At least I got the washing done before flying to Munich

GOLF:My mind guru Jamie came out to see me at the Portuguese Open and hopefully I will benefit, writes REBECCA CODD

WE ALL play mind games with ourselves on the course, even if it is mostly unintentional. I’ll tell this story against myself to serve the point. For the last while – weeks, months . . . years? – I’ve been under the impression that I have reacted well to missed putts (too many of them) and that I’ve always managed to gather myself reasonably well if a birdie opportunity decides not to plop into the tin cup.

Well, that was what I believed. Last week, for the first time, my sports psychologist, Jamie Edwards, came out to see me play in the Portuguese Open.

I work with him maybe five times a year in a one-to-one basis, but talk to him a lot more than that on the phone. So, it was nice he finally got to see me in competitive, playing mode . . . and for him to let me know I wasn’t actually reacting the way that I thought I was all this time.

Let me explain. I thought I was keeping my inner frustration at any missed birdie putts or par saves very much within control. For Jamie looking in, though, that wasn’t the case at all. He could visibly see how agitated I became if a putt missed or if a shot wasn’t executed the way I wanted to.

And, hopefully, that is another lesson learned for me as I try to put everything in its place heading into a particularly busy part of the season.

My return to the tour this past fortnight has brought limited success – two cuts made out of two, in the Turkish Open and the Portuguese Open – but left me with a sense of what might have been.

This is especially true of my performance in the Portuguese tournament last weekend, where a second-round 67 could have been even better only for two bogeys in mid-round.

It could have been a really low round, but at least it was satisfying to shoot a decent score, make the cut and give myself a chance of a good finish going into Sunday’s final round.

Unfortunately, it turned into an occasion to batten down the hatches as a strong wind made for difficult conditions and a double-bogey on the first hole and a triple-bogey out of nowhere on the seventh – where I got a flyer from 107 metres over the back into a load of rubbish with my approach – really knocked the wind out of my sails.

Those dropped shots, albeit in tough conditions, turned the final round into a grind and resulted in a 14-shot swing for the worse from the previous day.

Not what I wanted, for sure; and a reminder of how this game can get to you.

Anyway, I got a flight home from Portugal to Ireland on Sunday night, eventually getting home at 1am on Monday, which gave me the opportunity to do some washing – who says being a tour player is a glamorous life? – before getting back to Dublin Airport yesterday afternoon for the flight to Munich and on to this week’s event, the German Open at Golfpark Gut Hausern.

Next week, it will be on to Slovakia. The week after, it will be the Netherlands. So, it really is a hectic part of the schedule for me.

You might wonder why I would take the elongated route from Portugal to Germany via Dublin. The main reason? It was much cheaper, pure and simple.

There are some courses that fit your eye and you love returning to, and others that you dread going to. I like this course in Munich and, importantly, the weather forecast is quite good. I had quite enough of the strong winds in Portugal on Sunday!

There are a few holes here in Munich where you need to fade the ball and I like the questions that the course asks of a player and, hopefully, the input from my mind guru Jamie will help.

The area of my game I want to improve on this week is my scrambling. If I can walk away from Munich with my scrambling stats at 80 to 90 per cent, I will be happy.

And, hopefully, I can capitalise on the birdie chances that come along.

Rebecca Codd plays on the Ladies European Tour and contributes a monthly column to The Irish Times.