PRE-TEE-OFF ANXIETY DISORDER (P-TOAD) can be a daunting affliction affecting the most seasoned  golfers and can render potential newcomers to the game extinct if not handled with care.

While some people possess a rare confidence when performing at golf’s starting block, most feel more at home at the 19th.

Ensuring your wood makes contact with that speck of a ball ahead of an impatient crowd of regulars is enough to bring on hypertension in the best of us.

While there may be little ambition beyond getting the ball on to the course – actually making it airborne is something we can only aspire to, there is help at hand for minimizing the effects of P-TOAD for both amateurs and professionals alike.

Executive Officer of the Professional Golf Association in Perth, Stuart Kemp suggests taking your mind off how you are going to hit the ball by focusing on a target. “Pick out a target line such as a tree, a bunker or a house 200 metres to where you will hit the ball. Then just hit it. This will take the focus off hitting that first shot”.

Stuart also recommends using visualisation techniques which are practiced by the likes of Australia’s Aaron “The Hottest Rookie on the PGA” Baddley, and is as simple as closing your eyes before tee-off and visualising the ball flying down the middle of the fairway. “Take three deep breaths”, he adds, “try and relax and make the slowest swing possible. Generally you will see that you hit the ball off the tee without any problems”.

How hard can that be?

Now you have P-TOAD under control the rest is all downhill, over some bunkers, around some lakes and through a significant amount of bush.

Contrary to Mark Twain’s popular adage that “golf is a waste of a good walk”, the opportunity to experience natural bush land punctuated with bird song and the occasional roo, among modern living’s clipped environment is something to be embraced. The Japanese aren’t mad golfers for no reason and as our urban sprawl spreads further afield we will inevitably come to appreciate and even value the sport – as we do our museums.

There’s also that comfortingly primeval element golf brings to the fore, (pardon the pun), of brandishing control and mastering power over a club.

There is an addictive thrill that occurs when club and target make perfect contact and your conquest sails breathlessly into the far blue yonder.

Progress in design and feminism ensure our clubs are more streamline than those brandished by our caveman ancestors and women are no longer the
conquest sailing breathlessly comatose.

In my minimal experience with golf the elation of a good drive was the only reason I went back for more – the addiction when all the planets
line up and a light and breezy swing tinks the solid white into a long and far reaching arch.

The golfing language spat at the clunkers in between shots were all par for the course (that pun again) when in pursuit of perfection.

To understand this addiction further I approached Surf Side Ladies Club, a golfing group of women who have been teeing off together every Friday for the last 45 years. President Annette Steens spoke confidently on behalf of the 60 plus members about what attracts them to the sport.

“The outdoors, the companionship and the exercise are key elements attracting women to the sport, though it is the challenge against yourself that is the addiction” she confesses. “If you’re having a bad day it doesn’t affect anyone else but yourself and you are personally compelled to go back the next time to try and do better”.

Annette believes that raising your game to a consistently satisfying level is where the addiction perpetuates and playing becomes imperative, rain, hail or shine. “You have to play regularly to gain that consistency”, she says.

Pre T-off Anxiety aside, who could resist a sport that puts clubs in the hands of women, is addictive in a healthy way and ends in a bar with your friends?

Flourishnote: This article appeared in Issue 3 of Flourish magazine.

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