It’s not as if golfer Kevin Na is alone.
Major-leaguer Steve Sax had trouble throwing a baseball from second base to first.
Catcher Mackey Sasser’s baseball career essentially ended because he had trouble throwing the ball back to the pitcher.
Some basketball players are stricken at the foul line, afraid of missing another free throw.
When Na struggled to start his golf swing last weekend in The Players Championship, almost paralyzed at times by his series of pre-shot club waggles and fidgeting, he became the subject of ridicule and sympathy.
Already considered one of the PGA Tour’s slowest players, Na’s struggles were brought into sharp focus as he chased – slowly and awkwardly – one of the game’s biggest prizes.
He stumbled Sunday, falling victim to the pressure of the moment and the eyes on him as he publicly wrestled with his private demons.
“It’s shocking when you see it in a top athlete,” said Dr. Richard Keefe, director of sports psychology at Duke.
“The more glorified end of this is when you’re in the so-called zone. You don’t think of anything. Your swing is flowing back and forth. It’s effortless and almost blissful.
“This is the opposite. It’s incredibly painful. You lose total control.”
In Na’s case, he is working through a swing change, a major project for a professional golfer. That exacerbated his issues, which sometimes had him starting his full swing only to pull up and out of it on the way down. Other times, Na waggled the club so often fans began counting and heckling him to hit his shot.
Charlotte instructor Dana Rader, ranked among the nation’s top 100 teachers by Golf Magazine, said it’s essential for Na to develop a comfortable and repetitive routine that will eliminate the problems that afflicted him at The Players Championship.
“Ask any top performer, whether it’s in golf, tennis or the Olympics, they were in a good place when they performed,” Rader said. “When they have that mental unrest, they have the tools to pull themselves out of it.”
In a sport in which players practice diligently to create an almost unconscious and unchanging pre-shot routine, Na’s routine was different seemingly every shot. It took him an inordinately long time to hit a shot, adding to the frustration level of those watching and playing with him.
Eventual winner Matt Kuchar understood the challenges facing Na before they teed off together in Sunday’s final round, preparing himself mentally for a long afternoon.
“It’s not an envious thing to go through,” Kuchar said after his victory. “I’m glad it’s not happening to me.”
Na heard the heckling Sunday. He knows what he’s doing is counter-productive and frustrating. Getting past it, though, is an enormous challenge.
“I do need to work on my pre-shot routine. I do need to play faster,” he said . “But the average golfer has no clue how much pressure we’re playing under and how tough it is and how much of a fight it is mentally.”
Dr. Dick Coop, professor of educational psychology at North Carolina, has worked with many PGA Tour players and other athletes over the past 35 years. He likened what happened to Na to the putting yips in which a golfer is afraid to stroke a putt for fear of missing. The cause can be mental and physical, Coop said, adding to the difficulty of solving the problem.
Coop said he’s seen maybe a dozen athletes afflicted with issues similar to Na’s. It’s not unlike Sergio Garcia’s re-gripping issue during the 2002 U.S. Open when he would put his hands on and off his golf club up to 10 times before making a swing, leading fans to taunt him by counting the times he re-gripped the club.
“The outcome so overwhelms the process,” Coop said. “You want to make the process more important than the outcome, but that’s easier said than done. You want the outcome to be part of the process.”
Research has shown, Coop said, that athletes dealing with issues such as Na’s must resolve three key issues: They tend to over-aim, try to guide their shots and jam too much self-talk into their minds.
In Na’s case, Coop said having his caddie stand behind him to line up each shot likely adds to the pressure of lining up correctly. Consequently, Na tries to guide the ball to his target rather than letting his swing flow naturally.
“And there’s so much going on in his head, it’s jammed with different ideas,” Coop said. “It’s not like he’s doing nonsensical stuff. He’s giving it a lot of effort. But the longer this goes on, the harder it will be to remediate.”
Keefe said he sees similarities to what happens with patients with Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system.
“They keep starting things over and over because that part of the brain is deteriorated,” Keefe said. “Athletes don’t have anything wrong with their brains, but they have a build-up of bad thinking habits.”
Unlike team sports, when a golfer’s problems surface as Na’s did, there’s no place to hide.
“Golfers don’t have anywhere to go,” Keefe said. “They’re naked to the world.”
Article source: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/05/15/3243515/agony-of-anxiety-can-paralyze.html
Recent Comments