IMPOSSIBLE TO INEVITABLE
WHY MENTAL TOUGHNESS IN SPORT IS KEY AND THE INSIDE STORY ON CLARKE’S MAJOR WIN
DARREN CLARKE’S victory at Royal St George’s in 2011 will go down in history as one of the most remarkable performances in Open history.
He won his first Major by three shots from American duo Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, with rounds of 68, 68, 69 and 70.
But one of the biggest factors in Clarke’s surprising win, in which he became the oldest Open champion since Roberto De Vicenzo in 1967, was not his ability to play stunning long irons into a howling wind or put up with the torrential rain that was the order of the week in Sandwich, it was his desire to provide a moment of pure joy with his family some six months later.
In 2011, Clarke was working with mind coach Michael Finnigan, the founder and CEO of i2i, who has helped numerous stars and franchises from all sports with their mental approach, expectations and goal-setting.
It was not the first time Finnigan had worked with Clarke either, as they first paired up in 1998.
And even then, Finnigan says Clarke’s career goals and talent were obvious.
He said: “I first worked with Darren in 1998 and we’ve worked together a few times. Back then, I believe Darren thought he would retire from the game as a Major champion.
“He was so supremely talented but there were aspects of people around him not treating him the way they should, in terms of somebody who was capable of winning the game’s biggest prizes.
“As soon as we started working together it was obvious that his self-concept was of a high achiever. It was never a technical thing with Darren, it was just getting him to say and believe he was that good.
“I had to move his mindset from one of, ‘I am that good BUT will I ever get there?’ to, ‘I am that good AND I will get there’.
“That sounds fairly simple but at that time he was 29 and had built his mindset over that 29 years.
“But in 18 months working with me, he was world No.7 and had beaten Tiger Woods in the World Matchplay final.”
The late, great Arnold Palmer once said that, “Success in golf depends less on strength of body than upon strength of mind and character”.
And 14-time Major winner Tiger Woods was credited with being mentally stronger than his counterparts at the peak of his powers in the early 2000s, with commentators often talking of the fear other players felt merely seeing Woods’ name up on the leaderboard.
How, then, do the players competing for the game’s biggest and most prestigious titles – along with millions of pounds in prize money – keep focused and their minds strong?
Finnigan has spent the last two decades helping sporting stars and teams – football’s Bolton Wanderers and Wigan Athletic, Super League’s Wigan Warriors, South Africa’s cricket team, snooker’s Jimmy White and Olympic bronze medal gymnast Nile Wilson to name a few – achieve their dreams and make the impossible, inevitable.
He added: “We call our company Impossible2Inevitable. Impossible means set impossible goals for yourself and then develop a mindset which makes them inevitable.
“A lot of my clients say that I make them feel good, they think that I somehow, through what I’m saying, fill them with self-belief.
“Without saying it, they just like being with me. That’s what they think.
“What they probably don’t realise, or don’t give enough importance to, is that I’m doing stuff with them and teaching them the tools they need to succeed.” Making people feel good will only get them so far, though. To make a difference at the elite level of world sport takes time and dedication not only from the athletes themselves but from the whole teams around them.
Finnigan takes his clients through a thorough 10-step mental process, a “kit” as he calls it, in order to drill down into the deepest parts of their minds. This is where he finds the answers to the biggest questions. In 2011, Clarke was struggling and, having worked with Finnigan before, he knew the one man who could help him rediscover his form. Finnigan said: “Darren finished
last at an event over in Morocco and was left devastated.
“That result dropped him to 150th in the world and it was the turning point. He got his agent, Chubby Chandler, to phone me and ask if we could work together again. Of course, I didn’t hesitate.
“We met in April 2011, having not worked together in 11 years. I went over to Portrush and took him through the same process and mental tests and exercises I had back in 1998.
“So I didn’t teach him anything new. I just reminded him of what I first taught him.”
But what about the moment of pure joy that was the driving force behind his Major moment?
Finnigan added: “When I went back to work with him in 2011, Darren was very clear that he wanted to win a Major that season.
“What was very clear in his mind was that he hadn’t been invited to the Masters for a few years and he said that on Christmas morning he would tell his family that he had his invite for the 2012 event at Augusta.
“The invites go out in December and Darren said he’d keep the fact he’d received his invite a secret until everybody was sat around eating Christmas dinner. “Our focus was on what we had to do to make that happen. “From a psychology point of view, there was something about him and his demeanour that told me he meant it and that he was serious and that it was time. So all that stuff we’d done over 12 or 13 years was going to come to fruition.
“We talked very clearly about being invited back to the Masters as a Major champion. That was the very specific goal. That was it. And we didn’t talk about anything else.
“And I thought, looking at him, that there was no other way things were going to pan out – which is crazy.”
Shortly after starting to work with Finnigan again, Clarke won the Iberdrola Open in Majorca by three shots – his first victory in just short of three years. Two months later, it was The Open at Royal St George’s. “Darren said things to me during that week like, ‘This is my time’,” said Finnigan. “And for me, that was a hallelujah moment. It was like the seven-year-old boy who dreamed of winning The Open had finally decided this was the time. “It was a sense of destiny. And a sense of inevitability. “It’s amazing when you’re in that bubble with him and you see people around him treating him like a mad Irishman who thinks he can win The Open at the age of 42.
“But I was there and I could tell they couldn’t see what I could see in him. I was seeing a guy who knew that this was it.
“And when you get in that zone, all I could see in him was inevitability. I saw a man who believed in his own destiny and believed it was going to happen there and then.
“I just wish I could have put some money on him!
“He felt like the g a me owed him and it was his time to take it.”