Word: sports
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Rose's employment of both swing doctors and spiritual gurus on his return to top form is not unusual for a professional golfer; the debate over whether the game is best mastered through technical engineering or mental fine-tuning may be more pertinent to this sport than to any other. When Tim Gallwey published The Inner Game of Golf in 1979, in which he documented the division of a golfer's psyche into a "thinking" and a "feeling" self, he articulated what lovers of the game have long understood: there are two approaches to becoming a great golfer, and each...
...when taken to extremes. Professional practice ranges are lined with golfers hitting balls while standing on one foot or rigged up to mechanical swing aids such as metal arm braces or restrictive leg harnesses, all under the watchful eye of their earnest swing coaches. At the same time, no sport attracts more mental mumbo jumbo. Leadbetter says Argentina's Eduardo Romero credits his late-career success to yogic breathing during his swing. Spain's Ignacio Garrido said his win in the 2003 European PGA Championship stemmed from "practicing less, reading more" - particularly the works of spiritual guru Deepak Chopra...
Like athletes in all major sporting events, golfers at the Open undertake this challenge with the added pressure of intense scrutiny: spectators, TV cameras and journalists dissect every aspect of their game, and up-to-the-second scoreboards offer players the strange meta-drama of watching their own performance unfold in front of them. That said, British Open courses such as Birkdale tend to be more sparsely decorated than the courses on which U.S. majors are played: with fewer scoreboards and no JumboTrons, the Open reminds competitors that golf is essentially a lonely sport, designed to be played over...
...technique and concentration a peculiarly thrilling reward: the perfect control of a ball's trajectory over hundreds of yards, through contact that lasts less than a split second. When it all goes right, as it did for Justin Rose on the final hole at Birkdale a decade ago, no sport offers a greater sensation of mastery. It is this elusive joy that explains the golfer's endless pursuit of perfection. As Leadbetter says, "That's what it's all about in golf: the quest...
...Know your enemy - and learn about his favorite sport As far back as the 1960s, Mandela began studying Afrikaans, the language of the white South Africans who created apartheid. His comrades in the ANC teased him about it, but he wanted to understand the Afrikaner's worldview; he knew that one day he would be fighting them or negotiating with them, and either way, his destiny was tied to theirs...