Meet Casey Rotella – Baruzzini
My Dad and I are happy to be joining Eastern Golf TV this season. Since I’m sure most of you are familiar with my Dad’s work I thought I’d give you all a quick introduction to the brains behind the madness 
Name: Casey (Rotella) Baruzzini
Education: University of Notre Dame, BA History (European)
Golf Experience: Won VA State Championship for Juniors, Charlottesville City (3x), and various other mid-Atlantic Junior tournaments, MVP for the Nike USA Team vs. Ireland, played collegeiate golf at the University of Notre Dame (though I fought through a wrist injury three of those four years)
Pets: the most lovable 30lb cat in the world John Winston Lennon
Favorite Things: My faith, My husband, children, and family (of course), Notre Dame, cats, The Beatles, learning languages (especially German and Italian), all ages of European history, but mostly modern Germany, antiquing, and browsing used book stores
Favorite Movies: La Vita E Bella (Life is Beautiful), if you haven’t seen it YOU MUST!, Goodbye Lenin, The Mission, Spanglish, Sleepless in Seattle, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Favorite Books : Jane Eyre, Little Women, anything by James Herriot, The Old Man and the Sea, The Everlasting Man, the Father Brown series, C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy
What I Can Bring to the “Roundtable”: experience as a junior golfer at the national level, knowledge of the college golf world, persistance in the game despite injury, the relationships between family and education and golf, and the good fortune of growing up in and around my father, Dr. Robert Rotella, and the world of sports
Random Fun Fact: In seventh grade I came up with the original title for my Dad’s work of “Golf ,the Brain Game,” but for some reason the publishers decided “Golf is Not a Game of Perfect” would sell more copies. Who knew?
Tags: Dr. Rotella, golf, golf instruction, Golf Psychology, PGA TOUR
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On My Interpretation of Dreams
I have two things in common with Sigmund Freud. I have a couch in my consulting room. And I ask people to tell me about their dreams. But there the resemblance ends. The couch is in my basement rec r0om, near the Grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The picture frames above it hold not the psychoanalyst’s carefully neutral art by a print of golfer swinging a mid-iron and a flag from the 18th hole at Pebble Beach, signed by Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Tom Kite. A four-and-one-quarter inch putting cup sunk, into the floor, and a universal gym complete with decor. And no one lies on my couch. They sit, and we talk face to face. Freud believed dreams were a window into the subconscious mind. From them, he spun a web theory that, too often, boils down to a belief that people are the victims of circumstances beyond their control-of childhood traumas, parental mistakes, and instinctive impulses. But the dreams I ask about are no the ones that creep from the unconscious the night before. They are the goals and aspirations a golfer has been carrying around in his or her conscious mind.
The dreams I want to hear of excite some fortunate people from the time they wake up each morning until they fall asleep from the time they wake up each morning until they fall asleep at night. They are the stuff of passion and tenacity. They might be defined as goals, but goals so bright that no one need write them down to remember them. In fact, the hard task for the professionals I work with is not recalling their dreams, but occasionally putting them out of their minds and taking some time off from their pursuit of them. The dreams I want to hear about are the emotional fuel that helps people take control of their lives and be what they want to be. Time and again, I have heard stories of dreams that intimately connected to the ability to play great golf golf. In, fact, this is the first mental principle a golfer must learn.
A person with great dreams can achieve great things.
A person with small dreams, or a person without the confidence to pursue his or her dreams, has consigned himself or herself to a life of frustration and mediocrity.
Dr. Bob Rotella – Golf is not a Game of Perfect
Tags: Dr. Rotella, golf, golf instruction, Golf Psychology, PGA TOUR
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