WAROLD BROUGH updates the cards of our eager guinea-pig golfing foursome

Meanwhile, far from Muirfield this week, with the open, the world superstars and the crowds, there are four of us following a novel, unobserved trail, hopefully to golfing success of our own.

It is  lot easier and more tranquil than going on the golf course and actually hitting lots of golf shots, trudging miles through wind and rain in unpeopled green acres.

As golfing pupils of Mr Mike Whitenburgh we spend a great deal of time cosily at home while he explain to us that much of the secret of this captivating and infuriating game is in the mind, that by shutting out all the negative thoughts about hitting the ball into the canal, or three putting the 3rd  green where there is a slope like the pitch of a roof, we will dramatically improve.

Of course, we also have to unsettle ourselves from the armchair, go out,  get wet, and actually play the game too. But regularly now, as the Mike Whitenburgh guinea-pig foursome, we switch off from all worldly affairs, put his cassettes on the player and listen to his calming, encouraging lessons about the mental approach to better golf.

“Just relax…. Whatever you conceive and believe you can achieve in your golf. You will be amazed at how ridiculously easy you chip away those strokes from your score… Now relax….

Mike Whitenburgh is an optimist. No one else would risk forecasting a six shots cut in my golf handicap by the autumn. But then his faith in his approach to golf is such he forecasts a 25 per cent improvement for the three others taking part in this exercise – teenager Helen Stokes from Llandudno, Patricia Watterson from the Daily Post Problem Post Reader service, and Daily Post photographer Derek Wright.

“You will be amazed.” he says. “I do expect phenomenal results.”

He is a psychoanalyst with a practice in Liverpool’s Rodney Street where he sees people with neuroses out of control. He uses psychotherapy and, in the cause of better golf, hypnotherapy.

He has experience of golf and its disasters too. So he made a tape for his own use about confidence and images of perfect golf. He listened to it twice, entered an open event at Prenton, Wirral and won easily with a net score of about 60 which for the benefit of non-golfers, is, frankly amazing.

But then he said the reason people win is because they believe in themselves. “You just cannot win if your mind is full of negative thoughts….`Gosh, I’ll never beat this guy…`etc. The idea is to remove all fear of failure, and replace it with positive thoughts like believing the drive will fly down the fairway, the putts will drop.”

His tapes are about relaxation and confidence, belief in winning. He plans to put them on sale later this year and meanwhile has given each of us a set to use.
 
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I actually became so relaxed I fell asleep. Helen Stokes (handicap 5) and Pat Watterson (15) made similar confessions. We all feel a little guilty but then the doctor says it does not matter whether we are awake or not because the messages are designed to be implanted into the subconscious.

This is good news because the tapes are now part of my bedtime, a golf lesson to take into dreamland after lights out. “Now picture the ball flying down the fairway, chipping into that green….”

Next day I went on the first tee and hit a 3 iron towards the middle of the fairway and guess what? No it did not go into the trees again. As international ace Gary Player once said: “It went so far so straight, I had to lean sideways to see the flag.” I had a 73 nett in the medal that weekend.

Is it possible something strange is happening?......

Tension is certainly less a problem. Patricia won her game in a match against another club – but more remarkable is the improvement in her putting. “It was quite surprising really. I suddenly thought I could do it, instead of thinking I couldn’t.

Helen Stokes came in with a 74 gross in a competition at Rhos on Sea, North Wales – her best ever score, five strokes below par for the course and, as far as is known hotel at a new record for ladies at Rhos.

“I did not feel any difference.” She said. “I felt I was improving anyway, but it is possible the tapes are helping too.”

NERVOUS

“If I get nervous I tell myself to relax, as the tape say. I remember , I think they help in that way. I Feel positive and I think they help increase confidence.” Helen listens to the tapes after her morning duties at the family hotel at Llandudno, before she goes and plays.

The problem for the four of us is finding sufficient time to listen, to really relax, to believe Mike Whitenburghs words: “There is nothing for you to do….”
But then with a 68 gross at Rhos, and indeed at Southport once wayward putts rifled into the hole, we should be encouraged because there are tempting visions of success on the horizon.

The other encouraging sign came in the picture of this sporting summer, Australian Pat Cash scrambled through the seats after his Wimbledon win.

Who do you think he wanted to hug in joyful celebration? His family, of course. But also his psychologist who had prepared him for success.