The purpose of this study was two-fold; (a) to identify the program and protocol of psychological skills training to operate psychological skills training program for golfers; (b) to test the effects of psychological skills training program on psychol...
The purpose of this study was two-fold; (a) to identify the program and protocol of psychological skills training to operate psychological skills training program for golfers; (b) to test the effects of psychological skills training program on psychological skills and performance. For the purpose of this study, the program of psychological skills training included psychological characteristics of subject and was operated by personal needs. A single subject design and multiple baseline across behavior were used to know the effects of psychological skills training program on improvement of golf skills.
The following results were identified for exploration in this study:
First, procedures and contents of psychological skills training program
Golf scores, behaviors of pre-competition, psychological skills, psychological obstacles and solving problems, reminiscences of a game, and significant other's advice were collected and interviewed. These data were used as a baseline to measure effects of the program. Based on the data, psychological skills training program included four different trainings: goal setting training, attentional focus training, routine training, and imagery training. Each of these psychological skills training programs requires subject practice written paper, task-oriented method, and taped recorder for 16 weeks.
The psychological skills and performance were measured to know effects of the program two times at the baseline, three times(fourth week, ninth week, fourteenth week) during the psychological skills training, and one time after training. Golf scores that were performed at five tournaments held during the phase of baseline and three tournaments during the psychological skills training were used to analyze for this study.
Secondly, the effects of psychological skills training on development of the psychological skills
The psychological skills were measured six different psychological skills such as anxiety, self-challenge, imagery control, self-confidence, attentional focus, and arousal control. The results of this study indicated that subject with high self-confidence at the baseline maintained highly his confidence during and after psychological skills training program. Additionally, other anxiety, self-challenge, imagery control, attentional focus, and arousal control were showed progressively improvement with introduction of the psychological skills training.
Thirdly, the effects of psychological skills training on improvement in golf scores
The golfers ranks and scores at the tournaments were used to measure his performance. The results of this study showed that subject reported significant improvement in his game without cut-off at three KPGA tours compared to pre-training scores that were cut-off at three tours of the five tours. This study also reported that prize money rank, scoring average, putting average, par save percentage, and greens in regulation percentage were improved progressively in his game as measured by comparison of pre- and during-training period.
These results indicated that the psychological skills training program described here can help improving the golfers psychological skills and performance.