"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
weekly online golf column
by
Chris Dortch

May 11, 2004

Charles Plott remembers well the day his life—and his life’s work—changed forever.

Plott was running a successful clinical counseling business in Huntsville, Ala., specializing in marriage, family and depression. One day in the late 1990s, a client walked in the door that would so drastically alter Plott’s career path he would eventually close his practice and hang up a new shingle outside:

Sports psychologist.

The client was an Auburn pole-vaulter who had lost his ability to clear the bar.

"He had gotten injured and come back too soon," Plott said. "After that, he couldn’t clear the bar; he’d just fall back to the ground. This went on for three weeks. At that point, his coach reminded him he was on scholarship to go over the bar."

A friend advised the vexed vaulter to see Plott, who had never worked with an athlete. Plott had dabbled in sports psychology, reading Bob Rotella’s books on the mind game of golf. An accomplished player, Plott studied Golf is Not a Game of Perfect before taking a shot at qualifying for the 1996 U.S. Amateur. Plott didn’t make the Amateur field, but his interest in performance psychology had been stoked.

When the pole-vaulter walked in his door that fateful day, Plott had an idea of what to tell him.

"We talked for two hours, and in that two hours, I decided that he was trying not to fall as opposed to trying to go over the bar," Plott said. "I didn’t know anything about pole vaulting, but I asked him if there was a height he could guarantee me he could go over. I had him clear that height 10 times in a row."

After that, Plott asked the athlete to raise the bar six inches and clear it 10 more times in succession. Once that was accomplished, he kept adding six inches to the bar. If he missed, he had to drop the bar a foot and start all over.

Two weeks after the pole-vaulter first visited Plott, he set a personal best at the Southeastern Conference championships and finished ninth overall.

Suddenly, Plott was a sports psychologist. "It was so much fun," Plott said. "I had a sense of real accomplishment."

Plott’s path to a drastic career turn seemed to be paved and waiting for him. While he was working as a clinical counselor he served as volunteer golf coach at Huntsville’s Grissom High School. On his team was Spike McRoy, who would later earn his PGA Tour card.

"I went to see Spike play in Atlanta the first year he got on tour," Plott said. "I was watching him balls and I saw a sign on the range that said caddies, club reps, coaches and sports psychologists had to have a credential to go behind the ropes. I asked Spike about that and he got me a tour instructor’s credential."

Soon, Plott was working with a small group of tour players, including McRoy. McRoy had lost his tour card for two years, but in 2002, after working with Plott, he won the B.C. Open and earned exempt status through the 2004 season.

Plott’s business later expanded to junior and collegiate golfers, but he also branched out into other sports. The University of Alabama became a huge client, sending its men’s and women’s basketball, women’s gymnastics and women’s tennis teams to Huntsville. When former football coach Dennis Franchione took over the job in 2001, he quickly made a trip to see Plott.

"He told me he wanted to really know his players before spring pratice," Plott said.

Plott helped Franchione do that by making each player take an extensive personality profile test. The test is the bedrock of Plott’s practice. Answers to questions that might seem irrelevant to some give Plott a wealth of information.

"The first thing I want to do is understand your personality," Plott said. "Do you have performance limiting factors? If so, we can develop an individual plan, not just mentally, but physically, for training yourself."

Plott has developed a thriving business in Chattanooga alone. Among his first clients was the UTC golf team.

"He met with us four times as a group," said UTC coach Reed Sanderlin. "Keep in mind we had never worked with a sports psychologist before. The kids started off skeptical. By the second session, it began to make some sense to them."

Plott has also worked with individual golfers of all skill levels, including younger players looking to rise to another level, and older players looking to regain something they might have lost. McCallie golfer Adam Mitchell began seeing Plott last season. Since then, he’s won nine tournaments. Todd Moreland, an amateur who had settled into a recreational golf mode, wanted to start playing in tournaments again. After a couple of sessions with Plott, he had sufficiently beaten back a couple of personal demons to have confidence to enter the Signal Mountain Invitational. "He’s unbelievable," Moreland said of Plott.

Plott promises no miracles. But he does promise that his clients will have a better understanding of their own personalities and tendencies. And with that knowledge usually comes improved performance.

"We don’t preach band-aids in the golf swing, and don’t make unrealistic claims," Plott said. "Ours is a long-term approach. If our clients are willing to dig a little bit into their personalities and find out what performance-limiting factors might be at work, chances are they’ll be able to improve at whatever sport they play and have more fun. That’s our goal for everyone, but others might want to dig a little deeper. Winning tournaments might be their goal. If that’s their goal, we’ll try to help them get there."

Check out Charles Plott’s website at www.mindgamesinc.com.

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