Page 416 - Deception at work all chapters EBook

Golf and the Cunning Plan 417

Use non-verbal communication to your advantage: people react to it

Alternatively, after your opponent’s bad shots:

Say nothing, but just grunt or put your hand over your mouth or, better still, your eyes. In fact
you can go for the eye covering non-verbal from time to time when your opponent is about
to hit. The second option is to say: ‘Good shot’. This will really upset him and he is likely to
respond: ‘No, it bloody well wasn’t.’ You can then be really cruel: ‘Well, I thought it was one
of your better ones.’ If he becomes angry, his chips are up.

Anger results in the opponent making more mistakes

You also have a great opportunity to increase both anxiety and frustration every time
your opponent carves his ball into the jungle or into Mrs Arbuthnott’s flowerbed of prize
geraniums:

Start looking around 50 yards short of where the ball actually landed. The opponent will say:
‘It was much longer than that’. ‘I don’t think it was,’ you reply sincerely, ‘I think you topped
it.’ If the opponent walks back in your direction you know you have him.6

Frustration leads to anxiety

From time to time, walk up to his ball when it is lying perfectly in the fairway, take off your
glasses, crouch down on your hands and knees and look carefully at the little round object
but say nothing. He is going to ask:

‘What’s up?’
You reply: ‘Nothing, I thought you might be in a divot, but you’re not.’

This will set his mind racing and to be certain he does not hit the top of the ball – in what
he is now convinced is a divot – he will take an almighty smack and duff it into the bushes.
You should not overdo this ploy and ten or twelve times in an eighteen hole match is quite
enough.

THE PIVOTAL POINT AND TURN

If your cunning plan works you will reach the point where your opponent’s head drops, his
body shrivels and he says something like:

‘I don’t know what’s gone wrong today. I normally play much better than this. Maybe you
were right and my clubs are too heavy.’ [this is a classic case of loss of confidence]

6 Some readers may feel this is a bit sneaky, but it’s the opponent’s own fault. The idea is to hit fairways and greens