Cordie Walker with Golf Science Lab is joined by Bhrett McCabe, PhD.

Bhrett McCabe, PhD is a performance and sports psychologist that has worked extensively across a variety of settings and athletic groups through his company, The MindSide, LLC. Dr. McCabe has a diverse background of working in the pharmaceutical industry in clinical trial research and education prior to returning to his academic and professional training as a clinical and sports psychologist.

The important thing is early diversity and the early exposure to other sports that teach kids how to sit on the bench and realize that maybe you are not the superstar. And if you are not the superstar, can you be a role player? Can you be the guy that goes into a basketball game and only gets to play a third of the minutes, but you can learn how to play defense and maybe score two points?

The amazing thing about sports is that everybody is on a different maturation schedule and the guy or the girl who is four inches taller and stronger, who grew early may not grow last.

We have to start developing the psychological resiliency, communication skills, and how to deal with failures in juniors. For juniors that play other sports there is a benefit to playing with kids that are better than you, there is also a benefit of playing with kids that are not as good as you we have to allow for as many experiences as possible.
Failure Drills

It’s important to put an athlete through drills that forces them to not succeed and see how they deal with failure. We’re looking for players that go, “That drill that we did, kicked my butt, when are we doing it again? I’m going to get it this time” versus, “I don’t want to do that drill ever again because it made me lose my confidence.”

A drill can’t make you lose your confidence unless you chose to allow that drill to make you lose your confidence.

We have a putting drill that I do that is really hard called the ‘The Closer’ which is eight stations from five feet away around the hole and you have to make 24 in a row to win it, all from five feet or you have to start over.

The average completion time is over an hour-and-a-half the first time because the nerves start kicking in and the last putts are hard to make.

It’s a failure drill, you are going to fail at it, but can you handle the failure in order and put it in the back of your mind to focus on the success?

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