Hi everyone, 

We have some brilliant offers on in the shop at the moment. To name but a few, we have free ball personalisation from Titleist when your purchase a minimum of one dozen balls from their entire range - order yours on my website here. Then there is the £50 cashback offer from Motocaddy when you purchase a Motocaddy electric trolley with a Lithium battery between now and Christmas. Amazing!

As you all know, I often make comment about the Tour scene which is obviously relevant as it influences the equipment and other facets of our game. However, as someone who has always watched and been involved in other sports, it is interesting sometimes to look at a wider range of sports especially when you believe they may have some relevance to your main one.


English Sport

Having just watched a fantastic Rugby World Cup (lots of you will be aware I played a lot of rugby in my mid-20s for Thanet Wanderers), which for the most part did not involve the England team, and then, thanks to the wonder of Sky TV, recently watching a dismal display from England in three test matches (go on argue with me on that one), yesterday I watched an exhilarating first day in the test match between Australia and New Zealand. I now find myself contemplating the English disease in sport.

What disease? Well, once again, I have to say that these are not just my thoughts but I totally agree with them. It has been written by others that we suffer from a fear of losing that certain nations do not. That is to say we get so worried about making mistakes, of trying things that may be fantastic but could prove costly, that it paralyses us so that we defend at all costs and eventually end up losing, which is exactly what we were trying to avoid! 

English football reeks of this: Please don't say English football is doing well by the way - we've just qualified from the easiest group in history so we cannot argue something very positive there. I can remember one game - ONE GAME - in all the years I have watched England play football where I thought we were truly positive against good opposition, which was against Germany in the famous 5-1 win. 

In rugby we were blessed in 2003 with a great team that pretty much disintegrated after that World Cup and we have struggled since. English cricket is the best example of our disease: It is fundamentally a team game made up of lots of individual performances. I have watched for many years our captains in particular miss opportunities to attack when they should, including declarations, instead always erring on the side of caution. I have witnessed batsman who have made records in county cricket suddenly dry up when on the international scene (Mark Ramprakash, Graham Hick to name just a couple). This of course does not always happen but it is common. And this, of course, can only be highlighted when you compare us with others. 

Australia have a conveyer belt of winners in almost everything despite actually being quite a small nation numbers-wise. They go for wins and have world champions in so many sports. I use them as an example as they are the country which demonstrates a positive edge more than any other to me.


So what I hear you ask? 

Well I think the first part to changing how we act and perform is to realise our weaknesses and to own up to them. How many of you recently (and I know it's a number) have had either a round where you scored around 10-12 points on the front nine followed by 20+ points on the back, or the complete opposite?

Why is this? 

One of my best ever back nines was at Mid Kent a few years ago when I was seven-over after nine holes and cursing myself for how bad I'd played. At that point it didn't matter what I did because I was out of it. So I relaxed - and shot 29 back! For some reason I don't seem to suffer the other way - if I'm playing well I seem to keep it up but I can definitely say I've felt the fear of messing up a good round on a number of occasions. Sometimes we are playing well and put ourselves under pressure from the word go, mess up early on and then relax, hence the low - high points change. The opposite is the feeling of pressure that a good round puts on us and it can paralyse us.

My Conclusion

My argument is that we, as a nation, are scared of failure and it causes exactly that sometimes. We can do something about that as individuals. Recognise how you feel - it's ok. Now understand what it might do to you. Why are we worried? What is the worst that can happen? Feel the fear and do it anyway (that's a famous book by the way so it must be right!). Most importantly, be ok with it going wrong. Allow yourself to make the odd mistake but don't let it worry you so that you mess things up - you might, but you might also play fantastic! Just a thought for you all that might just help!