities and processes relevant to training and competition.
David’s TOPS results showed that he struggled with maintaining focus, negative thinking, and emotional regulation.
Due to these first results, I was eager to investigate David’s current training and practise methods. As a sport psychologist focusing on golfers, the topic of training and practice’s impact on performance fascinates me. From what I have seen, even the most accomplished golfers often need to put in the time and effort necessary to improve their game through practice, and this can hurt them in two ways. To begin, a golfer may not acquire the abilities necessary for competition success through inefficient practice. Second, the best practise should help the golfer increase their self-assurance, emotional stability, and ability to regulate their learning and performance. On the other hand, David came across as “less assured.” However, I thought David needed more time to track his development, analyze his backlash, and reinforce his learning.
David’s self-evaluation places him below average in a few areas.
Intervention
There were two primary goals for the intervention. In accordance with our guiding principle, the aim was to help David achieve a higher level of meta-cognitive awareness. He could gain confidence in himself and have more satisfying emotional experiences by broadening his awareness.
Second, I wanted to give him the tools to sharpen his mind so he could play better golf by focusing better and expanding his mind with the right kind of self-confidence while out on the course. David’s interviews revealed a man obsessed with results who has a minimal definition of success. He had a very narrow concentration while evaluating his performance in practise or competition, focusing on exact results or particular golf swings. As we talked, it became clear that he had no idea how to measure success in any other way. In addition, David said he became impatient and furious whenever his performance dipped, both in practise and in competition, and that this trend had intensified over the past three years. One of the intervention sessions focused on goal setting and strengthening David’s knowledge and ability to guarantee that he can more successfully monitor his performances, his practice, and his confidence levels considering some of this information and talks.
Following his golf sessions, David has begun keeping a diary. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that all David did was keep track of his putts made per round along with his fairway and greens in regulation totals. That is precisely how he feels after that. It would be helpful if David kept a more detailed golf diary that included statistics and additional observations about his games. There was a strong emphasis on David keeping track of his round’s successes in terms of nice shots (and also shots that did not work out). The point was for him to give himself more time to reflect on the positive aspects of his round. This golf diary was meant to document an overall shift toward a more methodical approach to rating play. Example: He was advised to keep track of details about each time he went to practice. In this section, he might discuss his practise sessions, such as what he worked on and for how long, and his overall thoughts on how practical each session was.
This methodical plan helped David keeps track of his progress and figure out where he was strong and where he was weak. As part of this data collection process, he was encouraged to focus on his pre-performance process, its significance, and how it might help him focus and control his emotions. As David analysed his habits (particularly his pre-shot ritual), he discovered that he could modify them to suit the varying demands of the tasks he faced throughout a tournament. This was a significant shift from his previous focus on the outcome of his performances, which he categorized as either a bad round or a good round. His enhanced awareness of goal attainment due to the interventions strengthened and supported his process orientation.
References
Brick, N., MacIntyre, T. & Campbell, M. (2015). Metacognitive processes in the self-regulation of performance in elite endurance runners. Psychology of Sport & Exercise doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.02.003
Campbell, M. & Moran, A. (2014). The practice of applied sport, exercise and performance
Comas-Diaz, C. (2006). The present and future of clinical psychology in private practice. Clinical Psychology: Science & Practice. 13, 273-277.
Hemmings, B., & Holder, T. (2009). Applied sport psychology: A case-based approach.
Kitsantas, A. & Kavussanu, M. (2011). Acquisition of sport knowledge and skill: the role of self-regulatory processes. In B.J. Zimmerman & D.H. Schunk, D.H. (Eds.). Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance. Routledge; London
Moran, A. (2012). Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction (2nd ed). London:
psychology: Irish and international perspectives. In G. Cremades & L. Tashman (Eds.) Becoming a sport, exercise and performance psychology professional: a global perspective (pp. 186-192). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Pres Routledge.
Thomas, P.R., Murphy S.M., & Hardy, L. (1999) Test of Performances Strategies: Development and preliminary validation of a comprehensive measure of athletes’ psychological skills. Journal of Sport Sciences, 17, 697-711 Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.
Introduction
Three main things make golf a mental challenge (Moran, 2012): Because golf is challenging, it takes at least five hours to complete a round or match. Unfortunately, many club-level and informal golfers need to rise to this challenge. Instead, they let themselves get annoyed by people ahead of them who seemed to be moving slowly. When golfers are frustrated, they usually play worse.
Also, golf is challenging on the brain because each player has to be in charge of their own game. Golfers cannot be replaced if they don’t do well, which is possible in team sports like soccer or hockey. Third, the fact that golf is a “stop-start” is a big distraction. It means golfers have little time to hit the ball. The rest of the time they spend doing things that don’t matter, like walking, talking, looking for balls, wishing they had done something differently, feeling regret, anger, frustration, or having trouble focusing.
Background Information
David is a 23-year-old amateur golfer who plays on an international level. He has a “plus-two” handicap and is considering becoming a professional golfer. He has been on the men’s senior elite golf team for the past three years but has yet to win a major tournament. Still, he has been a “runner-up” in these events four times. At first, the fact that he had not won a tournament did not bother him, and he could comfort himself with the idea that he would win one soon. In the last six months, though, he has started to wonder why he always seems “second best.” Because of this worry, he gets very nervous about “closing out” games against opponents in match play and playing the last few holes in stroke play. David sometimes gets so nervous that he can almost feel the club shaking when he chips onto the green or lines up a putt. Even though he tells himself there is nothing to worry about, he still wonders if he is mentally strong enough to play professionally. He knows a lot about the psychology of sports and wonders if he has the “yips.”
Description of the Case
David contacted me because he could not win a major tournament in three years. Naturally, David was struggling with his self-confidence when we first made contact. He felt he had put much time and effort into training and practise but had seen little to no results. He also complained about his declining ability to focus for extended periods during drills and warm-ups. Consequently, he frequently doubted his ability to win tournaments.
Theoretical Framework
Awareness and agency are the cornerstones of successful sport psychology consultation (Hemmings & Holder, 2009). That is the fundamental idea driving our consultancy. This strategy is composed of three parts. The first distinguishing feature of our approach is that it is athlete-centric in its approach to intervention. As a second point, it is founded on the Boulder Science-Practice Model, which is used in various contexts, including clinical psychology (Comas-Diaz, 2006). Through the Scientist-Practitioner Model, psychologists can use findings from empirical studies to inform their clinical work while also incorporating insights from their clinical work into future research.
That is why it is essential to do both: research can help shape best practices, and excellent practices can help shape new studies. Finally, the high-performance environment informs a pragmatic approach to applied practice. By understanding the complexities of the high-performance environment, the role of organizational culture in sports and the needs of athletes and coaches for long-term support have been illuminated by experiences at the Olympic Games, national championships, and as advisors to professional and elite amateur teams. (Fletcher & Hanton, 2012)
With an athlete-centered approach, the consultant’s job isn’t just to teach mental skills; it’s also to help the client become more independent by giving them a toolkit of mental skills and teaching them when and how to use it. In my opinion, the key to a successful session is helping the client become more self-sufficient as time progresses (Campbell & Moran, 2014). In terms of theory, this procedure is based on studies of self-confidence and metacognition (Brick, MacIntyre, & Campbell, 2015). Self-confidence and metacognition are, at their most basic, an athlete’s knowledge of and control over how they think (Kitsantas & Kavussanu, 2011).
During a marathon, for example, when a runner starts to feel tired, he or she may consciously focus on his or her breathing. In short, I used a theory-led, evidence-based practise paradigm along with practice-based evidence when it was needed.
Needs Assessment
Through these initial three meetings, I aimed to gain David’s trust. I used this foundation of trust to probe his background in professional competition. That understanding mainly focused on the athlete’s mental approach to the game. Moreover, that is on top of in-depth interviews with athletes to determine their specific requirements, objectives, and areas of expertise. At the beginning of my time working with David, I employed the Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS; Thomas, Murphy, & Hardy, 1999). The TOPS is an 8-scaled self-report questionnaire that measures many cognitive abilities and processes relevant to training and competition.
David’s TOPS results showed that he struggled with maintaining focus, negative thinking, and emotional regulation.
Due to these first results, I was eager to investigate David’s current training and practise methods. As a sport psychologist focusing on golfers, the topic of training and practice’s impact on performance fascinates me. From what I have seen, even the most accomplished golfers often need to put in the time and effort necessary to improve their game through practice, and this can hurt them in two ways. To begin, a golfer may not acquire the abilities necessary for competition success through inefficient practice. Second, the best practise should help the golfer increase their self-assurance, emotional stability, and ability to regulate their learning and performance. On the other hand, David came across as “less assured.” However, I thought David needed more time to track his development, analyze his backlash, and reinforce his learning.
David’s self-evaluation places him below average in a few areas.
Intervention
There were two primary goals for the intervention. In accordance with our guiding principle, the aim was to help David achieve a higher level of meta-cognitive awareness. He could gain confidence in himself and have more satisfying emotional experiences by broadening his awareness.
Second, I wanted to give him the tools to sharpen his mind so he could play better golf by focusing better and expanding his mind with the right kind of self-confidence while out on the course. David’s interviews revealed a man obsessed with results who has a minimal definition of success. He had a very narrow concentration while evaluating his performance in practise or competition, focusing on exact results or particular golf swings. As we talked, it became clear that he had no idea how to measure success in any other way. In addition, David said he became impatient and furious whenever his performance dipped, both in practise and in competition, and that this trend had intensified over the past three years. One of the intervention sessions focused on goal setting and strengthening David’s knowledge and ability to guarantee that he can more successfully monitor his performances, his practice, and his confidence levels considering some of this information and talks.
Following his golf sessions, David has begun keeping a diary. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that all David did was keep track of his putts made per round along with his fairway and greens in regulation totals. That is precisely how he feels after that. It would be helpful if David kept a more detailed golf diary that included statistics and additional observations about his games. There was a strong emphasis on David keeping track of his round’s successes in terms of nice shots (and also shots that did not work out). The point was for him to give himself more time to reflect on the positive aspects of his round. This golf diary was meant to document an overall shift toward a more methodical approach to rating play. Example: He was advised to keep track of details about each time he went to practice. In this section, he might discuss his practise sessions, such as what he worked on and for how long, and his overall thoughts on how practical each session was.
This methodical plan helped David keeps track of his progress and figure out where he was strong and where he was weak. As part of this data collection process, he was encouraged to focus on his pre-performance process, its significance, and how it might help him focus and control his emotions. As David analysed his habits (particularly his pre-shot ritual), he discovered that he could modify them to suit the varying demands of the tasks he faced throughout a tournament. This was a significant shift from his previous focus on the outcome of his performances, which he categorized as either a bad round or a good round. His enhanced awareness of goal attainment due to the interventions strengthened and supported his process orientation.
References
Brick, N., MacIntyre, T. & Campbell, M. (2015). Metacognitive processes in the self-regulation of performance in elite endurance runners. Psychology of Sport & Exercise doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.02.003
Campbell, M. & Moran, A. (2014). The practice of applied sport, exercise and performance
Comas-Diaz, C. (2006). The present and future of clinical psychology in private practice. Clinical Psychology: Science & Practice. 13, 273-277.
Hemmings, B., & Holder, T. (2009). Applied sport psychology: A case-based approach.
Kitsantas, A. & Kavussanu, M. (2011). Acquisition of sport knowledge and skill: the role of self-regulatory processes. In B.J. Zimmerman & D.H. Schunk, D.H. (Eds.). Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance. Routledge; London
Moran, A. (2012). Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction (2nd ed). London:
psychology: Irish and international perspectives. In G. Cremades & L. Tashman (Eds.) Becoming a sport, exercise and performance psychology professional: a global perspective (pp. 186-192). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Pres Routledge.
Thomas, P.R., Murphy S.M., & Hardy, L. (1999) Test of Performances Strategies: Development and preliminary validation of a comprehensive measure of athletes’ psychological skills. Journal of Sport Sciences, 17, 697-711 Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.
Introduction
Three main things make golf a mental challenge (Moran, 2012): Because golf is challenging, it takes at least five hours to complete a round or match. Unfortunately, many club-level and informal golfers need to rise to this challenge. Instead, they let themselves get annoyed by people ahead of them who seemed to be moving slowly. When golfers are frustrated, they usually play worse.
Also, golf is challenging on the brain because each player has to be in charge of their own game. Golfers cannot be replaced if they don’t do well, which is possible in team sports like soccer or hockey. Third, the fact that golf is a “stop-start” is a big distraction. It means golfers have little time to hit the ball. The rest of the time they spend doing things that don’t matter, like walking, talking, looking for balls, wishing they had done something differently, feeling regret, anger, frustration, or having trouble focusing.
Background Information
David is a 23-year-old amateur golfer who plays on an international level. He has a “plus-two” handicap and is considering becoming a professional golfer. He has been on the men’s senior elite golf team for the past three years but has yet to win a major tournament. Still, he has been a “runner-up” in these events four times. At first, the fact that he had not won a tournament did not bother him, and he could comfort himself with the idea that he would win one soon. In the last six months, though, he has started to wonder why he always seems “second best.” Because of this worry, he gets very nervous about “closing out” games against opponents in match play and playing the last few holes in stroke play. David sometimes gets so nervous that he can almost feel the club shaking when he chips onto the green or lines up a putt. Even though he tells himself there is nothing to worry about, he still wonders if he is mentally strong enough to play professionally. He knows a lot about the psychology of sports and wonders if he has the “yips.”
Description of the Case
David contacted me because he could not win a major tournament in three years. Naturally, David was struggling with his self-confidence when we first made contact. He felt he had put much time and effort into training and practise but had seen little to no results. He also complained about his declining ability to focus for extended periods during drills and warm-ups. Consequently, he frequently doubted his ability to win tournaments.
Theoretical Framework
Awareness and agency are the cornerstones of successful sport psychology consultation (Hemmings & Holder, 2009). That is the fundamental idea driving our consultancy. This strategy is composed of three parts. The first distinguishing feature of our approach is that it is athlete-centric in its approach to intervention. As a second point, it is founded on the Boulder Science-Practice Model, which is used in various contexts, including clinical psychology (Comas-Diaz, 2006). Through the Scientist-Practitioner Model, psychologists can use findings from empirical studies to inform their clinical work while also incorporating insights from their clinical work into future research.
That is why it is essential to do both: research can help shape best practices, and excellent practices can help shape new studies. Finally, the high-performance environment informs a pragmatic approach to applied practice. By understanding the complexities of the high-performance environment, the role of organizational culture in sports and the needs of athletes and coaches for long-term support have been illuminated by experiences at the Olympic Games, national championships, and as advisors to professional and elite amateur teams. (Fletcher & Hanton, 2012)
With an athlete-centered approach, the consultant’s job isn’t just to teach mental skills; it’s also to help the client become more independent by giving them a toolkit of mental skills and teaching them when and how to use it. In my opinion, the key to a successful session is helping the client become more self-sufficient as time progresses (Campbell & Moran, 2014). In terms of theory, this procedure is based on studies of self-confidence and metacognition (Brick, MacIntyre, & Campbell, 2015). Self-confidence and metacognition are, at their most basic, an athlete’s knowledge of and control over how they think (Kitsantas & Kavussanu, 2011).
During a marathon, for example, when a runner starts to feel tired, he or she may consciously focus on his or her breathing. In short, I used a theory-led, evidence-based practise paradigm along with practice-based evidence when it was needed.
Needs Assessment
Through these initial three meetings, I aimed to gain David’s trust. I used this foundation of trust to probe his background in professional competition. That understanding mainly focused on the athlete’s mental approach to the game. Moreover, that is on top of in-depth interviews with athletes to determine their specific requirements, objectives, and areas of expertise. At the beginning of my time working with David, I employed the Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS; Thomas, Murphy, & Hardy, 1999). The TOPS is an 8-scaled self-report questionnaire that measures many cognitive abilities and processes relevant to training and competition.
David’s TOPS results showed that he struggled with maintaining focus, negative thinking, and emotional regulation.
Due to these first results, I was eager to investigate David’s current training and practise methods. As a sport psychologist focusing on golfers, the topic of training and practice’s impact on performance fascinates me. From what I have seen, even the most accomplished golfers often need to put in the time and effort necessary to improve their game through practice, and this can hurt them in two ways. To begin, a golfer may not acquire the abilities necessary for competition success through inefficient practice. Second, the best practise should help the golfer increase their self-assurance, emotional stability, and ability to regulate their learning and performance. On the other hand, David came across as “less assured.” However, I thought David needed more time to track his development, analyze his backlash, and reinforce his learning.
David’s self-evaluation places him below average in a few areas.
Intervention
There were two primary goals for the intervention. In accordance with our guiding principle, the aim was to help David achieve a higher level of meta-cognitive awareness. He could gain confidence in himself and have more satisfying emotional experiences by broadening his awareness.
Second, I wanted to give him the tools to sharpen his mind so he could play better golf by focusing better and expanding his mind with the right kind of self-confidence while out on the course. David’s interviews revealed a man obsessed with results who has a minimal definition of success. He had a very narrow concentration while evaluating his performance in practise or competition, focusing on exact results or particular golf swings. As we talked, it became clear that he had no idea how to measure success in any other way. In addition, David said he became impatient and furious whenever his performance dipped, both in practise and in competition, and that this trend had intensified over the past three years. One of the intervention sessions focused on goal setting and strengthening David’s knowledge and ability to guarantee that he can more successfully monitor his performances, his practice, and his confidence levels considering some of this information and talks.
Following his golf sessions, David has begun keeping a diary. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that all David did was keep track of his putts made per round along with his fairway and greens in regulation totals. That is precisely how he feels after that. It would be helpful if David kept a more detailed golf diary that included statistics and additional observations about his games. There was a strong emphasis on David keeping track of his round’s successes in terms of nice shots (and also shots that did not work out). The point was for him to give himself more time to reflect on the positive aspects of his round. This golf diary was meant to document an overall shift toward a more methodical approach to rating play. Example: He was advised to keep track of details about each time he went to practice. In this section, he might discuss his practise sessions, such as what he worked on and for how long, and his overall thoughts on how practical each session was.
This methodical plan helped David keeps track of his progress and figure out where he was strong and where he was weak. As part of this data collection process, he was encouraged to focus on his pre-performance process, its significance, and how it might help him focus and control his emotions. As David analysed his habits (particularly his pre-shot ritual), he discovered that he could modify them to suit the varying demands of the tasks he faced throughout a tournament. This was a significant shift from his previous focus on the outcome of his performances, which he categorized as either a bad round or a good round. His enhanced awareness of goal attainment due to the interventions strengthened and supported his process orientation.
References
Brick, N., MacIntyre, T. & Campbell, M. (2015). Metacognitive processes in the self-regulation of performance in elite endurance runners. Psychology of Sport & Exercise doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.02.003
Campbell, M. & Moran, A. (2014). The practice of applied sport, exercise and performance
Comas-Diaz, C. (2006). The present and future of clinical psychology in private practice. Clinical Psychology: Science & Practice. 13, 273-277.
Hemmings, B., & Holder, T. (2009). Applied sport psychology: A case-based approach.
Kitsantas, A. & Kavussanu, M. (2011). Acquisition of sport knowledge and skill: the role of self-regulatory processes. In B.J. Zimmerman & D.H. Schunk, D.H. (Eds.). Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance. Routledge; London
Moran, A. (2012). Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction (2nd ed). London:
psychology: Irish and international perspectives. In G. Cremades & L. Tashman (Eds.) Becoming a sport, exercise and performance psychology professional: a global perspective (pp. 186-192). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Pres Routledge.
Thomas, P.R., Murphy S.M., & Hardy, L. (1999) Test of Performances Strategies: Development and preliminary validation of a comprehensive measure of athletes’ psychological skills. Journal of Sport Sciences, 17, 697-711 Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.
Introduction
Three main things make golf a mental challenge (Moran, 2012): Because golf is challenging, it takes at least five hours to complete a round or match. Unfortunately, many club-level and informal golfers need to rise to this challenge. Instead, they let themselves get annoyed by people ahead of them who seemed to be moving slowly. When golfers are frustrated, they usually play worse.
Also, golf is challenging on the brain because each player has to be in charge of their own game. Golfers cannot be replaced if they don’t do well, which is possible in team sports like soccer or hockey. Third, the fact that golf is a “stop-start” is a big distraction. It means golfers have little time to hit the ball. The rest of the time they spend doing things that don’t matter, like walking, talking, looking for balls, wishing they had done something differently, feeling regret, anger, frustration, or having trouble focusing.
Background Information
David is a 23-year-old amateur golfer who plays on an international level. He has a “plus-two” handicap and is considering becoming a professional golfer. He has been on the men’s senior elite golf team for the past three years but has yet to win a major tournament. Still, he has been a “runner-up” in these events four times. At first, the fact that he had not won a tournament did not bother him, and he could comfort himself with the idea that he would win one soon. In the last six months, though, he has started to wonder why he always seems “second best.” Because of this worry, he gets very nervous about “closing out” games against opponents in match play and playing the last few holes in stroke play. David sometimes gets so nervous that he can almost feel the club shaking when he chips onto the green or lines up a putt. Even though he tells himself there is nothing to worry about, he still wonders if he is mentally strong enough to play professionally. He knows a lot about the psychology of sports and wonders if he has the “yips.”
Description of the Case
David contacted me because he could not win a major tournament in three years. Naturally, David was struggling with his self-confidence when we first made contact. He felt he had put much time and effort into training and practise but had seen little to no results. He also complained about his declining ability to focus for extended periods during drills and warm-ups. Consequently, he frequently doubted his ability to win tournaments.
Theoretical Framework
Awareness and agency are the cornerstones of successful sport psychology consultation (Hemmings & Holder, 2009). That is the fundamental idea driving our consultancy. This strategy is composed of three parts. The first distinguishing feature of our approach is that it is athlete-centric in its approach to intervention. As a second point, it is founded on the Boulder Science-Practice Model, which is used in various contexts, including clinical psychology (Comas-Diaz, 2006). Through the Scientist-Practitioner Model, psychologists can use findings from empirical studies to inform their clinical work while also incorporating insights from their clinical work into future research.
That is why it is essential to do both: research can help shape best practices, and excellent practices can help shape new studies. Finally, the high-performance environment informs a pragmatic approach to applied practice. By understanding the complexities of the high-performance environment, the role of organizational culture in sports and the needs of athletes and coaches for long-term support have been illuminated by experiences at the Olympic Games, national championships, and as advisors to professional and elite amateur teams. (Fletcher & Hanton, 2012)
With an athlete-centered approach, the consultant’s job isn’t just to teach mental skills; it’s also to help the client become more independent by giving them a toolkit of mental skills and teaching them when and how to use it. In my opinion, the key to a successful session is helping the client become more self-sufficient as time progresses (Campbell & Moran, 2014). In terms of theory, this procedure is based on studies of self-confidence and metacognition (Brick, MacIntyre, & Campbell, 2015). Self-confidence and metacognition are, at their most basic, an athlete’s knowledge of and control over how they think (Kitsantas & Kavussanu, 2011).
During a marathon, for example, when a runner starts to feel tired, he or she may consciously focus on his or her breathing. In short, I used a theory-led, evidence-based practise paradigm along with practice-based evidence when it was needed.
Needs Assessment
Through these initial three meetings, I aimed to gain David’s trust. I used this foundation of trust to probe his background in professional competition. That understanding mainly focused on the athlete’s mental approach to the game. Moreover, that is on top of in-depth interviews with athletes to determine their specific requirements, objectives, and areas of expertise. At the beginning of my time working with David, I employed the Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS; Thomas, Murphy, & Hardy, 1999). The TOPS is an 8-scaled self-report questionnaire that measures many cognitive abilities and processes relevant to training and competition.
David’s TOPS results showed that he struggled with maintaining focus, negative thinking, and emotional regulation.
Due to these first results, I was eager to investigate David’s current training and practise methods. As a sport psychologist focusing on golfers, the topic of training and practice’s impact on performance fascinates me. From what I have seen, even the most accomplished golfers often need to put in the time and effort necessary to improve their game through practice, and this can hurt them in two ways. To begin, a golfer may not acquire the abilities necessary for competition success through inefficient practice. Second, the best practise should help the golfer increase their self-assurance, emotional stability, and ability to regulate their learning and performance. On the other hand, David came across as “less assured.” However, I thought David needed more time to track his development, analyze his backlash, and reinforce his learning.
David’s self-evaluation places him below average in a few areas.
Intervention
There were two primary goals for the intervention. In accordance with our guiding principle, the aim was to help David achieve a higher level of meta-cognitive awareness. He could gain confidence in himself and have more satisfying emotional experiences by broadening his awareness.
Second, I wanted to give him the tools to sharpen his mind so he could play better golf by focusing better and expanding his mind with the right kind of self-confidence while out on the course. David’s interviews revealed a man obsessed with results who has a minimal definition of success. He had a very narrow concentration while evaluating his performance in practise or competition, focusing on exact results or particular golf swings. As we talked, it became clear that he had no idea how to measure success in any other way. In addition, David said he became impatient and furious whenever his performance dipped, both in practise and in competition, and that this trend had intensified over the past three years. One of the intervention sessions focused on goal setting and strengthening David’s knowledge and ability to guarantee that he can more successfully monitor his performances, his practice, and his confidence levels considering some of this information and talks.
Following his golf sessions, David has begun keeping a diary. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that all David did was keep track of his putts made per round along with his fairway and greens in regulation totals. That is precisely how he feels after that. It would be helpful if David kept a more detailed golf diary that included statistics and additional observations about his games. There was a strong emphasis on David keeping track of his round’s successes in terms of nice shots (and also shots that did not work out). The point was for him to give himself more time to reflect on the positive aspects of his round. This golf diary was meant to document an overall shift toward a more methodical approach to rating play. Example: He was advised to keep track of details about each time he went to practice. In this section, he might discuss his practise sessions, such as what he worked on and for how long, and his overall thoughts on how practical each session was.
This methodical plan helped David keeps track of his progress and figure out where he was strong and where he was weak. As part of this data collection process, he was encouraged to focus on his pre-performance process, its significance, and how it might help him focus and control his emotions. As David analysed his habits (particularly his pre-shot ritual), he discovered that he could modify them to suit the varying demands of the tasks he faced throughout a tournament. This was a significant shift from his previous focus on the outcome of his performances, which he categorized as either a bad round or a good round. His enhanced awareness of goal attainment due to the interventions strengthened and supported his process orientation.
References
Brick, N., MacIntyre, T. & Campbell, M. (2015). Metacognitive processes in the self-regulation of performance in elite endurance runners. Psychology of Sport & Exercise doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.02.003
Campbell, M. & Moran, A. (2014). The practice of applied sport, exercise and performance
Comas-Diaz, C. (2006). The present and future of clinical psychology in private practice. Clinical Psychology: Science & Practice. 13, 273-277.
Hemmings, B., & Holder, T. (2009). Applied sport psychology: A case-based approach.
Kitsantas, A. & Kavussanu, M. (2011). Acquisition of sport knowledge and skill: the role of self-regulatory processes. In B.J. Zimmerman & D.H. Schunk, D.H. (Eds.). Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance. Routledge; London
Moran, A. (2012). Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction (2nd ed). London:
psychology: Irish and international perspectives. In G. Cremades & L. Tashman (Eds.) Becoming a sport, exercise and performance psychology professional: a global perspective (pp. 186-192). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Pres Routledge.
Thomas, P.R., Murphy S.M., & Hardy, L. (1999) Test of Performances Strategies: Development and preliminary validation of a comprehensive measure of athletes’ psychological skills. Journal of Sport Sciences, 17, 697-711 Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.
Introduction
Three main things make golf a mental challenge (Moran, 2012): Because golf is challenging, it takes at least five hours to complete a round or match. Unfortunately, many club-level and informal golfers need to rise to this challenge. Instead, they let themselves get annoyed by people ahead of them who seemed to be moving slowly. When golfers are frustrated, they usually play worse.
Also, golf is challenging on the brain because each player has to be in charge of their own game. Golfers cannot be replaced if they don’t do well, which is possible in team sports like soccer or hockey. Third, the fact that golf is a “stop-start” is a big distraction. It means golfers have little time to hit the ball. The rest of the time they spend doing things that don’t matter, like walking, talking, looking for balls, wishing they had done something differently, feeling regret, anger, frustration, or having trouble focusing.
Background Information
David is a 23-year-old amateur golfer who plays on an international level. He has a “plus-two” handicap and is considering becoming a professional golfer. He has been on the men’s senior elite golf team for the past three years but has yet to win a major tournament. Still, he has been a “runner-up” in these events four times. At first, the fact that he had not won a tournament did not bother him, and he could comfort himself with the idea that he would win one soon. In the last six months, though, he has started to wonder why he always seems “second best.” Because of this worry, he gets very nervous about “closing out” games against opponents in match play and playing the last few holes in stroke play. David sometimes gets so nervous that he can almost feel the club shaking when he chips onto the green or lines up a putt. Even though he tells himself there is nothing to worry about, he still wonders if he is mentally strong enough to play professionally. He knows a lot about the psychology of sports and wonders if he has the “yips.”
Description of the Case
David contacted me because he could not win a major tournament in three years. Naturally, David was struggling with his self-confidence when we first made contact. He felt he had put much time and effort into training and practise but had seen little to no results. He also complained about his declining ability to focus for extended periods during drills and warm-ups. Consequently, he frequently doubted his ability to win tournaments.
Theoretical Framework
Awareness and agency are the cornerstones of successful sport psychology consultation (Hemmings & Holder, 2009). That is the fundamental idea driving our consultancy. This strategy is composed of three parts. The first distinguishing feature of our approach is that it is athlete-centric in its approach to intervention. As a second point, it is founded on the Boulder Science-Practice Model, which is used in various contexts, including clinical psychology (Comas-Diaz, 2006). Through the Scientist-Practitioner Model, psychologists can use findings from empirical studies to inform their clinical work while also incorporating insights from their clinical work into future research.
That is why it is essential to do both: research can help shape best practices, and excellent practices can help shape new studies. Finally, the high-performance environment informs a pragmatic approach to applied practice. By understanding the complexities of the high-performance environment, the role of organizational culture in sports and the needs of athletes and coaches for long-term support have been illuminated by experiences at the Olympic Games, national championships, and as advisors to professional and elite amateur teams. (Fletcher & Hanton, 2012)
With an athlete-centered approach, the consultant’s job isn’t just to teach mental skills; it’s also to help the client become more independent by giving them a toolkit of mental skills and teaching them when and how to use it. In my opinion, the key to a successful session is helping the client become more self-sufficient as time progresses (Campbell & Moran, 2014). In terms of theory, this procedure is based on studies of self-confidence and metacognition (Brick, MacIntyre, & Campbell, 2015). Self-confidence and metacognition are, at their most basic, an athlete’s knowledge of and control over how they think (Kitsantas & Kavussanu, 2011).
During a marathon, for example, when a runner starts to feel tired, he or she may consciously focus on his or her breathing. In short, I used a theory-led, evidence-based practise paradigm along with practice-based evidence when it was needed.
Needs Assessment
Through these initial three meetings, I aimed to gain David’s trust. I used this foundation of trust to probe his background in professional competition. That understanding mainly focused on the athlete’s mental approach to the game. Moreover, that is on top of in-depth interviews with athletes to determine their specific requirements, objectives, and areas of expertise. At the beginning of my time working with David, I employed the Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS; Thomas, Murphy, & Hardy, 1999). The TOPS is an 8-scaled self-report questionnaire that measures many cognitive abilities and processes relevant to training and competition.
David’s TOPS results showed that he struggled with maintaining focus, negative thinking, and emotional regulation.
Due to these first results, I was eager to investigate David’s current training and practise methods. As a sport psychologist focusing on golfers, the topic of training and practice’s impact on performance fascinates me. From what I have seen, even the most accomplished golfers often need to put in the time and effort necessary to improve their game through practice, and this can hurt them in two ways. To begin, a golfer may not acquire the abilities necessary for competition success through inefficient practice. Second, the best practise should help the golfer increase their self-assurance, emotional stability, and ability to regulate their learning and performance. On the other hand, David came across as “less assured.” However, I thought David needed more time to track his development, analyze his backlash, and reinforce his learning.
David’s self-evaluation places him below average in a few areas.
Intervention
There were two primary goals for the intervention. In accordance with our guiding principle, the aim was to help David achieve a higher level of meta-cognitive awareness. He could gain confidence in himself and have more satisfying emotional experiences by broadening his awareness.
Second, I wanted to give him the tools to sharpen his mind so he could play better golf by focusing better and expanding his mind with the right kind of self-confidence while out on the course. David’s interviews revealed a man obsessed with results who has a minimal definition of success. He had a very narrow concentration while evaluating his performance in practise or competition, focusing on exact results or particular golf swings. As we talked, it became clear that he had no idea how to measure success in any other way. In addition, David said he became impatient and furious whenever his performance dipped, both in practise and in competition, and that this trend had intensified over the past three years. One of the intervention sessions focused on goal setting and strengthening David’s knowledge and ability to guarantee that he can more successfully monitor his performances, his practice, and his confidence levels considering some of this information and talks.
Following his golf sessions, David has begun keeping a diary. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that all David did was keep track of his putts made per round along with his fairway and greens in regulation totals. That is precisely how he feels after that. It would be helpful if David kept a more detailed golf diary that included statistics and additional observations about his games. There was a strong emphasis on David keeping track of his round’s successes in terms of nice shots (and also shots that did not work out). The point was for him to give himself more time to reflect on the positive aspects of his round. This golf diary was meant to document an overall shift toward a more methodical approach to rating play. Example: He was advised to keep track of details about each time he went to practice. In this section, he might discuss his practise sessions, such as what he worked on and for how long, and his overall thoughts on how practical each session was.
This methodical plan helped David keeps track of his progress and figure out where he was strong and where he was weak. As part of this data collection process, he was encouraged to focus on his pre-performance process, its significance, and how it might help him focus and control his emotions. As David analysed his habits (particularly his pre-shot ritual), he discovered that he could modify them to suit the varying demands of the tasks he faced throughout a tournament. This was a significant shift from his previous focus on the outcome of his performances, which he categorized as either a bad round or a good round. His enhanced awareness of goal attainment due to the interventions strengthened and supported his process orientation.
References
Brick, N., MacIntyre, T. & Campbell, M. (2015). Metacognitive processes in the self-regulation of performance in elite endurance runners. Psychology of Sport & Exercise doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.02.003
Campbell, M. & Moran, A. (2014). The practice of applied sport, exercise and performance
Comas-Diaz, C. (2006). The present and future of clinical psychology in private practice. Clinical Psychology: Science & Practice. 13, 273-277.
Hemmings, B., & Holder, T. (2009). Applied sport psychology: A case-based approach.
Kitsantas, A. & Kavussanu, M. (2011). Acquisition of sport knowledge and skill: the role of self-regulatory processes. In B.J. Zimmerman & D.H. Schunk, D.H. (Eds.). Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance. Routledge; London
Moran, A. (2012). Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction (2nd ed). London:
psychology: Irish and international perspectives. In G. Cremades & L. Tashman (Eds.) Becoming a sport, exercise and performance psychology professional: a global perspective (pp. 186-192). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Pres Routledge.
Thomas, P.R., Murphy S.M., & Hardy, L. (1999) Test of Performances Strategies: Development and preliminary validation of a comprehensive measure of athletes’ psychological skills. Journal of Sport Sciences, 17, 697-711 Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.
Introduction
Three main things make golf a mental challenge (Moran, 2012): Because golf is challenging, it takes at least five hours to complete a round or match. Unfortunately, many club-level and informal golfers need to rise to this challenge. Instead, they let themselves get annoyed by people ahead of them who seemed to be moving slowly. When golfers are frustrated, they usually play worse.
Also, golf is challenging on the brain because each player has to be in charge of their own game. Golfers cannot be replaced if they don’t do well, which is possible in team sports like soccer or hockey. Third, the fact that golf is a “stop-start” is a big distraction. It means golfers have little time to hit the ball. The rest of the time they spend doing things that don’t matter, like walking, talking, looking for balls, wishing they had done something differently, feeling regret, anger, frustration, or having trouble focusing.
Background Information
David is a 23-year-old amateur golfer who plays on an international level. He has a “plus-two” handicap and is considering becoming a professional golfer. He has been on the men’s senior elite golf team for the past three years but has yet to win a major tournament. Still, he has been a “runner-up” in these events four times. At first, the fact that he had not won a tournament did not bother him, and he could comfort himself with the idea that he would win one soon. In the last six months, though, he has started to wonder why he always seems “second best.” Because of this worry, he gets very nervous about “closing out” games against opponents in match play and playing the last few holes in stroke play. David sometimes gets so nervous that he can almost feel the club shaking when he chips onto the green or lines up a putt. Even though he tells himself there is nothing to worry about, he still wonders if he is mentally strong enough to play professionally. He knows a lot about the psychology of sports and wonders if he has the “yips.”
Description of the Case
David contacted me because he could not win a major tournament in three years. Naturally, David was struggling with his self-confidence when we first made contact. He felt he had put much time and effort into training and practise but had seen little to no results. He also complained about his declining ability to focus for extended periods during drills and warm-ups. Consequently, he frequently doubted his ability to win tournaments.
Theoretical Framework
Awareness and agency are the cornerstones of successful sport psychology consultation (Hemmings & Holder, 2009). That is the fundamental idea driving our consultancy. This strategy is composed of three parts. The first distinguishing feature of our approach is that it is athlete-centric in its approach to intervention. As a second point, it is founded on the Boulder Science-Practice Model, which is used in various contexts, including clinical psychology (Comas-Diaz, 2006). Through the Scientist-Practitioner Model, psychologists can use findings from empirical studies to inform their clinical work while also incorporating insights from their clinical work into future research.
That is why it is essential to do both: research can help shape best practices, and excellent practices can help shape new studies. Finally, the high-performance environment informs a pragmatic approach to applied practice. By understanding the complexities of the high-performance environment, the role of organizational culture in sports and the needs of athletes and coaches for long-term support have been illuminated by experiences at the Olympic Games, national championships, and as advisors to professional and elite amateur teams. (Fletcher & Hanton, 2012)
With an athlete-centered approach, the consultant’s job isn’t just to teach mental skills; it’s also to help the client become more independent by giving them a toolkit of mental skills and teaching them when and how to use it. In my opinion, the key to a successful session is helping the client become more self-sufficient as time progresses (Campbell & Moran, 2014). In terms of theory, this procedure is based on studies of self-confidence and metacognition (Brick, MacIntyre, & Campbell, 2015). Self-confidence and metacognition are, at their most basic, an athlete’s knowledge of and control over how they think (Kitsantas & Kavussanu, 2011).
During a marathon, for example, when a runner starts to feel tired, he or she may consciously focus on his or her breathing. In short, I used a theory-led, evidence-based practise paradigm along with practice-based evidence when it was needed.
Needs Assessment
Through these initial three meetings, I aimed to gain David’s trust. I used this foundation of trust to probe his background in professional competition. That understanding mainly focused on the athlete’s mental approach to the game. Moreover, that is on top of in-depth interviews with athletes to determine their specific requirements, objectives, and areas of expertise. At the beginning of my time working with David, I employed the Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS; Thomas, Murphy, & Hardy, 1999). The TOPS is an 8-scaled self-report questionnaire that measures many cognitive abilities and processes relevant to training and competition.
David’s TOPS results showed that he struggled with maintaining focus, negative thinking, and emotional regulation.
Due to these first results, I was eager to investigate David’s current training and practise methods. As a sport psychologist focusing on golfers, the topic of training and practice’s impact on performance fascinates me. From what I have seen, even the most accomplished golfers often need to put in the time and effort necessary to improve their game through practice, and this can hurt them in two ways. To begin, a golfer may not acquire the abilities necessary for competition success through inefficient practice. Second, the best practise should help the golfer increase their self-assurance, emotional stability, and ability to regulate their learning and performance. On the other hand, David came across as “less assured.” However, I thought David needed more time to track his development, analyze his backlash, and reinforce his learning.
David’s self-evaluation places him below average in a few areas.
Intervention
There were two primary goals for the intervention. In accordance with our guiding principle, the aim was to help David achieve a higher level of meta-cognitive awareness. He could gain confidence in himself and have more satisfying emotional experiences by broadening his awareness.
Second, I wanted to give him the tools to sharpen his mind so he could play better golf by focusing better and expanding his mind with the right kind of self-confidence while out on the course. David’s interviews revealed a man obsessed with results who has a minimal definition of success. He had a very narrow concentration while evaluating his performance in practise or competition, focusing on exact results or particular golf swings. As we talked, it became clear that he had no idea how to measure success in any other way. In addition, David said he became impatient and furious whenever his performance dipped, both in practise and in competition, and that this trend had intensified over the past three years. One of the intervention sessions focused on goal setting and strengthening David’s knowledge and ability to guarantee that he can more successfully monitor his performances, his practice, and his confidence levels considering some of this information and talks.
Following his golf sessions, David has begun keeping a diary. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that all David did was keep track of his putts made per round along with his fairway and greens in regulation totals. That is precisely how he feels after that. It would be helpful if David kept a more detailed golf diary that included statistics and additional observations about his games. There was a strong emphasis on David keeping track of his round’s successes in terms of nice shots (and also shots that did not work out). The point was for him to give himself more time to reflect on the positive aspects of his round. This golf diary was meant to document an overall shift toward a more methodical approach to rating play. Example: He was advised to keep track of details about each time he went to practice. In this section, he might discuss his practise sessions, such as what he worked on and for how long, and his overall thoughts on how practical each session was.
This methodical plan helped David keeps track of his progress and figure out where he was strong and where he was weak. As part of this data collection process, he was encouraged to focus on his pre-performance process, its significance, and how it might help him focus and control his emotions. As David analysed his habits (particularly his pre-shot ritual), he discovered that he could modify them to suit the varying demands of the tasks he faced throughout a tournament. This was a significant shift from his previous focus on the outcome of his performances, which he categorized as either a bad round or a good round. His enhanced awareness of goal attainment due to the interventions strengthened and supported his process orientation.
References
Brick, N., MacIntyre, T. & Campbell, M. (2015). Metacognitive processes in the self-regulation of performance in elite endurance runners. Psychology of Sport & Exercise doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.02.003
Campbell, M. & Moran, A. (2014). The practice of applied sport, exercise and performance
Comas-Diaz, C. (2006). The present and future of clinical psychology in private practice. Clinical Psychology: Science & Practice. 13, 273-277.
Hemmings, B., & Holder, T. (2009). Applied sport psychology: A case-based approach.
Kitsantas, A. & Kavussanu, M. (2011). Acquisition of sport knowledge and skill: the role of self-regulatory processes. In B.J. Zimmerman & D.H. Schunk, D.H. (Eds.). Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance. Routledge; London
Moran, A. (2012). Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction (2nd ed). London:
psychology: Irish and international perspectives. In G. Cremades & L. Tashman (Eds.) Becoming a sport, exercise and performance psychology professional: a global perspective (pp. 186-192). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Pres Routledge.
Thomas, P.R., Murphy S.M., & Hardy, L. (1999) Test of Performances Strategies: Development and preliminary validation of a comprehensive measure of athletes’ psychological skills. Journal of Sport Sciences, 17, 697-711 Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.
Introduction
Three main things make golf a mental challenge (Moran, 2012): Because golf is challenging, it takes at least five hours to complete a round or match. Unfortunately, many club-level and informal golfers need to rise to this challenge. Instead, they let themselves get annoyed by people ahead of them who seemed to be moving slowly. When golfers are frustrated, they usually play worse.
Also, golf is challenging on the brain because each player has to be in charge of their own game. Golfers cannot be replaced if they don’t do well, which is possible in team sports like soccer or hockey. Third, the fact that golf is a “stop-start” is a big distraction. It means golfers have little time to hit the ball. The rest of the time they spend doing things that don’t matter, like walking, talking, looking for balls, wishing they had done something differently, feeling regret, anger, frustration, or having trouble focusing.
Background Information
David is a 23-year-old amateur golfer who plays on an international level. He has a “plus-two” handicap and is considering becoming a professional golfer. He has been on the men’s senior elite golf team for the past three years but has yet to win a major tournament. Still, he has been a “runner-up” in these events four times. At first, the fact that he had not won a tournament did not bother him, and he could comfort himself with the idea that he would win one soon. In the last six months, though, he has started to wonder why he always seems “second best.” Because of this worry, he gets very nervous about “closing out” games against opponents in match play and playing the last few holes in stroke play. David sometimes gets so nervous that he can almost feel the club shaking when he chips onto the green or lines up a putt. Even though he tells himself there is nothing to worry about, he still wonders if he is mentally strong enough to play professionally. He knows a lot about the psychology of sports and wonders if he has the “yips.”
Description of the Case
David contacted me because he could not win a major tournament in three years. Naturally, David was struggling with his self-confidence when we first made contact. He felt he had put much time and effort into training and practise but had seen little to no results. He also complained about his declining ability to focus for extended periods during drills and warm-ups. Consequently, he frequently doubted his ability to win tournaments.
Theoretical Framework
Awareness and agency are the cornerstones of successful sport psychology consultation (Hemmings & Holder, 2009). That is the fundamental idea driving our consultancy. This strategy is composed of three parts. The first distinguishing feature of our approach is that it is athlete-centric in its approach to intervention. As a second point, it is founded on the Boulder Science-Practice Model, which is used in various contexts, including clinical psychology (Comas-Diaz, 2006). Through the Scientist-Practitioner Model, psychologists can use findings from empirical studies to inform their clinical work while also incorporating insights from their clinical work into future research.
That is why it is essential to do both: research can help shape best practices, and excellent practices can help shape new studies. Finally, the high-performance environment informs a pragmatic approach to applied practice. By understanding the complexities of the high-performance environment, the role of organizational culture in sports and the needs of athletes and coaches for long-term support have been illuminated by experiences at the Olympic Games, national championships, and as advisors to professional and elite amateur teams. (Fletcher & Hanton, 2012)
With an athlete-centered approach, the consultant’s job isn’t just to teach mental skills; it’s also to help the client become more independent by giving them a toolkit of mental skills and teaching them when and how to use it. In my opinion, the key to a successful session is helping the client become more self-sufficient as time progresses (Campbell & Moran, 2014). In terms of theory, this procedure is based on studies of self-confidence and metacognition (Brick, MacIntyre, & Campbell, 2015). Self-confidence and metacognition are, at their most basic, an athlete’s knowledge of and control over how they think (Kitsantas & Kavussanu, 2011).
During a marathon, for example, when a runner starts to feel tired, he or she may consciously focus on his or her breathing. In short, I used a theory-led, evidence-based practise paradigm along with practice-based evidence when it was needed.
Needs Assessment
Through these initial three meetings, I aimed to gain David’s trust. I used this foundation of trust to probe his background in professional competition. That understanding mainly focused on the athlete’s mental approach to the game. Moreover, that is on top of in-depth interviews with athletes to determine their specific requirements, objectives, and areas of expertise. At the beginning of my time working with David, I employed the Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS; Thomas, Murphy, & Hardy, 1999). The TOPS is an 8-scaled self-report questionnaire that measures many cognitive abilities and processes relevant to training and competition.
David’s TOPS results showed that he struggled with maintaining focus, negative thinking, and emotional regulation.
Due to these first results, I was eager to investigate David’s current training and practise methods. As a sport psychologist focusing on golfers, the topic of training and practice’s impact on performance fascinates me. From what I have seen, even the most accomplished golfers often need to put in the time and effort necessary to improve their game through practice, and this can hurt them in two ways. To begin, a golfer may not acquire the abilities necessary for competition success through inefficient practice. Second, the best practise should help the golfer increase their self-assurance, emotional stability, and ability to regulate their learning and performance. On the other hand, David came across as “less assured.” However, I thought David needed more time to track his development, analyze his backlash, and reinforce his learning.
David’s self-evaluation places him below average in a few areas.
Intervention
There were two primary goals for the intervention. In accordance with our guiding principle, the aim was to help David achieve a higher level of meta-cognitive awareness. He could gain confidence in himself and have more satisfying emotional experiences by broadening his awareness.
Second, I wanted to give him the tools to sharpen his mind so he could play better golf by focusing better and expanding his mind with the right kind of self-confidence while out on the course. David’s interviews revealed a man obsessed with results who has a minimal definition of success. He had a very narrow concentration while evaluating his performance in practise or competition, focusing on exact results or particular golf swings. As we talked, it became clear that he had no idea how to measure success in any other way. In addition, David said he became impatient and furious whenever his performance dipped, both in practise and in competition, and that this trend had intensified over the past three years. One of the intervention sessions focused on goal setting and strengthening David’s knowledge and ability to guarantee that he can more successfully monitor his performances, his practice, and his confidence levels considering some of this information and talks.
Following his golf sessions, David has begun keeping a diary. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that all David did was keep track of his putts made per round along with his fairway and greens in regulation totals. That is precisely how he feels after that. It would be helpful if David kept a more detailed golf diary that included statistics and additional observations about his games. There was a strong emphasis on David keeping track of his round’s successes in terms of nice shots (and also shots that did not work out). The point was for him to give himself more time to reflect on the positive aspects of his round. This golf diary was meant to document an overall shift toward a more methodical approach to rating play. Example: He was advised to keep track of details about each time he went to practice. In this section, he might discuss his practise sessions, such as what he worked on and for how long, and his overall thoughts on how practical each session was.
This methodical plan helped David keeps track of his progress and figure out where he was strong and where he was weak. As part of this data collection process, he was encouraged to focus on his pre-performance process, its significance, and how it might help him focus and control his emotions. As David analysed his habits (particularly his pre-shot ritual), he discovered that he could modify them to suit the varying demands of the tasks he faced throughout a tournament. This was a significant shift from his previous focus on the outcome of his performances, which he categorized as either a bad round or a good round. His enhanced awareness of goal attainment due to the interventions strengthened and supported his process orientation.
References
Brick, N., MacIntyre, T. & Campbell, M. (2015). Metacognitive processes in the self-regulation of performance in elite endurance runners. Psychology of Sport & Exercise doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.02.003
Campbell, M. & Moran, A. (2014). The practice of applied sport, exercise and performance
Comas-Diaz, C. (2006). The present and future of clinical psychology in private practice. Clinical Psychology: Science & Practice. 13, 273-277.
Hemmings, B., & Holder, T. (2009). Applied sport psychology: A case-based approach.
Kitsantas, A. & Kavussanu, M. (2011). Acquisition of sport knowledge and skill: the role of self-regulatory processes. In B.J. Zimmerman & D.H. Schunk, D.H. (Eds.). Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance. Routledge; London
Moran, A. (2012). Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction (2nd ed). London:
psychology: Irish and international perspectives. In G. Cremades & L. Tashman (Eds.) Becoming a sport, exercise and performance psychology professional: a global perspective (pp. 186-192). Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Pres Routledge.
Thomas, P.R., Murphy S.M., & Hardy, L. (1999) Test of Performances Strategies: Development and preliminary validation of a comprehensive measure of athletes’ psychological skills. Journal of Sport Sciences, 17, 697-711 Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.
