Golf A stroke of luck For Tiger Woods, the final round of a tournament has to be played in a red shirt, described by his mother Kultida as his power colour.
Dermot Gilleece relates the notorious superstitions of many of our top golfers For Tiger Woods, the final round of a tournament had to be played in a red shirt, described by his mother Kultida as his power colour. For Seve Ballesteros, it was a navy-blue sweater and slacks, along with a number four golf-ball as a protection against three-putting. Tom Weiskopf and Jack Nicklaus liked to play with three pennies [cents] in their pocket, while Weiskopf always used a broken tee on a par three. The fact is that tournament golfers as a group are notoriously superstitious, even though Len Zaichkowsky, an American professor of sports psychology, believes it can have a damaging effect on performance. As he puts it: ‘You are relinquishing belief in your own abilities to some ‘unknown power’ or luck.’ According to Chambers dictionary, superstition is ‘any belief or attitude based on ignorance, that is inconsistent with the known laws of science or with what is generally considered in particular society as true and rational.’ In that context, how does one categorise the beliefs of Gary Player who claimed that God had ordained he would win the modern Grand Slam of the US Open, British Open, US Masters and PGA Championship? The great deed was actually achieved at the US Open at Bellerive, St Louis, in 1965, after a play-off with Kel Nagle. Before the championship
got under way, however, Player claimed that his name appeared, clear as daylight, in gold letters at the top of the leaderboard. And to what should we attribute this - superstition or to devout religious belief ? Professor Zaichkowsky claims that such beliefs serve no useful purpose, even though they might have been adopted with the intention of reducing anxiety. ‘Superstitions have always been prominent among sports people,’ he says, ‘but the idea that a particular object or behaviour brings luck and causes you to play well, is a non-scientific attribution to success or failure.’ All of which is very plausible. But perhaps the good professor will riddle me this: for 71 holes of the 1970 British Open Championship, Doug Sanders stuck with his long-established practice of not using a white tee. On the fateful 72nd hole, however, he made the curious decision to place a white tee in the ground. And the rest, as they say, is history: Sanders missed a two-and-a-foot putt for the title and went on to lose an 18-hole play-off to Nicklaus. Interestingly, Britain’s Laura Davies has a distinct preference for white tees. Indeed, she has been known, en route to a tournament venue, to drive back to her hotel so as to replenish her supply. Then there was Notah Begay, the full-blooded Native American who, before progressing Senior Times l May - June 2020 l www.seniortimes.ie 52
