Five years ago at the venue of this year’s Open Championship, Louis Oosthuizen secured his first major win. During his composed and clinical play commentators noticed a small red dot drawn on to his glove.
Afterwards Louis revealed that it was in fact a trigger shown to him by his psychologist, Karl Morris, which enabled him to engage his pre-shot routine effectively throughout the tournament.
IGPN caught up with Louis ahead of his return to St Andrews to find out more…
Q. Can you explain a bit about the red-dot concept and what it was designed to do?
“I had it on my glove to have a focus point to start my routine. It could have been any colour, but red we thought was like a stop sign; stop what you are doing and focus on the next shot.”
Q. How did Karl help you identify this and build it in to your game?
“I worked with Karl Morris for 1 or 2 weeks to work on a routine, nothing other than that, just on the routine side of my game.”
Q. How much do you think the idea assisted you throughout that week?
“Well I still needed to play well, but obviously that helped me get into the right frame of mind before I hit every shot.”
Q. Do you still use this concept or something similar when playing now?
“No I do not use that concept anymore, but I got myself into a routine after that. I do not need the trigger as I know now before a shot to stand a few seconds to focus on what I want to do.”
Q. How do you feel about returning to St Andrews five years on from your Open Championship win?
“I’m really looking forward to playing a golf course I love at my favourite place in the world. Hopefully the game is there and I play well this week.”
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