Fergus Bisset: A learning curve

Fergus is trying to understand why he's playing so badly. He's starting to get it.

Fergus Bisset
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published

My cliché du jour is, "Rome wasn't built in a day."

Yesterday I decided that I needed to write more about my golf in order to understand my game and therefore play better. Well, I'm still in the very early, beginning to understand, phase. The playing better bit will just have to wait. I'm treating yesterday's Medal as a learning experience - a stepping-stone towards my ultimate goal.

My key problem at the moment is that my mental game is as fragile as a crepe paper trampoline held up by rotten sticks. I started promisingly yesterday with two regulation pars before I took a three-putt bogey on the third in my stride. At least, I thought I took it in my stride. I didn't cry out in anguish as the ball lipped out or hurl my putter up a tree. But I must admit that, internally, I was still cursing myself as I drove from the fourth tee. Not concentrating properly on the shot I produced a power fade that kicked right from the fairway and headed for a copse of trees. When I got there to find my ball totally stymied I was mentally ruined.

That's not good is it? I was only one-over-par, with almost the whole round still to go, and I'd totally written myself off. I hacked it out back to the short grass, blasted one down to the edge of the green, fluffed a chip on, banged the putt up to the edge of the cup and tapped in for a six. I then stormed up to the fifth tee, belted one thoughtlessly down the right, didn't check my yardage before creaming my approach through the green and failing to get up and down - four over through five and contemplating walking off. Things didn't get much better after that and a nett 73 meant I was up by 0.1, again.

I've just spotted Bob Rotella's "The Golfer's Mind" on my bookcase. A quick flick through the key chapters confirms it - I don't currently have a "Golfer's Mind."

"Don't let the ball control your mind," he says. "The essence of golf is reacting well to the game's inevitable mistakes and misfortunes." Oh dear. Do I "love" my game? Oh my lord no. OK I'm reading this thing cover to cover right now.

Fergus Bisset
Fergus Bisset
Contributing Editor

Fergus is Golf Monthly's resident expert on the history of the game and has written extensively on that subject. He has also worked with Golf Monthly to produce a podcast series. Called 18 Majors: The Golf History Show it offers new and in-depth perspectives on some of the most important moments in golf's long history. You can find all the details about it here.

He is a golf obsessive and 1-handicapper. Growing up in the North East of Scotland, golf runs through his veins and his passion for the sport was bolstered during his time at St Andrews university studying history. He went on to earn a post graduate diploma from the London School of Journalism. Fergus has worked for Golf Monthly since 2004 and has written two books on the game; "Great Golf Debates" together with Jezz Ellwood of Golf Monthly and the history section of "The Ultimate Golf Book" together with Neil Tappin , also of Golf Monthly.

Fergus once shanked a ball from just over Granny Clark's Wynd on the 18th of the Old Course that struck the St Andrews Golf Club and rebounded into the Valley of Sin, from where he saved par. Who says there's no golfing god?

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