This is my instinctive thought on the subject of golf gurus, sports psychologists, invaders of the skull, nut adjusters - call them what you will: If the ten best golfers in the world prostrated themselves regularly on the couch of the most famous shrink in the business, at the end of the season, one of them is going to finish last.

How, I then wonder, is Sigmund Russell-Jung MGM (Master of the Golfing Mind) going to explain that?

I think I know. I think he's going to say: "Ah yes, but I have conditioned the others to be the best nine golfers in the world."

That's the whole point of all the mental means testing that is going on in the game today: you have got to have positive thoughts and you have got to have help, expensive help, usually, to nurture them.

Now matters of the mind, how it works etcetera, are way beyond me. I am not qualified to have an opinion on whether subliminal tinkering works or not and I have to concede that a bit of carefully implanted mysticism seems to be helping Steve Webster at the moment.

I have to stand with the agnostics and from the sidelines we can make cynical observations like: Ernie Els is the second best golfer in the world and he finds the need for help in arranging the screws in his head. Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the world and he doesn't.

Doesn't prove anything, of course. Except that Tiger, like Jack Nicklaus before him, has a mind that not even the top psychotherapist would be allowed to attempt to "improve."

Another thought: if Els says that having his thoughts arranged for him helps, then we have to believe him. If Webster swears by the power of mental magic, we have to take his word for that, too.

There is evidence that insists that men (and women) can be assisted to play better golf if they turn their minds over to gurus.

You've only got to read the literature and there's a lot of it. My ramblings on this intricate subject were provoked by a book that arrived this week entitled Zen Golf (Collins Willow, £10), written by Dr Joseph Parent, an American, who is an expert on Buddhist philosophy and stress reduction techniques.

Dr Parent has dedicated his work to the Venerable Chogyam Trunsgpa, Rinpoche, "who brought the teachings of Shambhala warriorship to the West . . ." Sounded as though I was in for a very heavy read but it wasn't.

"The best book he'd come across for connecting the mind and the game " says Vijay Singh in the blurb. It covers 73 areas of the game that can be improved by thinking straight. Here's one of the chapter headings: Never Keep More Than a Hundred Thoughts in Your Mind During Your Swing.

My immediate response to that was: if you want to clear your mind, don't read books like this. Then there's the section,You Produce What you Fear which can be summarised thus: if you think you're going to hit it into the water, you will. So I tried not thinking about hitting it into the water and guess what . . .

Further on in the book I found this virtual impossibility: How to Enjoy a Bad Round of Golf. "You can't know if it's a bad round until the round's over," says the author. Sorry, Doc, I know and all the people I play golf with know when we're having a stinker.

There is no amount of philosophical consolation in the world that will alter my certainty. It is tempting to be cynically dismissive of books like this but there's some sound advice in this one as there is in another that arrived the same day from the same publisher, The One Minute Golfer (£6.99).

This is written by Ken Blanchard, founder of The Golf University in San Diego and co-author of The One Minute Manager which sold 12 million copies in 27 languages.

Ken guarantees the book will improve my game. He's got some cute things to say as well and here's the line that caught my fervent attention. When I play a bad shot, he invites me to think these three words: "How unlike me." Ken, old son, you couldn't be more wrong!