Olympic break: on thin ice

Golf fans, excuse this Olympic break. The Golf Blog has only once before allowed a non-golf related post (on how bad Mary Carillo is), but it turned out to be one of TGB's most read post ever (here and ranks high on the Google search for Mary Carillo). Carillo's at the Olympics, but we're not going to rip into her today.

I wanted instead to comment on Sasha Cohen. She won the silver, but got really lucky and a lot of help from the other skaters who messed up. During warmups, Cohen fell twice. Announcer Scott Hamilton then all but predicted that things were not looking good for Cohen and that the look in her eyes showed worry, not something you want going into the long program as the leader. Well, Cohen made Hamilton look like Nostradamus because, within 30 seconds of her long program, she fell twice. The gold, gone. Credit to Cohen for perservering and skating well after those two spills. (More here)

So how does this relate to golf? Well, it doesn't. But one thing I thought about while watching the drama of Sasha Cohen falling during warmups was what happens to golfers when they "get the hooks" or, even worse, "shanks" on the driving range. Once you do, it's hard to go out on the 1st tee, without fearing your next shot will go OB. Nerves and bad mental thoughts will do that, even to the best of us.