Jeffries golden dream could be derailed by Golfer by Kevin Taylor Aug 21st 2008

Tony Jeffries hopes of competing in the Olympic final on Sunday could be scuppered by top golfer Padraig Harrington, who has been given advice to Jeffries' opponent, Kenny Egan. Harrington, who's dad Patrick (Paddy) was a boxer himself as well as playing Gaelic football for Cork, gave Egan some advice on how he could peak and how to perform his best at big events. "Kenny came to my house, and basically was talking about how to peak, how to go to a big-time event and produce your best performance." said Harrington who has won three majors. "He was obviously a very talented competitor himself and knew what to do, but was feeling that he was slightly underachieving at the big events. "He came and we had a chat. We had a good day to together, and you know, I went through a few things, gave him a bit of advice, gave him a few sports psychology books to read, and it's good to see it's paying off. "I won't take credit for it. As any boxer, they put in incredible amounts of work. It's nice that he's saying these things, but one of the keys I put across to him at the time, and I'm sure some of this is driven by the media here, but one of the keys is his ability to do his own thing and be self-sufficient and concentrate on his own personal performance and not get distracted. "I think he obviously is doing that, and it is a tremendous success. But I would suggest that he shouldn't be thinking at this stage, there should be only one thought in his head, and that's the semi final bout and not get too drawn up into how he's done so far. There's plenty more ahead." Unfortunately Harrington has not been able to follow his countryman's pursuit of a gold medal. "I've been in the States and obviously each country puts the main focus of the television on their own athletes. "So I haven't really seen too much of any of the Irish performances so far this Olympics, but I have been watching quite a bit of the Olympics."

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