At the start of the week, Bob Rotella, the mind-man who shepherded Darren Clarke in the hours before his final starting time at Royal St George’s in 2011, gave a telling interview on what goes into the winning of the Claret Jug.
"Thursday morning," he began, "is all about the mental game, about finding a mental place in which you can get yourself to do all the things you can do so easily on the practice range.
"The first tee," he continued, "is challenging enough, but the scale of the challenge on the Sunday is bigger by far – and reaches a crescendo with the final putt."
In which connection, he said that a player does best to go with his first instincts.
"When someone has a putt to win and his first look tells him that it is straight, he will often say to himself, ‘It can’t be straight, you can’t have that easy a putt to win the Open’. He will then start looking from a host of different angles and that’s almost always a mistake.
"After trusting his first instincts and committing to the line, he must ‘see’ the putt going in the hole before following his usual routine and ‘letting it happen’."
Which is much the same as the feeling that Phil Mickelson ascribed to all his putts as he came down the stretch on the Sunday. "I just putted those greens phenomenally – some of the best I’ve ever putted. The birdies kind of happened; they weren’t forced."
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