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Tilbake
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19.05 Alexander Noren:
Han har et poeng - disiplin i treningen.
Ingen vei utenom
Alexander Noren har hatt suksess på golfbanen han er ivrig ute på nettet. Han
gikk på Oklahoma State Universitetet. Der var det hardt kjør for å bli god.
Coachen lå heller ikke på latsiden. College golf er en god måte å bli god i golf
på.
Her er en artikkel han har skrevet på sin blogg som mange av våre beste juniorer
har lest.
18 november 2009 skrev han følgende:
A lot of you seem interested in hearing more about my time in college and in
particular about the golf coach I had there. I'm gonna try my best to tell some
stories and give a hint of how our golf was over there at Oklahoma State
University (OSU).
Team's schedule on a normal day:
6.30-7.30: Workout (4 times a week plus individually on weekends)
8.30-12.00: School classes
13.30-18.30: Golf practice
Our Coach's schedule:
6.00-7.30: Workout (7 days a week)
8.00-12.00: Work
13.00-until last player leaves practice: Golf coaching
As you can see, we all worked pretty hard. But, I think our coach worked harder
than us players.
The first year was very tough. Everything was new and I felt a little out of
place. We were 10 players on the team but only 5 play each tournament so the
competition was very good. I struggled with an injury during the first semester
(fall) but got to play in the spring but didn't manage many top results. My game
got better each year and I improved in the rankings and also improved my
position within the team.
Our coach's main goal was to win NCAA (National Collegiate Athlete's
Association) titles, but he also wanted to prepare us for professional golf. He
was the most competetive person I've ever met and I don't think I'll ever meet
anyone more competetive either. He has been very successful over his 30 years of
coaching at OSU. To sum up what he believed in:
1. Never have any excuses, nobody cares about hearing them anyway.
2. Always tell your score and nothing else, nobody cares how you did it.
3. Always perform to your full potential, if you don't you choose not to do it.
4. You should be able to shoot low in any kind of weather.
5. Never give up.
To make us learn these things, he trained us hard all day, every day.
We usually had 4 rounds of team qualification before each tournament to decide
which 5 players get to play. If the weather was too good at a qualifying day, he
usually changed it to a day when the weather was supposed to be bad. He loved it
when it rained really hard and the wind was strong. He thought golf was to easy
when it was calm and sunny.
Our college course (karstencreek.com) was a brutal test of golf. I remember
after playing my first qualifying round we all gathered in a ring and coach
pointed his finger to each player asking for the scores. 71, 75, 69, and so on.
Then to me, 80. He looked at me and just sighed. He then glanced away onto the
next player. I felt very low and I understood where I have gotten. I had to get
better. I did get better but I recorded many more rounds in the 80's during my 4
years of qualifying.
If anybody would add one single word after telling his score when coach asked
him, he was given a lesson by coach saying that "nobody cares how you played.
Just tell your score and nothing more". If you kept making excuses or saying you
finished well after a bad start you were given a punishment workout which was
not pleasant. We all learned very quickly.
Coach thought you should perform to your maximum potential in every area of life.
The three main areas for us players during our college years were in most
important order (to coach), school, golf and then workout. I peferred playing
golf over studying though and got benched during a great stretch of tournaments
including Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Las Vegas because he thought I could have done
better in school the previous semester. The same for golf. He tought a player
underperforming chooses to underperform. Most teachers and coaches will tell a
player who just had a bad round to forget it and wish him/her better luck next
time. Not our coach.
If he saw someone slacking during a workout, he gave him a lesson to always try
your hardest or go to another college where they allow slacking off. He was very
direct. You always knew what was going on, which I thought was great.
One thing that he did sticks out the most when I think back to college. He had
just heard of a game called "worse ball" (you play 2 shots and pick the worst
one) and described it to us before we all were going out to play a casual round.
We thought it sounded like a game that would improve our golf so we were up for
it. Then he added, we play this game and it counts as a double qualifying round.
So now, we were going to play worse ball at one of the world's most difficult
golf courses during a qualifying round which counts as two rounds. Now he got
our harts pumping. Coach didn't think much of a friendly round of golf. He
wanted to make us feel the nerves shaking to prepare us for the worst. We sucked
at worse ball in the beginning, recording scores in the 80' and 90's but we got
it down to mid 70's by the the time we left.
Coach did so many things to make us feel the pressure both from ourselves and
from all the others who wanted us to perform well. If he thought a player on the
team looked nervous, he made him feel even more nervous. Coach described himself
as being our conciousness and expressing our doubts and nervousness clearly so
if we could overcome and disregard his voice, we could overcome our own voice.
As another example, I usually scored really bad at the tough 17th hole at
Karsten Creek. I rarely made par and double-bogeys were common for me there. He
knew I hated the whole and that it made me nervous playing it, so he always told
me and everybody else how I never play good there. He used to tell about my
latest triple-bogey there over lunch and so on. Then, at the NCAA final
tournament at just Karsten Creek in 2003 I made a triple-bogey on the 17th. Do
you think I got to hear the end of that? It still echoes in my head. Maybe I
didn't overcome either his exaggurated words or my inner voice this time but I
did on a lot fo other occasions.
I remember one time when I performed better than coach thought I would. One time
we got to choose our own date when we wanted to play a qualifying round at
Stillwater Country Club. The only rules were that we had to play with at least
one more teammate and you had to announce that you were playing the round as a
qualifying round at the first tee box. The first day we went up there to play,
my friend Dayton announced his round as a qualifying round but for some reason I
didn't so I just played it as a casual round. I shot 63 (-8) that day. "Too bad
you didn't announce it on the first tee that you were playing it as a qualifying
round. Now you will not even sniff that when you do announce it", said coach
when he heard about my round. The next time I went upp there to play I felt
ready and announced it and boom, I shot a 61 (-10)! It was the sweatest thing
seeing coach's face when he found out.
The more I play this game and the older I get, the more thankful I am for all
the lessons he gave us. I couldn't have read these things in a book. No way!
Time to hit the swiss ball:)
See you later!
Tilbake
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