LIV Golf drama with Brooks Koepka, Matthew Wolff highlights mental side

Brooks Koepka has again brought some attention to LIV Golf, but this time by taking one of his trusty mid-irons and jamming it directly onto the third rail of modern sensibilities: The mental struggle.

You couldn’t help but notice in recent years, more than ever, emphasis is often directed toward the athlete’s psyche and the need to destigmatize the occasional and/or constant need for emotional support.

Entire industries — from pharmaceuticals to literature to self-help gurus — have welled up from the cracks in our collective psyche.

That’s good, some will say, since previous generations reflexively ignored such things and lots of lives were negatively affected.

That’s bad, say others, suggesting something worth doing is almost always seen by some as worth overdoing. We’ve gone quickly into the over-coddling realm, they say.

Take your pick.

The emotional aspect of sports found a new headline this past week in perhaps the most mental sport of them all — golf, where fractions of fractions can mean the difference between success and near-crippling failure.

Ever since yips with the putter ruined the game for Old Tom Morris, even the world’s best golfers have dealt with periods of self-criticism, self-doubt and occasionally self-hate. They’ve either ratcheted up their grind and dug hard in the dirt to find answers, or took a couple weeks off to find the flaw, fix it, then bury the fix into their game through thousands of practice shots.

Matthew Wolff, just a few years ago considered an up-and-comer if not a can’t-miss, has openly dealt with the mental side. He even took two months off in 2021 to get away and make things better. In a Golf Digest interview two years ago, he said at times he just wanted to “stay in my bed and not be in front of everyone and not screw up in front of anyone.”

Last year, either to make a clean break or to cash in while the cashing was good, he made the jump to the LIV tour. Given LIV’s insistence on introducing a team concept to professional golf, complete with semi-juvenile team names, Wolff found himself on the four-man team known as Smash GC, “captained” by Brooks Koepka.

Unfortunately, Wolff’s game hasn’t much improved. In fields of 48, including some highly overmatched golfers, Wolff has finished outside the top 30 in the last five…