Daydreaming about golf could shave shots off your handicap

FRUSTRATED golfers catching up on highlights of the day’s play on their wintry evening commutes while longing to be out on the course might feel their game is sliding away.

The most committed will get the driver out and hit the range, desperately working on their swing in preparation for those balmy summer nights.

But watching the pros on your mobile phone or daydreaming about sinking that birdie putt can actually reduce your handicap, a study has found.

Scientists from the University of Limerick (UL) and Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Software Research Centre, discovered kinaesthetic ability – how well someone is able to feel an action without actually performing it – can help a person’s golf game.

Niall Ramsbottom, a research assistant at UL and Lero, said: “Our results indicate that a form of mental practice, i.e. the combination of action observation and motor imagery, may enhance the golf putting ability of experienced golfers, and that could well mean a reduction in a golfer’s handicap.”

Around 40 per cent of golf strokes – and many of the most important ones – are taken with a putter. According to the Professional Golf Association, it is among the most significant skills in determining how much a golfer earns.

The study, published in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise, indicates that golfers who already have a good “feel” for putting may benefit the most from mental practice.

Mr Ramsbottom said: “We found, kinaesthetic imagery ability ... may have an important role in determining the effectiveness of the exercise on putting performance. The findings suggest that simply viewing a video of another performing an action may bolster one’s ability to imagine and subsequently perform that action.”

The authors recruited 44 righthanded, skilled male golfers for the study. They each completed 40 putts in a laboratory, with instructions to “make the ball stop as close to the target as possible”. A 3D ultrasound camera was used to record the putting.

Mr Ramsbottom added: “A subset of

‘Viewing a video of another performing an action may bolster one’s ability to ... perform that action’

golfers looked at an action observation video which consisted of an expert golfer performing the putting task in the same lab environment. They did so while listening to a motor imagery script consisting of short sentences describing key visual and kinaesthetic feelings associated with performing the putting the task.

“The golfers who were found to have better kinaesthetic imagery (KI) ability benefited more from the mental practice intervention than those with poorer KI ability.”

Arnold Palmer famously said that golf is a sport played in “the six inches between the ears”. It turns out he was more right than he thought.