ANN ARBOR, MI – Nobody is perfect, but many try to be.
Cydney Clanton was one of them.
Thursday, Clanton put herself in the hunt for the third time this season at the LPGA Volvik Championship. She’s on pace to pick up her third top 10 of the year - a first for the 2012 rookie, who in her previous five years on Tour, finished once in the top 10.
“She is the epitome of hard work,” said Tim Yelverton, Clanton’s instructor. “However, sometimes it actually worked against her.”
As Clanton strived to improve her game, her failure to meet the high expectations she set for herself took its toll. She became depressed. The outcome became cyclical – the more she let herself down on the course, the less she was able to recover.
Clanton’s negative outlook also began affecting her work with instructor Tim Yelverton, as she would become frustrated with her lessons.
“She has extremely high expectations of herself, to say she's a perfectionist would be an understatement,” Yelverton said. “A good example would be a bogey-free round. In trying not to make a mistake or a bogey, it would almost handcuff her and prevent her from performing to the level of her true skill.”
At the end of the 2016 season, Clanton’s team suggested she speak with someone. Yelverton recommended Dr. Bhrett McCabe, a Birmingham based sports psychologist and former athlete who works with members of the LPGA and PGA Tours, NFL, MLB and MMA. In January, the pair met with McCabe and Clanton began working with him. They speak monthly over FaceTime or Skype and McCabe is on call anytime Clanton needs to talk. The focus of their work has been on changing Clanton’s perspective and learning to accept any outcome.
“I didn’t know if it was going to help, how it was going to help,” Clanton told LPGA.com.
But it did help.
“We really don’t have control of anything out here, but if you give control to someone higher than you, then you never know what’s going to work out,” Clanton said about her new outlook. “It’s amazing, if you’re timid of something it’s all you focus on rather than focus on what you want. This year has been focusing on what you want, like you want to make the up and down, you want to hit this close.”
Yelverton has seen an improvement, too.
“Since working with Bhrett, she is more accepting and looks at difficult circumstances more as a challenge than a problem,” Yelverton said.
Clanton’s new focus on what she wants, rather than what she doesn’t, helped her pull off back-to-back upsets at the Lorena Ochoa Match Play. The No. 15 seed defeated No. 2 Ha Na Jang and then No. 7 Caroline Masson to advance to the round of 16, where she was eliminated by No. 3 Cristie Kerr. The strong showing was her second top 10 of the year. Three weeks prior, Clanton posted four consecutive rounds in the 60s at the LOTTE Championship in Hawaii to finish tied for ninth, her best finish since September 2014.
This week in Ann Arbor, Yelton and Clanton worked on her short game, making physical changes that will work hand in hand with the adjustments she made to her mental game.
“We changed her putting routine, which I think will make her more athletic and reactive, rather than trying to be too perfect or precise,” Yelverton said. “I'm really proud of her attitude and the changes she has made and look forward to the rest of the season.”
Clanton should be proud, too. She isn’t perfect, but she doesn’t have to be in order to find success - admitting she needed help turned around her career.
“It’s been really good and I’m so thankful that I went.”
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