Golf World Visits Old Chatham Golf Club to Shoot Photos of Dr. Dick Coop

Renowned Sports Psychologist and Member of Old Chatham Featured in Article from Premier Golf Magazine

(DURHAM, N.C.) – Golf World, a Golf Digest publication, recently visited Old Chatham Golf Club for a photo shoot with Dr. Dick Coop, a renowned sports psychologist and member of Old Chatham, to accompany an article about how golfers and other professional athletes use sports psychology to improve their game. The article ran in Golf World’s November 11 issue.

Photographer Bryan Regan visited the club and shot a photo of Coop poised in an overstuffed leather arm chair on the 10th tee box for the article. The piece included interviews with golf’s top 5 sports psychologists, placing Dr. Coop alongside other well known names in sports psychology, Dr. Bob Rotella, Dr. Gio Valiante, Julie Elion and Dr. Fran Priozzolo.  Each of them discussed how modern sports psychology is utilized not only in golf, but in virtually all athletic endeavors. The article highlights how Coop provides professional athletes with tools to solve mental flaws that are hindering their game.

Coop was quoted in the article, saying “The field either comes down to having a base in educational psychology or clinical psychology. The clinical psychologist operates generally out of a medical model of ‘You're sick, we want to heal you.’ I come from the educational psychology background. Most of the best practitioners in golf are from educational psychology. Ed psych comes more from giving people tools to work with to solve problems, whether it’s golf or race-car driving.”

Coop is a professor of educational psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he serves as a consultant to all university athletic teams in the area of mental skills training and performance enhancement. In addition, he has worked with a number of professional golfers on the PGA, Senior PGA and LPGA Tours. The PGA Tour players he has worked with have won a combined six British Opens, four U.S. Opens, four PGA Championships and seven Masters Tournaments. Dr. Coop has been a member of the advisory board of the Academy of Golf at the Hills of Lakeway in Austin, Texas and at Grand Cypress Resort in Orlando, Fla., as well as an instructor in the Jack Nicklaus Golf Schools at the two academies.

For more information, visit www.oldchathamgolf.org.