Utahn's role is to help, then get out

Late last month, when Stephen Ames, a golfer from Canada by way of Trinidad who had won exactly one PGA Tour event in his life, was on his way to a six-stroke victory and $1.4 million in prize money at The Players Championship in Florida, the Utahn who played a major role in that unexpected heist was boarding a Sunday afternoon plane at the Salt Lake City Airport.

Alan Fine, a performance enhancement specialist who was born in Wales and lives in Sandy, was on his way to California to help other clients "unblock and thus unlock" their native talents.

He didn't need to be in Florida. Well before the golf tournament started, he'd laid down the basics for Ames, reminding him of the three F's, Faith, Fire and Focus: Have faith in your abilities, have the fire to compete, and focus to the finish line.

"What could I have told Stephen about golf that he didn't already know?" Fine asks rhetorically.

By the time the plane landed, Ames had completed his — and Fine's — triumph, adding yet another endorsement for the mental approach to success that Fine and his American Fork-based company, InsideOut Performance, has been espousing for the past 20 years.

"All of our research and experience points to the fundamental truth that, assuming the requisite knowledge and experience are there, performance improvements are primarily driven by removing interference," says Fine.

Don't think, just do.

What worked for Ames — who after his five-under-par final round said, "it felt like a typical practice round" — is what worked 20 years ago when Fine was a tennis instructor in his native U.K. and stumbled upon something so practical and basic he at first had a hard time understanding what it was.

He was teaching a 9-year-old girl and, as he tells it, "her mother and I had conspired against her by saying she wasn't very good; she was shy, she didn't have good coordination and all the rest. After six lessons she couldn't hit more than six shots in a row without missing."

But then, in an effort to simplify the lesson, Fine reduced his instruction to two commands: "bounce" and "hit."

He started to bounce balls at the girl and she started to hit them.

She hit 53 in a row.

"The kid is really excited and I have no idea what's going on," remembers Fine, little realizing at the moment that he had stumbled onto his life's work.

"Normally, when you take a lesson you expect the coach to tell you what you're doing wrong," he explains, "but frequently it's the endless instruction and so-called constructive criticism that gets in the way of optimal performance."

As Stephen Ames, who has realized both of his tour golf wins since hooking up with Fine in 2004, said after the TPC, "Alan helped me to quiet my mind and not get in my own way on the course."

Golfers are hardly Fine's and InsideOut's only clients. "I've worked with squash players, pistol shooters, fencers, teachers, kids and dozens of CEOs and businesses," says Fine, who insists his mental formula for success can be tailored to anyone and any endeavor.

And once he figures you've got it, he promises he'll get out of your way.

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Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.