CADDIES ROLE:The power of positive thinking 'can' help you to achieve your greatest goals

'IF YOU think you can or can't you are probably right." This is not a quote from a famous philosopher, as far as I am aware. I heard it from the Yes putter representative during an idle moment he had from pushing putters beside a practice green at a tournament in the States recently. Representatives, like caddies, get a lot of time to contemplate life's complexities. Then, when one of the other 20 putter pushers is foisting their brand upon an unsuspecting player with a high putting average, we are left watching our 500th divot sailing down the practice range subconsciously admiring the trajectory of its flight and wondering when our player will become as bored as we are and pack it in.

It is actually a wonderfully terse and accurate quote which could apply to most aspects of life, sport, business and relationships. No more so than the ultimate mind game, golf, where opposition is not required to apply pressure on the individual - we are quite capable of doing it without any outside influence. In other words we can think we "can't" when we really need to assert that we "can", all in our own little heads.

I suppose I need to qualify this theory a little bit by saying I am referring to the talented ones; those with tour cards in golf, tennis players who are in the final stages of Wimbledon this week and all those soccer players who competed over the past three weeks in Switzerland and Austria, I am assuming, are all of a similar high standard of their chosen sports.

Now of course the best exponent of this theory in our game of golf is the guy who is sitting out the rest of the year in an effort to restore equilibrium into the distorted world of men's professional golf, Tiger Woods.

It is important not to get misled into thinking Tiger hits his golf ball any better than half the other guys he is playing against each week because he doesn't. His clubs are as good and pretty similar to the next pro he is competing against as is his ball, his bag, his caddie, his coach and whatever else he has in his competition armoury.

Tiger simply thinks he "can" day and night, in the rough or on the fairway, behind a tree or on the green. "Can't" does not exist for him.

The trouble for the rest of us on tour is we all think he "can" too, which hints at the logical conclusion that not everyone "can", so therefore we believe "can't".

There seems to have been more challengers to the ultimate exponent of "can", Tiger Woods, recently. Rocco Mediate will be the last man of the 2008 season to have had this privilege. But which one of us watching the play-off in the US Open actually believed the ageing Mediate would overcome the best golfer in the world no matter how handicapped he was with his sore knee? I hear silence. No matter how many down Tiger was in the play-off, I never thought he "can't".

So where did he get the "can" mentality from and how did he convert all of us to that theory at our own expense? Tiger was born with it but he also was trained to compound it from an early age by his parents. The rest of us bought into it more gradually as we witnessed him run roughshod through every competition he played in since he came on tour. Belief unless questioned is largely what we learn from a young age. We all felt much younger on tour until TW came along.

I was intrigued to listen to the very entertaining punditry on RTÉ over the past few weeks after the European Championship games. I know it makes for good viewing to have a "devil's advocate" on the post-match panel and I am sure they are encouraged by the producer to be argumentative. So when I was listening to Eamon Dunphy's dismissive attitude towards a technically and talent-wise inferior German side I was bemused by his simplistic attitude when it came to the power of belief. I know it from having been in the heat of battle with top golfers, if you drill into them that they are playing well they might just let their talent take over and just let it all happen and realise their high potential no matter how well the competition is playing.

Of course Liam Brady and John Giles were in visual disbelief that protagonist Dunphy was suggesting Germany were too crap to ultimately succeed in the European Championship. In my limited knowledge of soccer I agreed, though what I had seen they did not look like a great side although of course all individually talented. But for someone to deny the power of belief in top sportsmen is to deny the very nature of competition. Again I say this assuming a certain amount of talent in those competing, which of course the Germans have.

It seemed like the rest of Europe wanted Spain to win the final, I get the feeling it was because they recognised that the Spanish side were the best team of the competition.

This didn't matter on Sunday last. Germany, despite their technical inferiority, believed they "can".

They made Spain feel they could, too, when they started the second half. Spain's talent eventually took control.

However, to dismiss the power of "can" at any top level of sport is to deny that Tiger Woods exists and more importantly, that the philosophy hatched out of the humdrum daily duties of us labourers on the golf tour is simply idle banter.