It began with Phil Mickelson getting schooled in ping pong. It turned out to be a lot more.

For the brother who has everything, Tim Mickelson made a request of Dr. Michael Lardon a few years ago. A sports psychologist, Lardon had worked with Tim’s men’s golf team at USD. In that time, Tim found out that Lardon was wickedly good at table tennis.

Tim Mickelson asked Lardon if he could give Phil some ping pong pointers as a Christmas present. Phil wanted to learn a new serve for those epic battles in the U.S. Ryder Cup team room.

Lardon, of course, said yes, and they met in the gym at The Bridges, where Mickelson learned a few things while whiffing at Lardon’s high-toss serves. Lardon would later get his reward when Mickelson asked him about some of his psychological approaches.

And on the driving range at The Bridges, as Lardon explained a pre-shot routine and Mickelson immediately put it into play on his practice shots, the five-time major winner said, “I like your mental scorecard system.”

That was it.

“The light went on in my head,” Lardon said. “That’s what I’ll call it! I don’t know if Phil even knows it, but he came up with the name.”

With the mental scoring system as the centerpiece, Lardon has written a new book, “Mastering Golf’s Mental Game, Your Ultimate Guide to Better On-Course Performance and Lower Scores” (Crown Archetype, $25).

Lardon previously wrote a book called “Finding Your Zone,” for athletes of all walks, but the associate clinical professor of medicine at UCSD had always wanted to do a golf-specific book. He had been close to golfers for years, including caddying for his brother, Brad, for a time on the PGA Tour.

Lardon’s clients have included David Duval, Lee Janzen and Erik Compton.

“I really feel like if a reader were to spend time with this book, when you’re done with it, it will be like me working with you directly,” Lardon said. “That was the idea of this. To make something that, if you worked on it, would be of value.”

In Mickelson’s case, he has credited Lardon with helping him get into the proper frame of mind to do what he never thought he could – win the British Open in 2013.

In the foreword to the book, Mickelson wrote, “Coming so close to winning the U.S. Open is unfortunately something I had experienced before 2013, but Merion was especially tough. Mike helped me see that in spite of that every difficult finish, my game was in a great place and I was continuing to play better. I went to Muirfield with more confidence than I had going into previous British Opens.”

Many sports psychologists attempt to remove players from being results oriented. Lardon came up with a very specific plan to make that happen. With the mental scorecard, golfers are asked to follow a pre-shot pyramid, the tenets of which are: calculating the shot, creating the shot, and executing the shot.

Golfers then rate their performance in each area for each hole and come up with a score. At the end of the round, they’ll have a number for how well they played mentally throughout the round.

At their best, top-level pros, working in a zone, can reach about 95 percent, Lardon said. High-handicappers may only play at 25 percent.

“If I can get those guys to put the cigar down, follow something that’s pretty simple, and keep their mind on track, I think it will make the biggest difference for them,” Lardon said. “Since they’re not doing it now, any improvement is going to give you some pretty good results.”

Reviewed by Tim Boggan, Table Tennis Magazine, Nov-Dec 2008

Sports psychiatrist Dr. Mike Lardon is well known for having worked with PGA, NFL, and Olympic athletes. For almost 35 years he and his family have been friends with my family – originally through the now-Olympic sport of table tennis. Mike and my sons Scott and Eric won the 1976 U.S. Junior Team Championships at Detroit’s Cobo Hall, and later that year Mike, experiencing for a time his own “Zone,” was a finalist in the U.S. Junior Singles Championships at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Because of our shared table tennis and golf experiences (I was once Captain of my University Golf Team), I re-live in reading Mike’s book much of my own competitive experience, for almost all those who take sports or anything else seriously probably at some time or other have been in a “Zone” – that is, where you perform at your highest level, but likely don’t know how it happened.

To take an example from my own life – and Mike’s book urges you to interrelate like doctor/patient, teacher/student – when in the 1960’s six-time U.S. Table Tennis Champion Dal-Joon Lee had not lost a single match to any native-born U.S. player, I opened my eventual loss to him with an unbelievable 21-8 first-game win. When that game was over, I had no idea that I’d built up such a score, or even that the game had ended. For a moment in Time, but only for a moment, I’d been in a no-thought trance – the “Zone.” How to do it again and again? Since that’s what aspiring winners want to know, Mike’s aim in this book is to share Lessons he’s learned to help you try to find, repeatedly, this elusive “Zone.”

Lesson One stresses the importance of dreams, even daydreams. They can lead you to the path of “self-actualization,” to your “inner drive for higher values and purpose,” and so to the “Zone.” Write them down, think about them – they’ll provide internalized energy and direction for you. And perhaps some revelations. Mike gives the example of Dr. Jonas Salk discovering the polio vaccine. During one of his recurrent dreams, “he was able to manipulate his perspective from observer to the subject itself, the virus. He said that in this state of being the virus, he saw his own (the virus’s) vulnerability” – and the vaccine followed.

Mike had sometimes caddied for his brother Brad, for years a golf pro playing the PGA circuit, and thus had occasion to learn vicariously from watching some of the best golfers. He was struck – and wants you to be too – by how Phil Mickelson, positioned to win the Masters, “was napping just prior to teeing off.” It showed how prepared he was, how confident he was – how he’d made the inevitable anxiety, the tension needed to perform, manageable.

“Fuel your determination to succeed with unwavering commitment,” says Mike. Lesson Three describes “your most powerful ally: will.” Mike’s speed-skater friend Eric Heiden “played with pain.” During his coldest practice sessions in a Wisconsin winter, he’d persevere when others left the ice. How’d he do it? By remembering how he used to test himself in summers by sitting in an automobile with the windows closed and the heat on, seeing how long he could endure it. Then in the dead of winter he’d practice this “solipsism” – his mind convincingly modifying reality so as to adapt this remembered warmth to the cold. Lesson: manage your reality, strengthen your will.

Lessons Four and Five I, as a now aging golfer, have to pay strict attention to – for I hit many bad shots and “freeze” on short putts. Problem is: I’m result-oriented, I’m afraid I’ll mishit and add another stroke to my already burgeoning total. What you, Tim, and others like you need, says teacher Mike, is a homework assignment. You’re all to keep two scorecards – one for your actual score, the other for those times you unconsciously know what you’re supposed to do and unhesitatingly do it. For example, you read the line you want your putt to take and just smoothly stroke the ball. Nothing last-second extra is needed. Especially not thought. Keep it simple. ADD anything and you’ve got Attention Deficit Disorder. So, on the second scorecard, whatever club is called for, you’re to record “the percentage of shots that you executed to the best of your ability.” Use the following guidelines: first, visualize the shot you want, then hit it without doubt, or, if doubt exists, back away and start again. Absorb yourself in that regimen until it’s mindlessly automatic. “We choke when we care too much about the wrong thing.” Take satisfaction in the quality of shots hit. Have FUN! It’s often said, says Mike, “that only 10 percent of life is what happens to you, and 90 percent is how you react to it.”

One important concept is conserving your energy. You have to practice some detachment. If you’re frustrated, have the mind-awareness to take a reality check. To relieve tension stretch your fingers. It’s even o.k. to get angry – we’ve seen Tiger Woods bang down a club, or for uttering an audible curse word incur a reprimand from announcer Johnny Miller – but it’s not o.k. to lose focus. Generally performance depends on intensity of focus. Anger can be overcome by visualization techniques. For example, Mike says he sometimes asks “players to shut their eyes and imagine putting their anger on a falling leaf and releasing it to descend into a flowing stream.” That’s Lesson Six.

But it follows in Lesson Seven that the player’s passion, his juices have to keep flowing too. “A mind that is worried about what others think” is practicing “extrinsic motivation,” not the “intrinsic motivation” needed. When we honor the pure motivation that comes from heart and soul, and is not laid out for us by others, “we are loving ourselves.” But following our own path, pursuing our dream, is not an unhealthy experience. This “healthy narcissism” allows us to have the “dedication and effort required to achieve the highest level in business, arts, or sports.” Being in the “Zone” requires pure motivation – it’s a “private experience.”

I once did an interview with Zhuang Zedong (Chuang Tse-tung), the famous three-time World Table Tennis Champion of the 1960’s. “Failure is the Mother of Success,” he said – and “Success the Mother of Failure.” That is, the more successful the player, the more pressure he begins to feel; and the more pressure he feels, the more chance he’s afraid of losing. For, with his reputation, and his need to preserve it, everyone goes gunning for him. “It’s that fear, that failure of spirit, the player must overcome if he’s to be great.” Mike realizes this of course, and says it’s imperative for a player, even for Tiger Woods, to realize “his sport is not a matter of life and death” (for him it almost is?). For sure, though, Lesson Eight says any player has to overcome fear.

Lesson Nine is so important to every player, for it emphasizes the importance of confidence. How do you get it? By “mastery experience” naturally, but also through vicariously watching someone who’s got it, or who can inspire you to get it.

It helps if, as a lead-off quote in Lesson Ten states, “Playing under pressure is not to be feared. It is merely the normal circumstance of performing.” Familiar territory for those who progress. Mike stresses the importance of “activation energy.” Start a reaction that tries to lead you to the “Zone.” But realize the “Zone” “can’t be forced or controlled.” It has “a life of its own.” And though Mike does a good job of trying to get you to find it, understand it, when all’s said and done, the ten lessons learned, the “Zone’s” “an inexplicable phenomenon.” It just arrives out of nowhere.

Since faith in yourself helps, I’ll point you to my own inner door of intrinsic motivation, and show you the mystic key Simone Weil keeps for me and others. The “Zone’s” in mind-awareness, though mindlessly obtained. She says: “Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.” That light, too, comes out of nowhere – faith-based… like the inexplicable “Zone.”

Elite athletes are capable of finding it on a regular basis, and top golfers are often in it when clutch shots are made.

It’s also discussed in daily life, and chances are you’ve been in it before, whether it’s generating your best report for school or work, conquering your favorite video game or making more putts than usual on the practice green.

It’s performing at your highest level – being in “the zone” – and it’s Dr. Michael Lardon’s job to help professional golfers and other athletes be in it as much as possible.

“When you’re in the zone, you really don’t think too much,” said Lardon, a sports psychiatrist whose education includes a B.A. in psychology from Stanford, an M.D. from the University of Texas and an internal medicine internship at UCLA. “You bypass your cerebral cortex, and when you do that you work at a much more reflexive, instinctive level. Paradoxically, as we’ve become more intelligent and think more [in our activities], we often get in our own way.”

Lardon grew up playing golf in Long Island, N.Y., often waking up early with his dad and younger brother to play the Black Course at Bethpage State Park. Though he excelled at the sport as a youngster, his most successful athletic endeavor was table tennis. Lardon was so talented that he was chosen at 16 to go to Japan to train with the reigning world champion.

When Lardon returned to America for the national junior championship, he discovered the zone, a mental state where one of his top skills became even easier to execute.

“I made it to the finals and I had an unusual experience where the ball, which normally travels at speeds exceeding 100 mph, started to slow down, and I won the first two games easily,” Lardon recalled. “I was in the zone. Then, somebody said something to my coach about me becoming the next national champion, triggering me to become conscious of what was going on, and I fell out of that state and lost the match. The experience haunted me for many years but also gave rise to my drive to understand the science behind this phenomenon.”

Later, Lardon turned professional and played all over the world, still fascinated with similar states of peak performance he experienced. He won a gold medal at the Olympic Sports Festival in 1980 and then retired to delve into the zone from an academic angle.

His research took off during the early 1990s at UC-San Diego, where he completed his residency in psychiatry and a fellowship in psychopharmacology and psychobiology. In 1994, he was awarded a grant by the United States Tennis Association for the “Neuroelectric Assessment of Enhanced Athletic Performance” – basically, what role the brain plays in an athlete’s performance.

“We had three focus groups: athletes that were among the best in the world, people that were in very good shape and then regular people,” Lardon said. “Even regular people reported times in their lives – not always in sports, it could have been in their jobs – where everything was flowing synchronously.”

Even before that study, Lardon, who has been an associate clinical professor in UCSD’s psychiatry department since 1995 and a consulting psychiatrist for U.S. Olympians since 1999, was offering advice to pro golfers. He met many of them through caddying for his brother, Brad, who first made it onto the PGA Tour in 1991.

“Any PGA Tour level golfer can shoot 62,” Lardon said. “Why somebody plays well on Sundays, or why somebody like Tiger Woods can always seem to put it together, that’s between the ears.”

His new book, Finding Your Zone: Ten Core Lessons for Achieving Peak Performance in Sports and Life, isn’t devoted entirely to golf, but much of it is.

Here are four of Lardon’s tips that can help you visit the zone more often on the golf course:

• See the big picture. “Half of [succeeding] is what’s going on when you’re out there in the heat of the moment and how you manage stress and anxiety. The other half is how you contextualize the sport in your life and the importance of having balance and a check of your ego.”
• Keep a thought journal. “Go back after your round and recall what was happening on each shot. Almost uniformly, when players are playing well, they’re fully engaged in the process of what they’re doing. On poor shots their minds wander to things like, ‘I’ve got to pick up my kids.’ That happens so quickly and insidiously that I think amateurs don’t really pick it up.”
• Have a mental game plan. “Maybe 10 minutes before your round, take time and say to yourself, ‘For the next four hours, my focus is going to be on staying relaxed every time I hit a shot.’ Or, ‘I’m going to try to be really cognizant of what I’m doing and what’s going on so my attention doesn’t drift.'”
• Pulse your concentration. “Think of your focus like an accordion. When you’re walking after a shot, you can relax, and when your ball comes back into sight, your concentration starts to increase and you begin making calculations. You bring that intensity out, and when you step into the shot, you’re fully committed, and after the shot you can relax again.”

SAN DIEGO – Dr. Mike Lardon is a sports psychiatrist. The difference between a sports psychiatrist and a sports psychologist can be as wide as, oh, the Pacific Ocean.

Unlike sports psychology, a largely unregulated field with a wide range of qualifications, sports psychiatrists such as Lardon are medical doctors.

Lardon majored in psychology at Stanford University, graduated from the University of Texas Medical School, attended UCLA for internal medicine training, and completed his psychiatry residency plus a two-year fellowship in psychobiology (the relationship of the mind and body) at the University of California at San Diego.

He serves as an associate clinic professor of psychiatry at UCSD and maintains a private practice.

So lay down on my couch, and I’ll tell you how to hit a 300-yard drive.

No, no, no.

Lardon constantly crusades against stereotypes in the psychological arena.

“In psychiatry, we are pigeonholed all the time,” Lardon said as we walked Torrey Pines Golf Course during the U.S. Open. “People talk about us like we are the ones who give drugs to crazy people.

“In the same way, sports psychologists and psychiatrists are pigeonholed: ‘Oh yeah, I know all about them. They give advice to athletes.’ Well, it isn’t that simple.”

Lardon stresses this reality: Our lives outside golf have a huge influence on our golf success or failure.

“On any given day,” he said, “your score depends not only on how you play, but also on the framework and context of what is going on in your life. Using the same reasoning, what you do off the course can help you on the course.”

He has been an adviser to David Duval and works with Rich Beem and Michael Campbell. All three are major champions who might be viewed as restoration projects, having plummeted in the world rankings.

Lardon does not discuss his players, and they, too, remain largely silent. Excessive testimonials invariably place too much pressure on the golfers who utter them, something Beem avoided when he said simply, “I’m getting there, and Mike is helping me.”

Lardon is ready, though, to dispense specific advice that might help all golfers. His new book, “Finding Your Zone, Ten Core Lessons for Achieving Peak Performance in Sports and Life” (Penguin, paperback, $14.95), is aimed heavily at golf.

While observing the U.S. Open, he offered seven tips for golfers of all skill levels.

TIP NO. 1: Keep two scorecards.

One is for your score, the other is for your commitment to every shot.

“On every single shot, I want you to answer yes or no,” Lardon said. “The idea is to achieve a yes on each shot. To do this, you need a clear image of the shot, you need to step into the shot with conviction, and you need to execute it with full commitment and a clear mind.”

TIP NO. 2: Develop instant amnesia.

“Tiger Woods has this uncanny ability to forget one shot and go on to the next shot,” he said. “I’m not saying that all of us can be Tiger Woods, but I am saying that we can learn from his example. Too many golfers become self-conscious after a bad shot. It happens to good players as well as average players. We need to overcome this self-consciousness and focus on the next shot.”

TIP NO. 3: Let-go-of-the-club drill.

“Try this drill for letting go and moving on,” Lardon said. “After every shot, do not let go of the club until you are ready to forget about the shot. If you are steaming mad, hold onto the club and recalibrate. Letting go of the club – whether you hand it to your caddie or stuff it into your golf bag – is a signal that you’re ready to move on.”

TIP NO. 4: Trust your training.

“Don’t try to change things on the course,” Lardon said. “Trust your training. Each time you play, that’s what you have that day, so go with it. Maintain a clear plan. Don’t complicate what your mind and body are doing.”

TIP NO. 5: Stepping-over-the-line drill.

“Avoid overthinking,” Lardon said. “I talk to players all the time, and you would think they’re doing brain surgery. They get in their own way.”

Lardon recommends a drill that has been advocated by Henri Reis, Annika Sorenstam’s teacher, and others: Draw an imaginary line 3 or 4 feet behind the ball. Once you step over that line, all your computation has to be gone. Maintain a clear image of the shot and swing away.

TIP NO. 6: Anxiety is fine; fear is not.

“It is normal to be anxious,” Lardon said. “Anxiety can be beneficial. Fear, on the other hand, can be inhibiting.

“Ask yourself, ‘What am I afraid of? Can you live with the result of your shot? Can you accept it?’ If you hit a bad shot, you’re still going to be here tomorrow to play again.”

TIP NO. 7: Keep a dream journal.

“The night before you play, run through the golf course in your mind’s eye,” he said. “Develop a mental template for it. Give yourself suggestions. You might be able to dream about your success. We all have the ability to move our dreams and influence our dreams. The unconscious mind is a powerful place.”

“Then keep a journal. Jot down tidbits, what worked for you. Dreams go in there, too.”

No couches here, just solid advice.

Seventeen days before his big race at the 2002 Olympics, U.S. sledder Jimmy Shea got word that his grandfather, a 1932 gold medal winner, had been killed by a drunk driver. Reeling and distraught, he turned to sports psychiatrist Michael Lardon for counsel. At Lardon’s suggestion, Shea taped a picture of Grandpa Jack into his helmet for the downhill race. Fifteen high-speed turns later, under driving snow, Shea won the gold with .05 of a second to spare, marking the memory of his grandfather by becoming the first third-generation winter Olympian the nation has ever had.

For Lardon, who has helped sports figures such as PGA champion Rich Beem and San Diego Chargers Pro Bowl kicker Nate Kaeding reach for greatness, Shea’s win in Utah illustrates how even the most crippling distractions can be overcome – both in sports and in the game of life. Now Lardon, in a new book called Finding Your Zone, has boiled down the essential lessons and advice he dispenses to elite athletes. Those looking for some quick-fix, secret formula should stop reading now. As Lardon points out in the introduction, “The secret is there is no secret.”

“Allow yourself to dream, but realize there are no shortcuts,” he writes. “The Zone is not for sale for $19.99 or any price: It’s free …the Zone is within you.”

If it sounds like a Star Wars, new-age approach to peak athletic performance, the book’s spiritualistic undergirding is balanced with common-sense, practical steps to achieve it. Though some athletes have a physical edge over others, Lardon’s chief message is that anyone with the will and discipline can achieve greatness.

He helped his own brother, Brad Lardon – two-time Texas State Open Champion and 2007 Southern Texas PGA Player of the Year – achieve his dream of getting a fully exempt PGA Tour card.

Michael Lardon’s fascination with high-performance sports was nurtured by his own interest in table tennis. In 1976, at age 16, he was chosen by the United States Table Tennis Association as the country’s most outstanding junior. He won a gold medal in the 1980 U.S. Olympic Sports Festival.

A graduate of the University of Texas medical school, Lardon won the Judd Research Award at the University of California, San Diego for his work studying the brain waves of some of the world’s greatest athletes. The common link, he found, was their ability to perform at a “primitive, reflexive level while being fully engaged.”

Time slows down when you’re in the Zone, he observes, making a speeding fastball seem like it’s traveling in slow motion or allowing golfers like Tiger Woods to enter an almost trance-like state, ignoring distractions and fears to sink a high-pressure putt.

But everyone can’t be like Tiger, so how does the average Joe reach peak performance?

Lardon lays out 10 practical lessons for getting into the Zone, ranging from tips to good practicing habits to advice on letting go of negative thoughts and destructive behavior. Lesson No. 1 seems a bit odd – channeling the power of the subconscious mind – but Lardon points out that some of history’s greatest achievements were born as dreams.

Inspired by a college class given by Jonas Salk, who devised a cure for polio based in part on recurring dreams about it, Lardon advises his clients to keep a dream journal and even to consciously daydream as a way of visualizing success and peak performance. He dedicates another chapter to the power of concentration and the danger of “overthinking” athletic performance. For example, after observing that professional golfers often alter their preshot rituals during high-pressure moments – generally spending more prep time when the stakes were highest – Lardon used a stopwatch in 2004 to calculate how long Tiger Woods spent getting ready to hit the ball. “He always took the same amount of time with each shot, regardless of its importance,” Lardon writes.

He’s a psychiatrist, so people often come to Lardon when they’re in a slump, can’t seem to win or choke too much. Typically, he writes, it’s because they began to “care too much about the wrong things,” like critics in the media, fame or money. To recreate the magic, Lardon advises his clients to make an effort to remember what was most important when they had the most fun, and to be honest about what truly motivates them. “Falling into the Zone is not that different from falling in love,” Lardon writes. “They both come out of nowhere. They both can dissipate in a moment’s notice, and without passion they cease to survive.”

LOS ANGELES, June 8 (Reuters) – The key to survival for players tackling the longest U.S. Open course ever at Torrey Pines next week is to be mentally disciplined and prepared for setbacks, says a renowned physician and sports psychiatrist.

Dr. Michael Lardon, who has dedicated his career to helping elite athletes understand and more easily achieve peak performance, has advised his players to use this strategy to cope with the demands at the year’s second major championship.

U.S. Open layouts traditionally feature tight fairways, thick if graduated rough and slick greens. Regulation pars, rather than birdies, are often the most prized commodity.

“With the U.S. Open, you have to have a different expectation coming in,” Lardon told Reuters.

“You have to realise you are going to hit beautiful shots that will run through the fairway, perhaps just two inches in, and you won’t see the top of the ball in the rough.”

“You have to say to yourself: ‘This is the U.S. Open and it’s the same challenge for all the different players.’ They have to understand this is the nature of it.”

“I loved the movie The Silence of the Lambs when Jodie Foster asks Dr. Hannibal Lecter how to catch him (serial killer Buffalo Bill) and Lecter says to her: ‘You must understand the nature of what you covet.’”

“In majors, and especially the U.S. Open, the challenge is so difficult, you have to be so patient, your frustration tolerance has to be enormous and so I think you have to anticipate that this is going to be the nature of it.”

“Pars are fantastic and there is a lot of damage control,” added Lardon, who has 2002 PGA champion Rich Beem among his clients. “When you have the opening, then obviously you take it but it’s not like regular courses you can dominate.”

The South Course at Torrey Pines, which co-hosts the PGA Tour’s Buick Invitational early each year along with the North Course, will play to a par of 71 and measure 7,643 yards off the back tees.

NO EQUAL

World number one Tiger Woods, a six-times winner of the Buick, is heavy favourite to clinch his 14th major title next week. In Lardon’s view, the twice U.S. Open champion has no equal in the game when it comes to unwavering mental strength.

“What impressed me most is his almost surgeon-like attitude,” Lardon said. “He’s not a golfer, he’s a rock star and he has some pressures to deal with that are immense.”

“For the last two years in the majors here in the U.S., I have had real up-close access watching his preparation an hour or two before tee-off on the weekends and he is almost trance-like. I am very impressed with that peace.”

Lardon, whose book Finding Your Zone was published earlier this month, believes Woods best exemplifies ‘instant amnesia’, a pre-requisite for sporting success at the highest level.

“To be in the now, you have to accept what has just happened. If you can’t do that, you will be separate from the experience and that is when trouble lurks.”

“Instant amnesia is a quality that Tiger personifies and it’s absolutely essential because you’re not always going to hit a perfect shot and when you get up to that next shot, you have to not be thinking about the previous one.”

“We use that same attitude with place kickers in the NFL,” added Lardon, a former top-ranked U.S. junior table tennis player. “Instant amnesia is a concept you must have if you are going to perform at your very best.”

The 108th U.S. Open starts on Thursday. (Editing by Ed Osmond)