Mastering the US Masters

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Created on Tuesday, 04 September 2012 12:31

Written by Dave Pughe-Parry

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Tiger Woods and Bubba Watson were having breakfast together last year. A snippet of the conversation went like this, "You're too good not to be winning and doing this and that," says Tiger.

Bubba Watson replied, "Yeah, I understand that. But my mind just wanders. I have some stuff going on up there," 

Bubba Watson mastered that and won one of the most coveted titles in world golf, the US Masters. This is not about the fact that the American beat our South African Louis Oosthuizen in a tense play-off. This is about Bubba Watson mastering his ADHD to win the title when he needed to concentrate and not get distracted. The first thing you see on his website are the words, "I never got this far in my dreams!"

The shot he made to win the play-off was a memorable one - many thought he was mad to even try it. This is typical of the man who was famous for telling golfing great Steve Elkington to "kiss my ass." This impulsive interchange was caught on national television and so Bubba Watson became famous for something he would rather not be famous for. Sound familiar?

One day Bubba, playing with his wife and caddie at the Vaquero golf club, decided to play every one of the 77 shots with a 4-wood! This included the putts. By the way, the course is a par 71 for the rest of of us mortals.

When someone says that his behaviour is indicative of having ADHD, he readily admits to having it. His wife Angie immediately and heartily agrees.

Many top-flight athletes and sports people have ADHD. Michael Phelps who won 8 Olympic gold medals - the most ever by an individual in any sport has long been the ADHD poster-boy.

Dr Richard Coop and American education psychologist has worked with "at least eight golfers," including the flamboyant Payne Stewart a three time major winner.

A great advantage of having ADHD is being able to hyper-focus in times of great stress. This balances to some extent, the tendency to be impulsive and distracted.

The most significant point of the Bubba Watson fairy tale is that after a a single lesson from his father as a very young boy, he has never had a single golf lesson. He is completely self taught!

The quotes for this article were taken from a terrific profile piece by Jaime Diaz of The Golf Digest Magazine. The photograph is by Carl Lindberg and is published under the GNU Free Documentation License

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