This month's golf news and features

ACE FOR PER ERICSSON

Our vice chairman achieved his first hole in one at the 7th hole at Royal Ratchaburi with a wedge on 20th May.
Our thanks to Ross McWilliams, who on his annual visit donated 3 bottles of very special liquer, produced by his families’ winery in New South Wales Australia.
Received with thanks by John Stuart and Wolfgang who each won a 36 hole competition.
The Pattaya trip on 7th July is almost fully subscribed.
Our now annual Ryder Shield with the Phuket Expat Golf Society will be played in August here in Hua Hin, details will be published in next month’s issue.
The annual charity scramble and Christmas Dinner will be held on Friday 19th December. the Dusit Hotel will be the host for the evening, and probably Palm Hills will be the venue for the golf tournament, confirmation in the August issue.
RECENT RESULTS: 20th May at Royal Ratchaburi 22 players one group. 1st John Stuart 42 pts 22 hcp, 2nd Wit 39 pts 14 hcp, 3rd Boom 38pts, 21 hcp. 23rd May at Milford, 22 players one group, 1st Sam Sheriff 37 pts, 21 hcp, 2nd Wit 36 pts 12 hcp, 3rd Nit 35 pts 20 hcp. 27th May at Sawang, 19 players one group, 1st Monta 43 pts, 26 hcp, 2nd Fritz 41 pts 12 hcp. 30th May at Springfield 26 players one group, 1st Fritz 40 pts, 10 hcp, 2nd Larry English 39 pts 7 hcp, 3rd Wolfgang 37 pts, 26 hcp. 3rd June at Palm Hills 27 players one group. 1st Tip 42 pts, 16 hpc, 2nd Ross McWilliams 39 pts, 24 hcp, 3rd Berny 39 pts 16 hpc. 6th June at Lake View 32 players A group 0-18 hcp, 1st Peter Dunne 41 pts 6 hcp, 2nd Malcolm Taylor 39 pts 15 hcp, B group 19-36 hcp, 1st Han Hackvoort, 2nd John Stuart 41 pts 19 hcp. 10th June at Majestic Creek 27 players one group, 1st Dan Hughes 41 pts, 14 hcp, 2nd Mick Evans 41 pts 10 hcp, 3rd Mick Wittering 40 pts 7 hpc, 13th June at Milford, 2 ball scramble 13 teams, 1st Peter Gouldby / Sam Sheriff 57.2 net 11.8 hcp, 2nd Fritz / Boom 57.4 net, 13.6 hcp.

FIXTURES FOR JULY
Tues 1st Palm Hills
Fri 4th Milford
Pattaya Trip
Mon 7th Vintage
Tues 8th Laem Chabang
Wed 9th Bangpra Int.
Friday 11th T.B.N.
Tues 15th Royal Hua Hin
Fri 18th Springfield
Tues 22nd Majestic Creek
Fri 25th Lake View
Tues 29th Royal Ratchaburi

Bottling It!

by John McVey
Mick Wittering knows the feeling well: an inescapable sense that no matter what he does or thinks, the little white ball will not roll where he so desperately wants it to.
"It's very easy to convince yourself that you're going to miss a putt," says Mick, a professional golf-club maker at the Custom Club Makers. "It's like walking in quicksand. The more you struggle, the deeper you go."
Almost everyone, from Olympic athletes to public speakers, goes through the humbling experience Mick describes: crumbling under pressure - or, as it's more brutally known, bottling it!
Mick battled through his problem by altering his routine, tweaking his stroke and adjusting his mind-set. But performing under pressure remains a murky, poorly understood enterprise.
Should you calm yourself down or psych yourself up? Should you focus on the task at hand, or think about something unrelated? Why do some people fall to pieces when the stakes are high, while others function better than ever?
The phenomenon fascinates people; just last month, millions agonised with Len Mattiace as he botched an approach shot, a chip and a putt, and lost the Masters playoff to Mike Weir.
Now, using golfers, goalies, marksmen and other sports figures as guinea pigs, scientists are trying to pinpoint what happens in the brains and bodies of people trying to do their best when the chips are down.
"The knowledge that we get will relate to all those who are performing under pressure, whether they're pilots or golfers or ICU nurses," says Dr Aynsley Smith, director of Sports Psychology Research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Soldiers in combat may eventually benefit, too. Scientists at the Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland are planning a study that will use a room-size video projection system to replicate the pressure of a firefight.
Smith has studied pressure for 10 years, examining golfers, hockey goalies and musicians. Her findings often contradict the advice that coaches offer before a big game.
For example, in eight years of observing high school and minor-league goalies, she found that their heart rates often average more than 170 beats a minute - extremely fast, considering that they spend so much time standing relatively still. Although far from calm, most performed well.
"I used to try to teach the goalies to relax," says Smith, who has advised several college and National Hockey League teams. "But it's not about being relaxed. It's about learning to deal with not being relaxed."
Now, instead of telling players to try to calm down, she counsels them to enjoy, or at least accept, the adrenaline rush.
This summer, Smith plans a study of golfers - a putting tournament that pits bottlers against non-bottlers. During the contest, participants will be hooked to devices measuring brain waves, heart rate and other physiological indicators.
Problems with pressure may stem from focusing too much. Some scientists now suspect that success requires concentrating less, not more.
"Pressure prompts you to pay attention to what you're doing," says Michigan State University psychologist Sian Beilock.
"For people who are highly skilled, this is a bad idea."
Walking, she says, is a good example. "If you're going down the street and I ask you to pay attention to how you're bending your knee, then you'll probably slow down, or you might stumble."
In a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Beilock tested this hypothesis by telling a group of golfers that if they didn't make enough putts, their partners would lose prize money they had earned.
Faced with this scenario, most golfers did much worse than they had without the added pressure.
"Peer pressure is always a good stressor," Beilock says with a laugh.
But one group did better - those who had undergone a previous training session where they were videotaped. Beilock's theory: The pressure-filled training taught them not to pay extra attention when the stakes increased.
Because the sport is so filled with opportunities to "bottle it", researchers gravitate to golf as a lens into high-stakes behaviour.
In one study, Mayo Clinic researcher Debbie Crews used 41 electrodes per golfer to measure brain waves, muscle tension and heart rate. To raise the stakes, each golfer received a finger prick from a small needle every time they missed a putt.
She found that the best putters had a distinctive brain wave pattern. In the seconds leading up to the putt, the left side of their brains - which controls logical and analytical processing - was active. Then, just before the subject putted, the left side quieted and the right side - which controls spatial orientation, timing and balance - became more active.
"It's this beautiful balance between the two hemispheres," she says.
Bottlers exhibited a different pattern - their left lobes never shut down, possibly obstructing the work of the right brain.
A recent look at top marksmen seems to support this theory. In 2001, University of Maryland sports psychology Professor Brad Hatfield studied two groups of skilled shooters competing under pressure. The brains of clutch shooters showed less communication between the left temporal area, which controls analysis and language, and the prefrontal area, which signals muscles to act.
There is hope, though, for people with pushy left hemispheres. Crews, who consults with professional and college golfers, teaches biofeedback techniques that allow pressure-challenged duffers to generate the proper brain wave pattern. After changing the ratio and timing of right and left hemisphere activity, their performance improves, she says.
Simply getting people to acknowledge a pressure problem is often difficult, Crews says. Some worry that simply talking about the dilemma will pour fuel on the fire.
"They don't want the label (of bottler) because that adds to the pressure," she says.
Hatfield foresees a time when science will offer a simpler solution. In the next five to 10 years, he says, improved technology, particularly wireless advances, will allow golfers, basketball players, soldiers and pilots to discover, and adjust, "where their heads are at."
During practice and in competition, players might wear miniature brain and heart monitors, evaluating their mental performance as easily as they now gauge how fast they run or high they leap.
"Coaches will know whether a player is in the proper frame of mind," Hatfield says. "And if not, the athlete will have the technology to attain that frame of mind."
The right frame of mind can be found in a different type of bottle maybe!

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