Golf for the Alexandrian

by Ian McMichael

Golf by its very nature is psycho physical – the most difficult shot in golf is the six inches between your ears!

You stand over this poor innocent white ball with little to no idea of what is going to happen despite………. lessons, myriads of articles, books, pictures and…..you have even examined and watched the greatest players in the world and yet………. After all how can we hope to hit the ball at the correct speed, time, angle – all in total co-ordination – mission impossible. And…………we continue to try!

Golf is truly a mind sport – of course the physical aspect does play a vital role but – and this is vital – you have to trust yourself and the swing you have developed over sooooooooooooo long and that, well………….here is the problem. We all want to play the best shot, every time and, of course, we can’t.

I picked up a most interesting article written by a well known and respected golf teacher in the USA:

"I’ve come to understand that the yips are a motor-sensory disorder. The brain stops processing the motor skill commands for a certain movement. To fix it, you can’t try to do the same thing you were doing before. You have to do something different. You have to create a new pathway in your brain for the task. It took a dose of golf reality to make me understand how wrong my approach was – after struggling off the tee for 20 years".
Driver Yips – ex Golf Digest, August 2004 - by Hank Haney - no. 5 golf teacher in the USA .

From this you can see that without stopping and allowing the possibility of new habits to take place, the golfer will automatically revert back to his/her old habit. Even if that person is a world famous golf teacher! Even the axiom “teacher teach thyself” doesn’t apply!

Set out below is another article ... from 'Golf and Life' – a book written by Jack Nicklaus and Dr. John Tickell…from pages 118/119.
“There are six hundred or so muscles and one hundred and eighty or more joints in your body and they can all hurt. The spine is the most critical piece in the whole setup if you want longevity on a golf course.

The spine is able to move, flex, extend and rotate because of the discs between the vertebrae. The discs are like rubber sponges between the chunks of bone. A disc comes with two parts – a firmer capsule and an internal substance similar to very thick toothpaste. When you prolapse or herniate a disc, the capsule spills and some of the toothpaste oozes out and impinges on the nerves, causing pain and spasm.  The spinal nerve column is a bunch of nerves that run down from the brain stem, and nerve branches come out of the spine and supply all the muscles, joints and organs in your system. It is absolutely imperative that you look after your spine and the core muscles and ligaments that hold everything together.”

Need I go any further or are we convinced that golf, by its very nature, deserves a huge Alexander Technique dose?