It\u2019s easy to be sceptical about top sportsmen turning to psychologists for help. A bit precious, no? After all, what\u2019s wrong with the good old Fergie hairdryer treatment to unmuddle the thinking of some bewildered player? But when you hear Rory McIlroy extolling the virtues of the man who gets inside his cranium you start to think a little differently. Dr Bob Rotella, a craggy sports shrink from Vermont, is, it turns out, one of the key members of McIlroy\u2019s team and they have been working together for years. McIlroy paid a very handsome tribute to Rotella after his second successive Masters victory.<\/p>\n
Say what you like about Rory, but he\u2019s got personality, he\u2019s passionate, and he shows his emotions in a sport where most players are famously devoid of it \u2013 Cameron Young anyone? And what Rotella has done is to make McIlroy resist pushing too hard and stay patient. It might hurt to say this, but Dr Bob talks a lot of sense. How\u2019s this for example? \u2018A touring pro who sticks with the same coach gains clarity and stability in his game. A player who flits from coach to coach often winds up confused.\u2019 Something for Emma Raducanu to ponder.<\/p>\n
Or maybe this could help our Prime Minister: \u2018We can choose to believe in ourselves and thus to strive, to risk, to persevere and to achieve. Or\u00a0we can choose to cling to security and mediocrity.\u2019<\/p>\n
More or less anything Rotella says could help Arsenal, currently going through their usual end-of-season nervous breakdown, but try this: \u2018You have to develop a mental hardiness that responds to setbacks with energy and confidence.\u2019<\/p>\n
They\u2019re not the most complex insights ever, but they have certainly benefited McIlroy: he\u2019s now Europe\u2019s most successful golfer ever. Quite whether anyone involved with the shambles that is Chelsea FC speaks to Rotella is unknown, but it doesn\u2019t look like it. Owner Todd Boehly has been there for four years and has hired a series of crap managers \u2013 and sacked the good ones; he has spent a fortune, posted record losses and created a constant churn of players.<\/p>\n
They can buy young players easily enough; in theory, building a team of youngsters over the years into a brilliant side might work. In practice, though, the youngsters are let down by an extremely suspect temperament, especially under serious Premier League pressure. Which explains why Chelsea have the worst disciplinary record in the league, with 72 yellow cards and seven reds.<\/p>\n
It just shows it\u2019s better to be owned by a Russian kleptocrat than an American ultra-capitalist. A football club is a trophy asset and can\u2019t really be run as a business. Liam Rosenior, the manager, looks painfully out of his depth. Clearly a nice guy and a good man, he doesn\u2019t seem able to motivate his top stars. But a dreadful job for anyone. Call Dr Bob if I were you.<\/p>\n
A craggy sports shrink from Vermont is, it turns out, one of the key members of his team<\/p>\n
Blink and you might have missed it but the early days of the county championship have been brilliant. At 43, the ageless Jimmy Anderson led Lancashire to a thrilling victory over Derbyshire with four wickets for 18 in the second innings, while poor Zak Crawley looks totally shot. Will he even get into Kent\u2019s XI? He has been poorly managed by England, who should have let him rebuild in the county game earlier.<\/p>\n
I am not sure that the injury subs rule is right for county cricket. Teams are already gaming the system and replacing players due to \u2018illness\u2019. Isn\u2019t it part of the game to pick a team that lasts the course? On the other hand, it has created history: Somerset hammered Essex the other day, with their second sub, Archie Vaughan, flaying the bowling to hit the winning runs. This must be the first instance of a 13th man winning a county championship match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s easy to be sceptical about top sportsmen turning to psychologists for help. A bit precious, no? After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1721,5904,2623,217,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-535282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-golf","10":"tag-rory-mcilroy","11":"tag-sport","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}