2018 offers elite sports stars many opportunities to win their respective tournaments/competitions/finals. The Australian Open, which begins in mid-January and offers an opportunity to win the first major of the season. Success in the Australian Open can provide positive momentum going forward into the rest of the season. Whilst technical, physicality and energy systems will […]
Jordan Spieth threw away a 5 shot lead at the Augusta Masters golf tournament 2016 having dominated the competition until the last day. Walking on to the tenth hole on the final day he held a 5 shot lead. He bogeyed both 10 and 11 before his game totally unravelled on the 12th hole. The […]
As Neophyte Sport Psychology practitioners with the Golf Union of Wales (GUW) we are always looking for ways to improve our consultancy styles. As part of this development we recently ran a workshop on working with team sports for all of the psychology support team to attend. This team includes Dr Rich Neil, Dr Brendan […]
Anxiety is an unpleasant motivational state (Lundqvist et al. 2011) comprising of cognitive (worrying thoughts) and somatic (oneself perception of physiological arousal) anxiety (Englert and Bertrams 2012), commonly measured by the CSAI-2 (Martens et al. 1990 cites Edward and Hardy 1996); hardy individuals believe they are in control of events and reportedly have reduced levels […]
The end of March of course means that the Masters at Augusta National is just around the corner, it also means that North of the border golf must be one or two months away in Canada!!!!! Needless to say it is a great opportunity to talk about golf as many of us start look at […]
We’ve all seen or heard of elite sports people performing ritual movements before competitions, from a 100m runner blessing themselves before a race, to a footballer with his lucky pants or the Golfer with his favourite putter. From the outside looking in it may seem odd and strange; however in all sports, superstitions and rituals […]
You have the talent, you’ve been working hard at your game, you’re physically in great shape and you’ve won plenty of times in the past – but when it comes to the big events, you just can’t finish off that winning position. If we were to take elite golf as an example, let’s take a […]
Imagery has many uses not just in sport, but pretty much any occupation where motor (learnt) skills need to be performed to a high standard (such as surgery), as well as something as mundane as trying to remember a shopping list. Within sport it can be used for many different tasks from mental rehearsal (practicing your ‘lines’) to past […]
This article will run from how to develop a pre performance routine, via four questions, which will help you to develop your own routine. What is a pre performance routine? A pre performance routine is defined as ‘sequence of task relevant thoughts and actions which an athletes engages in systematically prior to his or her […]
For all of his greatness, I have always had my reservations about Rory McIlroy. He undoubtedly has spectacular golfing abilities and to have achieved what he has so far already makes him one of the greats. However my suspicions were first set racing when we witnessed the spectacular choke at the 2011 U.S Masters. Who […]