Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

 

Used to be a time when going to see a psychologist had a negative connotation, but I’m here to tell you that having someone crawl around inside your head is never a bad thing … especially when that psychologist helps you with your golf game.

You see, last year I was ready to give up the game completely. My sand wedge had been infected with such a terrible case of the yips that I was unable to hit a decent shot with it – heck, I couldn’t even get the ball to head towards the green; instead, it usually rocketed off to the right, much further from the green than it was previously.

The sickness began infected my nine iron … and then my eight.

I was ready to quit.

But Jared Tendler, a 1996 graduate of Newtown High School, read about my plight in this space. Serendipity was smiling on me, for Jared had just formed Jared Tendler Golf LLC, a business focusing on golf therapy.

“It was born out of competitive experience and psychology,” he said at the time.

Jared was a three-time All American and two-time captain at Skidmore College and earned an LMHC from Skidmore and MS in counseling psychology from Northeastern University and those two worlds naturally came together.

Just in time.

We met for a skull session at Rock Ridge Country Club and after 20 minutes or so “on the couch” we went out to the chipping area near the tennis courts and in less than five minutes – five minutes – my yips were cured.

And remain cured, to this day.

In fact, I took that lesson – and a subsequent lesson – so much to heart that I am playing the best golf of my life … especially after carding an 85 at Tunxis Plantation on Sunday (listen, it may not be the best golf of a lot of other people’s lives, but at for a once-a-week Sunday hacker I’m happy).

Since I met with Jared, I’ve broken 90 four times and that is without a single actual golf lesson (I begin those this week).

Jared began his golf therapy in the northeast and now it has taken him to Scottsdale, Arizona, for the winter. A segment appeared in a January issue of The Arizona Republic which said, “as one of the world’s finest golf destinations, Scottsdale can find ways to incorporate golf into almost every aspect of life. And now, Scottsdale is combining the sport with performance in the workplace. Jared Tendler Golf offers programs focused on stress-management and team-building strategies, and features a series of courses that help business professionals hone their essential management skills. Programs start on the course and can be tailored for business events, group seminars and individual lessons.”

If you’re having trouble with your golf game, hold off on buying that new-fangled golf club and spend a couple of sessions in golf therapy.

“Golf is a game to teach you about the messages from within, about the subtle voices of the body-mind. And once you understand them you can more clearly see your ‘hamartia,’ the ways in which your approach to the game reflects your entire life. Nowhere does a man go so naked.”

– Michael Murphy

author of Golf in the Kingdom

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I’m only 43 (I’ll be 44 in November), but I remember back when there were just a half dozen channels on television and they all went off the air around 1 am.

Now, there are hundreds of channels running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and you have to wonder how, in Heaven’s name, these stations come up with the programming to fill all that endless air time.

I especially got to wondering that this week after turning on ESPN in the morning to catch the highlights from the day before. It seems that host Trey Wingo and former NFL stars Sean Salisbury, Mark Schlereth and Mike Golic have been working over the so-called Ultimate NFL Depth Chart, going over each team in the National Football League and figuring out how the 2006 season – which is still over eight weeks away – is going to flesh out (they have already figured out who is going to the Super Bowl … but I won’t reveal who they picked; I don’t want to ruin the surprise).

It’s not like I don’t understand what’s going on here. There is ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN News, ESPN Classic, ESPN Deportes and ESPNU and with six different channels the producers have to come up with something to fill all that air time.

God help us.

“We’ll bring you the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat-and, because we've got soccer highlights, the sheer pointlessness of a zero-zero tie. You're watching Sports Night on CSC, so stick around.”

– Dan Rydell from Sports Night (1998)

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Of course, Mike and The Mad Dog of WFAN love to get the NFL schedules and work out how the New York Jets and Giants are going to do (“let’s see, the Eagles will be in the Meadowlands in Week 17 – that’s a win. I have ‘em at 9-7 for the year, Mike!”) and that drives me even crazier.

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But all of that notwithstanding, I can’t wait for football season to start.