Peak Performance: Golf
Cameron Davis used hypnotherapy after 'falling out of love' with golf before drought-breaking PGA Tour win
Damien McCartney - July 1, 2024 - 9.54am - Channel 9 Wide World of Sports
Cameron Davis revealed he'd "fallen out of love" with golf in the months leading up to his drought-breaking PGA Tour win.
The Aussie claimed a one-shot victory at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit on Monday morning (AEST), three years after he claimed his maiden win at the same event.
After three successive rounds in the 60s, Davis carded a final round two-under 70 and watched from the range as Akshay Bhatia three-putted the final green to gift him the win.
In his on-course interview, the 29-year-old revealed he'd only three weeks ago begun working with a hypnotherapist in an effort to turn around a form slump.
"From where I was a couple of weeks ago to today, I'm a completely different person," he said through tears.
Speaking to media including Wide World of Sports later, Davis said his wife Jonika had been pushing for him to give it a go after she'd had her own successes.
"I resisted for quite a long time, but my game had been going in the wrong direction, I was feeling more and more stress day-to-day with my golf and kind of falling out of love with the game a little bit," he said.
"My career trajectory was not where I wanted it, it had been a long time since I'd won and I felt like I wasn't playing anywhere near good enough golf to keep up with the best players in the game."
Since finishing in a tie for 12th at the Masters, his best result in the seven events since was a tie for 38th at the Wells Fargo. He missed the cut at both the US Open and PGA Championship.
Davis has been working with renowned sports psychologist Bhrett McCabe for some time, and the pair agreed hypnotherapy was at the very least worth a go.
He perhaps stated the obvious when he said it was working "extremely well".
"We've only been working together for a couple of weeks and I've gone from almost disliking the game to feeling like I've got a bit of that magic back," he said.
"I can entirely put it down to the fact that my team's had my back through every dark day I've had … but definitely the biggest turnaround has happened with the hypnotherapy."
Davis explained the hypnotherapy wasn't so much "pulling strings on you and making you act without your knowledge", but more mentally walking through situations he needs to be better in.
"You're able to kind of walk through all the steps in your head before you actually experience them in reality," he said.
"I think that made a huge difference because there were a lot of things that didn't go my way this week.
"I felt like I had plans in place (for) when things were going really well and when things weren't going well. You feel like you've already done it, and you're going out and doing it again.
"It's a very different situation to hoping for good golf, and when things don't go your way, not having a plan to deal with it."
"It's worked extremely well, extremely quickly for me.
"That's what I would put down to my golf coming from a pretty rough place to where it is now."