Tag: sports psychology

Swinney apologizes for ‘on suicide watch’ comment

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney said his team’s sports psychiatrist was “probably on suicide watch” following the Tigers’ loss to Miami.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney apologized on Sunday for a comment he made about his team’s sports psychiatrist being “on suicide watch” after the Tigers fell to Miami in double overtime on Saturday night.

Speaking to the media, Swinney said that it was poor judgment on his part to make that joke.

“That was such a poor attempt at humor on my part, and just a really bad choice of words in a bad moment and certainly not something I should say, and I absolutely apologize for that,” Swinney said.

The veteran head coach added that his program is “very deliberate about what we do about mental health around here.”

Swinney’s apology comes after he was asked if his team would employ a sports psychiatrist in light of the Tigers’ struggles on the field and their heartbreaking losses this season.

“We’ve got him. He’s probably on suicide watch right now,” Swinney said Saturday night. “We got him, but again, sometimes, things don’t go your way.”

Clemson lost 28-20 to Miami on the road on Saturday, blowing a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter and turning the ball over three times. With the loss, the Tigers moved to 4-3 (2-3 ACC) on the year and are out of ACC Championship contention.

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Max Homa’s new secret weapon? A sports psychologist

“I think it will be a momentous part of my journey in this game,” Homa said.

SAN DIEGO – Confidence is knowing your best golf is still to come.

Max Homa, who won the Farmers Insurance Open on Saturday for his second PGA Tour title of the young 2022-23 season, is off to the best start of his career and credited his recent success to his new secret weapon: a sports psychologist.

Homa began working with Julie Elion, who is best known in the golf world for working with the likes of Phil Mickelson and helping Jimmy Walker win a major, late last year and the results have been immediate.

“The confidence is becoming more steady. I’ve been working with a sports psychologist, Julie, who has – I mean the last two months have opened my eyes to a lot of things,” he said in his winner’s press conference. “Having a plan each day mentally. I didn’t go into a single round this week thinking about a technical goal or a statistical goal, it was I’m going to learn something today, I’m going to put in place what I’ve been working on, and today that’s what I did. I did a great job of it.”

What’s in the bag? Check out Max Homa’s golf gear

Speaking on the No Laying Up podcast, Homa detailed how on the 17th hole at Congaree in South Carolina during the final round of CJ Cup, his caddie, Joe Greiner, had something he wanted to address. He suggested Homa talk to a sports psychologist.

“I had tried that in the past and I didn’t like it,” Homa said. “The way he put it was I’m not tapping into a big facet of the game. Skill-wise, talent-wise, myself included, we’ve been working at this for so long there’s only so much I can better at incrementally I can get better at in this game.”

Homa has been open about how he can sometimes be his own worst enemy. Speaking at the Tour Championship in August after a round of 62 where the stars aligned, he said, “I felt like I deserved to play well, and I wasn’t even letting myself in the first place,” he said. “I get over, hit a great drive, a great 9-iron to 10 feet and think, ‘I have to make this.’ You just did two great things. Why don’t you just see what happens and trust that you’ve put in the work…

“This is how I am, unfortunately. But I think a lot of us are.”

Greiner, who is a childhood friend of Homa’s and has been on his bag for all six of Homa’s victories since 2018 (along with one win with Kevin Chappell), has witnessed the growth in Homa’s confidence in his own abilities.

“It’s really easy to fake-believe that you’re a really good player but now he walks around and you can just tell that he knows when he plays well he’s going to contend and he should be one of the best players in the world,” Greiner said. “He was always so hard on himself. He knows that his good is good enough and it is a lot easier for him to walk down the fairways and know he doesn’t need to be perfect.”

A key to Homa’s victory at Torrey Pines, where he shot a final-round 66 to win by two, was gutting out a 71 in the third round when he played solidly but couldn’t get the putts to fall. But rather than lose focus and mope, he did enough to hang around and trusted his game heading into the final round. When Elion texted to see if he wanted to talk, Homa responded that he was “all good.”

“Trust your game,” he said. “(Friday) was a bigger day towards the end goal than today really was because I had it, I had my game, I played awesome, swung it great, just did not make anything. Held it together and shot 1 under and gave myself a chance today to go play the same round of golf and let the ball go in the hole,” he said.

Homa is just scratching the surface in his work with Elion. Could it be the final piece in the puzzle for Homa to win his first major, where in 12 major starts as a pro he has recorded just one top-20 finish and missed the cut seven times?

“I think it will be a momentous part of my journey in this game,” Homa said. “I had never worked on my mental game the way (Joe) was talking about it. He said, ‘I’m not telling you this because I think you’re broken, I’m telling you this because I think it can boost us real high in this game of golf.”

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Why professional golfers seek out mental performance coaches vs. sports psychologists

Often times golfers struggle with the pressures of the game and may not even realize it.

It’s no secret that great golf comes from between the ears. Often times golfers struggle with the pressures of the game and may not even realize it. There are many factors that go into the mental game of golf like how you talk to yourself or how you visualize a shot.

Jamie Glazier is an Australian Mental Performance Coach (NLP Master Practitioner), specializing in the sport of golf for nearly 20 years. We asked him why some golfers prefer to seek mental performance coaches vs. sports psychologists.

Sports psychology and mental performance coaching can overlap at times, but both practices focus on enhancing an athlete’s cognitive performance and ability to remain focused and calm during high-pressure situations. All athletes face systemic elements that play an important role of an athlete’s performance.

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This topic is controversial to some. but you may be wondering what that main differences of the two are. It’s important to note that mental performance coaches are not psychologists.

“I would clarify the difference by saying a sports psychologist comes from a clinical background that targets any persistent or distressing life problems that can cause stress, anxiety, or depression,” said Glazier. “A Mental Performance Coach focuses more on looking at where the athlete currently is at, their cognitive behaviors and looking forward to what the athlete would like to achieve or what patterns they would like to change.”

Many golfers seek out Mental Performance Coaches over sports psychologists because they provide a more practical structure to the athletes mental game training program. They can provide exercises to help build a specific cognitive function that can aid the golfer in closing out a round of golf without letting the pressure interrupt a streak of good play.

Some players may solely want to focus on the sport and don’t have any past trauma or outside issues they want to address and don’t need the psychology aspect of help.

“Some of the key areas I work in with a golfer are expectation management, enhancing focus, self-belief, achieving clarity, cognitive flexibility, enhancing commitment with shots, self-identity/athletic identity and achieving a balance between life and golf just to name a few,” said Glazier.

Glazier offers an online training platform for elite and club level golfers where they can begin to build their mental game with approximately eight courses, a members forum and weekly mental game tips. 

You can learn more at www.mentalmastery.com.au.

You can listen to Glazier’s podcast, “The Mental Mastery Golf Podcast” here.

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