From the hearth: An interview with psychologist and author Dr. Gay Hendricks. His latest book is his first directly dealing with golf although it also delves into other matters. A review of Conscious Golf appears in this edition's Light Reading section. Another of his books, Conscious Breathing, in which I recall a very brief golf mention, is also excellent.

The Hearthstone Review: One concept of sports psychology accepted almost universally I was surprised to learn you don't endorse - visualization. What's the danger to projecting a positive result?

Dr. Gay Hendricks: I think it can be useful up to a point, but the problem that I've noticed is that it takes you out of the present. It takes you out of the now and the absolute most important thing in golf and in business and, in many ways in life itself, is focus. You've got to have the ability to have that clear, sensitive focus on the present. And I've noticed in a lot of people that get into visualization what happens also is that when the ball doesn't go where they visualized it to go, they feel immediate disappointment. Then they have to recover from that for their next shot.

So I think it's a good idea to have a general feel of where you want the ball to go but not an attachment, not so much as a clear visual picture but a feel for it so when you hit the ball you can immediately learn from where it actually went rather than feeling that sense of irritation and disappointment that it didn't go exactly where you wanted.

The Hearthstone Review: What you're talking about in a closely-related way is our expectations. They can be lethal.

Gay Hendricks: Absolutely. The way we say it around here, we have a saying that expectation is rooted in fear. In other words, when you've got an expectation that you're attached to, underneath it you're scared about something. You're scared you're not going to make the shot you want. Or you're scared your relationship isn't going to go the way you want. So the best thing to do is acknowledge that fear and to let go of the expectation. And put that clear focus right on the ball.

The Hearthstone Review: Let's talk about choking. From Greg Norman noting he had difficulty drawing a breath during the final round of the 1996 Masters to this comment from Sam Snead following a U.S. Open round: "I was so tight you couldn'ta drove flaxseed down my throat with a knot maul." In Sam's colorful way, he suggests a physical component to what we call choking, isn't that right?

Gay Hendricks: There really is. Nature, God bless her, has given us two different breathing patterns. One is designed for fight or flight situations when we're scared and need to run and another is designed for ease and harmony and flow. One of the things we do in our seminars is we show people both breathing patterns so they can recognize when they're going into the fight or flight pattern. Now, people like Tiger Woods have a magnificent ability to breath in a certain way and we've actually copied that breathing pattern and teach it to people now because he and several others among the better golfers have a way of breathing when they hit the ball and just before they hit the ball that allows them to be in that state of flow and harmony when they make contact with the ball.

People like Tiger…have a magnificent ability to breath in a certain way and we've actually copied that breathing pattern and teach it…