There was James Braid the golfer and there was James Braid the father of modern hypnotism. The two never met – Braid the golfer was born 10 years after Braid the hypnotist died – but what a fascinating meeting of minds that would’ve been? While the former extolled a simple golfing mantra that you should ‘keep on hitting it straight until the wee ball goes in the hole’ the latter was concerned with functional nervous disorders. Anyone who has developed a dose of the shanks while trying to get that infernal roon’ thing in the hole will know what Braid the hypnotist was delving into.
For Wallace Booth, this bamboozling, capricious pursuit has certainly toyed with the head in recent years. Having lost a good chunk of his formative years in the professional game to a complex shoulder injury, it is only now that the 31-year-old feels physically, technically and mentally complete to tackle the rigours of life at the coalface. A stint of hypnotherapy with Dundee-based counsellor, Vicki Simpson-Price, has certainly given him a much more positive outlook.
“I hadn’t got out what I wanted from sports psychologists so I tried something different and it was quite refreshing,” said the former Walker Cup player and Eisenhower Trophy winner. “At my first session she asked, ‘right, who’s Wallace?’, not ‘who’s Wallace the golfer?’ You lie there and feel like you drift off to sleep. She is speaking to the sub-conscious. It’s cleared my mind, I’ve got stuff off my chest. Personally and professionally it’s helped greatly. I won a mini-tour event in Portugal recently and I’ve never been as calm coming down the stretch before, and it had been a long, long time since I was in that position. In sport, if you’re happy you perform better. Golf can bite you in the backside as quickly as you can blink but I feel settled and believe I can compete.”
He may not be operating in the same rarefied air as his old Walker Cup team-mate Tommy Fleetwood – the Englishman was runner-up in the WGC Mexico Championship on Sunday – but Booth is eager to get cracking in 2017 and clamber his way up the golfing ladder.
“Tommy was a very good amateur but you can never tell who will make it and once you turn pro, anything you’ve done before often goes out the window,” said Booth as he pondered Fleetwood’s ascent in recent years. “I’ve been playing catch up since I turned pro with the injury but I feel as if I’m ready to give it a go. My love for the game is huge and I’m not ready to throw in the towel. There’s a bit of stubbornness in there too. You’ll never conquer this game but if you’re daft enough you’ll keep on trying.”
Booth, the older brother of Ladies European Tour winner Carly, has been selling shares in himself to help fund a campaign on the PGA EuroPro Tour. At £100 per share, he’s managed to sell around 150 which has already given him a decent financial war chest, some of which has been put to good use during a productive winter regime.
“This is probably the best I’ve felt across the board, but particularly from the mental side, and hopefully this all comes together and helps me move up," he said. "I feel like I have put a lot of hard work in not to get anything out of it. The dream I had as a kid remains something I want to achieve and that still is to be successful as a touring pro.”
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