After what must be an insane amount of media pressure, Tiger Woods issued a statement saying, “I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf. I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father, and person.”
Karl posted a video recently about the importance of developing mental toughness in golf, part of which involves developing (and keeping separate) your real self and your performer self.
Most golfers suffer because they don’t have a good distinction between who they are as a person, and what they are doing (playing golf).
So if they feel like a champion when they play well, they feel like nobody when it all falls apart – which puts them under too much pressure on the course to perform well.
Tiger’s statement recognises that he has allowed his performer self (‘Tiger’) to blend into his real/family self (‘Eldrick’). He has taken Tiger home with him and lost the sense of his ‘real self’.
And although Tiger’s blurring of real and performer self is the opposite to most people (who take their ‘real self’ on the course) – the effect is the same.
Like the rest of the golfing world, we can only hope that he can find and strengthen his real self quickly so that his performer self can come back and play more great golf.
Please leave your comments below.
Kind regards,
Rob
Rob Woodgate
Mind Factor Coach
Ps – Try the Players Coaching programme for 60 days and if for any reason during that time, you are not delighted with the results, you’ll get 100% of your money back. No Questions Asked!
What do you think? Please comment below to tell me.
on Dec 17th, 2009 at 11:26 AM
[...] had a chance to guest post about Tiger Woods announcement to break from professional golf. Here is what he said: After what must be an insane amount of media [...]