Published in Golf Vacations
July-December 2002

THE KEYS TO GOLFING SUCCESS? TRY A RED SHIRT AND THE RIGHT LOCKER. AND LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER

SINGAPORE

I write this as Tiger Woods marches down the 18th fairway of Augusta National in the 2002 Masters. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know what he's wearing - his good-luck red shirt which he wears on the final round of tournaments.

Why? Like a good Asian son he's just listening to his Thai mother, who explains "red is a lucky colour for Tiger. It brings power".

Superstitious? Of course. So what else is new, especially when you're dealing with Asian golfers?

At the Singapore Island Club, for example, members will do most anything to get locker eight, which sounds like the word "prosperity" in Cantonese, and do most anything not to get locker four, which sounds like shi, "death".

Nonsense? Not quite.

Superstitions of any kind are known to raise stress and anxiety levels, but for Chinese and Japanese Americans, the fear of the number four can be a real killer.

On the fourth of each month cardiac deaths for Chinese and Japanese Americans spike seven percent compared to other days, according to a massive new study by a team of scientists at the University of California-La Jolla.

So it's no wonder that golfers - Asian and Anglo - put so much faith in superstitions.

Perhaps my own golf game would improve if I carried around a lucky stone my son gave me, or an amulet I got from a Philippines medicine man. Couldn't hurt.

But do superstitions really work? Well, like so many things concerning the human psyche, if you think it works, it probably does. Call it the placebo effect, or just human nature, anything that silences the monkey mind when we're stroking a gotta-make-it one meter putt is worth a try.

Tiger has said that Jack Nicklaus is his role model. Everyone thought that Tiger's adulation of the Golden Bear was due, logically enough, to Nicklaus's unsurpassed string of victories. But perhaps Tiger senses an affinity with the Bear's superstitious nature.

Jack Nicklaus carries three pennies in his pocket during each round, explaining, "If I carried only one penny and lost it, I'd be without a ball marker. If I had only two pennies and lost one and a fellow player needed to borrow one to mark his ball, I'd be still out of ball markers."

Nicklaus always marks his ball with the tails side of the penny up, unlike Paul Azinger who marks his ball with the penny head facing upwards, and always with Lincoln looking towards the hole..

Chi Chi Rodrigues uses three different coins to mark his ball, depending if it is an eagle, birdie or par putt.

And what about tees?

On par threes, Jack Nicklaus would keep his good tee in his pocket and search for a broken tee on the tee box.

Doug Sanders never played a white tee, believing them to be unlucky. As he stood on the 18th tee box of the last day of the 1970 British Open, he needed par to win the claret jug. The story goes that he couldn't find a tee and a playing partner handed him a white one that he decided to use, against his better judgment, to avoid slowing up proceedings. He went on to bogey the hole, missing an infamous three-foot putt, and the following day lost a playoff to (guess who) Jack Nicklaus.

While not wanting to speculate too much on Nicklaus's state of mind, I wonder whether it was risky or respectful for him to design two courses at Superstition Mountain, in Arizona.

This superstition business can get really complicated, affecting not only what kind of tee you have in your pocket but also what kind of tea you have in your stomach.

Tiger, for instance, has a carefully worked out list of foods that make him win -- orange and green vegetables, fruit, turkey, baked fish, grilled chicken, skimmed milk, egg whites and rice. But he swears that other foods make him lose - pizza, ice cream, cheesecake, roast beef, fried chicken, and soft drinks.

So no more pizza and cheesecake for me before a round. Superstitious? Not at all -- I've got proof it makes sense. As I finish writing this Tiger has just clinched his third Masters, by a comfortable three shot margin. Hmmm. Wonder if the pro shop has any of those red shirts in my size.