Mental practice may improve golfers' putting performance

With ground conditions and the winter season combining to reduce competitive golf to almost zero at Colchester Golf Club thoughts turn to hone the skills in the game.

Lessons are a great idea, but have the Irish found the real answer?

The research was carried out recently at the University of Limerick, in conjunction with Lero (the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software). The findings for the work carried out by Naill Ramsbottom and his fellow researchers, Eoghan McNeill, Dr Adam Toth and Dr Mark Campbell, show that golfers who already had a good 'feel" for putting, may benefit the most from this mental practice. 

"We found, kinaesthetic imagery ability - an individual's ability to imagine the feel of action without actually performing it - may have an important role in determining the effectiveness of the exercise on putting performance. Putting is a feel-based motor skill and our research suggests that those with good kinaesthetic imagery ability may perform better following this mental practice technique," explained Ramsbottom.

"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," he said.

Putting ability is crucial in golf as, depending on a golfer’s ability, over 40% of golf strokes are taken with the putter.

In undertaking the research, 44 right-handed, skilled male golfers from the Limerick area were recruited. Each of the participants was required to hold a current Golf Union of Ireland handicap.

In a laboratory environment, the golfers completed 40 putts with instructions to 'make the ball stop as close to the target as possible'. A three-dimensional ultrasound camera was used to record the putting and statistical analysis was conducted, using specialised software.

"A subset of 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. Having completed these simple exercises, 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," explained Mr Ramsbottom.

Arnold Palmer once said that golf is played in the six inches between the ears, who is to say he was wrong, not the Irish.

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