Stuttering/Stammering & Golf: Part 2 – What to do?
In part one, I described and made comparison between tough golf courses and tough speaking situations, loss of confidence with certain clubs and loss of confidence with certain words or sounds, and how this can spread to big stuttering / stammering blocks other words, sounds, and situations. So what to do?
The driving range and calls to supportive friends/practice contacts.
Let’s start with golf.
Interesting how the psychological stress of a difficult course or challenging opponent manifests itself in ‘hitches’ to swings. Pro players after walking 18 holes in a tournament will go right to the driving range to “re-groove” their swings especially those that fell apart on the course. You see this with professional tennis players even after a 4 hour clay court match who go directly to the practice courts to correct those strokes that lost them points.
“Directly” because bad habits tend to put down roots if you don’t take care of them right away.
Okay, after 18 holes, I’m not in the mood, as a beginning amateur, to go right to the driving range. I’d prefer a gin and tonic and good dinner 
. But were I a professional, where my livelihood depended on how well I play, you better believe I’d get to the driving range after my round. As a (fairly serious) beginner, I’ll go to the driving range the next day. (There’s a serious analogy to this ‘beginner/pro’ stuff later.)
Starting with my easiest club, usually a pitching wedge, I’ll go back to basics, even breaking my swing down to three phases, until I can hit at least 5 in a row where I want with good, clean contact. Then I’ll go to the next easiest club, gain my confidence, then end up with those clubs that gave me the most trouble the day before on the course.
I will hit many more balls with my ‘challenging’ clubs than with the others. Sometimes I can get my confidence back that same session, but usually I’ll have to go back the next day and possibly the day after to totally regain confidence (at least on the driving range). Going back on a course before confidence is gained on the driving range is usually (but not always) productive.
And now to stuttering / stammering:
Call your supportive friends (for people in the McGuire Programme, use the phonelist and coaches) asap.
First an important point: Mentioned above, professional golfers will get to the driving range/putting green immediately. Amateurs usually don’t go immediately. We who stammer / stutter need to play this sport on the professional level … after-all, our livelihood depends or will depend to a great extent on how well we can verbally communicate. Therefore, we need to get to the equivalent of a driving range (phone calls and contacts) right away. Procrastinating until it is convenient or you’re not so tired is for amateurs.
Starting with those words you still have confidence in that didn’t fall apart in the pressure situation, use them in short sentences while exaggerating the speaking technique you know will lead to improvement. (In the McGuire programme this means pause, take a full costal breath, speak with deep and breathy resonance, and fully release residual air, practicing also hit and holds and block release.) Very effective is to use a lot of voluntary stammering (which we call ‘deliberate dysfluency’) on these less challenging words.
Move from the easiest words to the ones that gave you the most trouble and have becomed feared.
Now move up the stairway of feared situations. Starting with your support network, get these to the place where there is such an absence of fear that saying these once panic-striken words is so easy, it’s boring.
Like with getting your swing back on the driving range, this might take a couple of days/sessions. But do it. As you repeadly experience that you can indeed regain your confidence, both with feared clubs and feared words, it will take less time on the driving range/ making contacts, to get it back.
Dave McGuire
Tags: assertiveness, confidence, practice, recovery, stammering, stuttering