Eldrick Woods is more commonly known as Tiger Woods, or just Tiger. He is an American professional golfer, whose fame spreads far beyond the narrow world of golf. Until recently he was the highest paid athlete in the world, although he has now slipped slightly to second place.
Elite performance coach Dr. Stephen Simpson examines the possible secrets of Woods’s success. In this extract from his latest book, The $447 Million Secrets Of Sport, Dr. Simpson proposes that Woods has discovered the priceless secret of how to find the zone almost at will. The zone is the home of peak performance, also known as flow. Perhaps you could use a bit more flow in your life too?
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olfers are judged by how many Majors they win, and there are four every year. Tiger collected his first Major in 1997 just a year after turning professional, and soon after
was ranked as the best golfer in the world too. He retained this position for most of the next 13 years. To date Woods has won 14 Majors, and only Jack Nicklaus with 18 Majors has won more. Woods has many strengths and one of
them is his sheer physical presence. His competitors speak openly of being intimated when playing against him. Woods projects an aura of invincibility, and so often luck runs unerringly in his favour. Another strength is his enormous physical
power and his ability to hit the ball huge distances. This power comes from his intensive training, physical condition, and superb coordination. If players wanted to
be able to compete with Woods one of the things they had to do was to match his training programmes. Golfers were until recently not noted for their athleticism. Another example of Woods’s mental
strength is his ability to close out in the Majors. When he has been outright leader, or sharing the lead at the start of the final round, he has won fourteen times, and only lost once. Woods's mother is a Buddhist, and so
Woods was raised as a Buddhist too. He believes this has been the central foundation of his phenomenal development as a player and a person, not withstanding his recent difficulties both on and off the golf course. Meditation is a central foundation of
Buddhism, and so Woods would have learnt this skill from an early age. Meditation can be used in many different ways, but arguably its main benefit is that of facilitating control of
the mind and the emotions. This is a priceless skill for any athlete to
possess, and is the gateway to the zone. This is where mind, body, and soul combine as
Meditation is a central foundation of Buddhism,
and so Woods would have learnt this skill from an early age. Meditation can
be used in many different ways, but arguably its main benefit is that of
facilitating control of the mind and the emotions.