All in the Imagination : Doug Pfaff ‘Visualizes’ Those Winning Kicks, and Makes Them

Friday nights, Doug Pfaff is a lonely figure, surrounded by 56,000 silent seats in the darkness of Arizona Stadium, arcing imaginary field goals high into the desert sky.

It sounds like tilting at windmills.

But in the last two weeks, Pfaff has booted late, game-winning field goals to lift the University of Arizona to upsets of nationally ranked Oklahoma and Washington.

Two weeks ago, Pfaff’s 40-yard field goal with two seconds left gave Arizona a 6-3 victory over then sixth-ranked Oklahoma.

And last week, Pfaff nailed a 35-yarder with 1:01 remaining to hand Washington, ranked 11th at the time, a 20-17 defeat.

Pfaff, a product of Bishop Montgomery High School and El Camino College, says his pre-game “visualization process” is the key to those post-game victory rides he’s been getting from his teammates lately.

And that’s the reason for his solitary workout in the empty stadium on Friday nights. He boots about 40 imaginary field goals every night before a game.

“I can barely see what I’m doing,” Pfaff said. “But I just take my steps like normal, kick through the imaginary ball, and then I imagine the referee putting his hands to the sky.”

Pfaff was introduced to the visualization process last year by Arizona assistant coach John Baxter before a game against Washington State. In that game, Pfaff was good on three field goals and four extra points, and executed an onside kick to perfection.

The visualization technique has been with him ever since. He even does the trick on the road, staying on the field after practice when his teammates are all in the shower.

“I just try to imagine the perfect technique,” Pfaff said. “Then, when I get in the game, the pressure doesn’t seem to be there, because I’ve already made 35 or 40 kicks in my mind.”

The technique is paying off, both for Pfaff and Arizona (3-1). Pfaff has made eight of his nine field goal attempts this year (one was blocked by Oklahoma) plus all five extra point attempts. He hasn’t missed an extra point in his 27 career attempts at Arizona.

After his two fourth-quarter field goals brought Arizona from behind to knock off Washington, Pfaff was named Pac-10 Conference special teams player of the week for the third time this year. He also received the honor after his game-winner against Oklahoma, and after he kicked four field goals, including a 50-yarder, in Arizona’s 19-3 season-opening victory over Stanford.

“Doug is mentally the toughest kicker I’ve ever seen,” said Arizona Coach Dick Tomey.

Pfaff needed that toughness against Oklahoma. After Arizona rolled off 12 straight running plays to drive the ball to the Oklahoma 25-yard line, the Sooners called a timeout with seven seconds left to give Pfaff time to worry about his field goal attempt.

Oklahoma didn’t know about Pfaff’s visualization process.

“To me, that just gets me more ready to kick,” Pfaff said. “I also didn’t want to disappoint my teammates or the fans. I didn’t want to be hated by the entire city of Tucson if I missed the kick.”

The ensuing scene, with Arizona fans going wild after a perfect snap, hold and kick by Pfaff, would be repeated the following week against Washington.

This time, it took a one-yard plunge by Arizona quarterback Ronald Veal on fourth down to sustain the winning drive. The drive stalled at the Washington 18, and the Huskies called timeout to psyche out Pfaff.

“I wasn’t even thinking about whether it was good or not,” Tomey said. “I was already telling our kickoff team to get ready to go.”

Pfaff made history again with his 35-yarder. Lightning had gotten Washington twice--Pfaff beat the Huskies in Washington last year, 16-13, with a 22-yarder through a driving rainstorm with five seconds left.

“It’s starting to become habit forming,” Pfaff said. “Hopefully, if we can do that seven more times this year, the eighth time will be in a bowl game.”

It hasn’t been bad for a guy who wasn’t known as a place kicker anywhere he played before.

At El Camino, Pfaff was primarily a punter. He was recruited as a punter in 1986 by then-Arizona Coach Larry Smith, now head coach at USC. He redshirted in 1987 and went

into the 1988 season as a punter.

At Bishop Montgomery, Pfaff played wide receiver and kicked. In the second game of his high school career, Pfaff beat Hawthorne with a 42-yard field goal with three seconds left. But even though he was named to The Times’ South Bay team as a kicker, he was an all-Angelus League selection at receiver. The Angelus League first team kicker that year was Mater Dei’s Gary Coston.

Ironically, it was an injury to Coston, Arizona’s first-string place kicker last year, that gave Pfaff his shot at kicking again. Coston went down with a pulled thigh five games into last season, and even though he is Arizona’s No. 5 all-time scorer, he hasn’t been able to wrest the job away from Pfaff since.

Last year, Pfaff made 12 of his 17 field goal attempts. But that was before the NCAA Football Rules Committee, in order to add excitement and unpredictability to the game, voted to ban collegiate kickers from kicking field goals and extra points off of a tee.

Before the rules change, college kickers were making 95% of their extra point attempts, which was threatening to turn the PAT into a non-play. The rules committee predicted a 10% drop off in PAT accuracy and a 20% cut in field goal success.

The last time NCAA players kicked straight off the turf was in 1947. But Pfaff worked hard on adapting his style over the spring, and his success rate has actually risen.

“You have to concentrate on kicking the ball lower,” Pfaff said. “If you don’t, you miss bad--wide right, wide left--just atrocious misses. But now, I can’t even remember what it was like to kick off the tee.”

Kickers in the National Football League must kick off the turf as well. In fact, most NFL field goals are easier now that college attempts because the pro hash marks are closer to the center of the field. So Pfaff thinks the transition from college to pro ball would be a relatively easy one.

But he’s putting aside any thoughts of the NFL for now. He has a clear picture in his mind of Arizona playing in the Rose Bowl.

And if Pfaff visualizes something, well then, look out for Arizona.