COLUMN ONE : The Freuds of the Fairways : U.S. Open offers high stakes for pros and the psychologists, swing doctors who sharpen their game. For golf gurus, a winner can mean lucrative spinoffs selling books, videos to an eager public.

When the winning putt plunks into the final hole at the Baltusrol Golf Club this weekend, two winners of the U.S. Open likely will emerge: The champion and his golf guru.

The player will take home $290,000 and one of the sport’s most prestigious titles. His coach, who helps sculpt his swing and sharpen his mental attitude, also can expect to profit handsomely from selling an eager public books, videotapes, product endorsements and lessons.

In the United States alone, nearly 25 million people--one American in 10--plays golf, the National Golf Foundation estimates. Legions of amateurs hunger for teaching tips, especially from the coach of a U.S. Open winner. For that teacher, the tournament can be a springboard to success.

“The whole nature of the guru ballgame is testimonial--who is willing to say my success is due in part or whole to this instructor,” says Dr. Fran Pirozzolo, a Texas sports psychologist who works with touring pros on the mental side of the game.

“It is the players who keep my name in the frame,” agrees David Leadbetter, a 40-year-old Englishman who briefly played the European and South African tours before rising to fame as the architect of 1992 British Open champion Nick Faldo’s remodeled swing. “There are a lot of good teachers around. I was in the right place at the right time. Coaching Nick Faldo was a breakthrough to my career.”

Virtually all top players on the tour have gurus, whom they pay a set fee or a percentage of their earnings. But for a successful swing teacher the rewards can be much greater.

Harvey Penick’s “Little Red Book,” co-written by the coach of Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite, last year’s U.S. Open winner, is a runaway hit, lodged on the nonfiction best-seller list compiled by Publishers Weekly for the 43rd week. Almost 700,000 copies have been sold (at $19 each). NBC’s video based on the slim, folksy volume of advice about golf and life in Texas is the biggest-selling golf video of all time.

At 88, Penick has become a celebrity, and is working on a second book. Amateur golfers from all over the world make the pilgrimage to Austin, where he lives. Some even hope to rent apartments for a month so they can receive a series of lessons. But Penick declines to give multiple lessons, in part, because of his age and his belief that what he would say is so simple it could be disappointing.

Other teachers and his students, however, say Penick is being overly modest and is a great communicator.

“He’s a genius in the ways he conveys his thoughts,” says Crenshaw, the 1984 Masters champion. “People look at these things and say it’s laughingly simple. . . . He teaches in stories, images and metaphors.”

While other teachers have filled whole chapters about the proper way to hit the ball, Penick’s advice in his book is simple: “The best swing training aid you can buy is the common weed cutter. The motion you make lopping off weeds is the perfect action of swinging a golf club through the hitting area.”

“Just hanging around Mr. Penick was such a positive experience,” says Kite, on the videotape. “You never came away from a lesson not feeling better about yourself, not feeling better about your game than ever before.”

Fueled in large part by Faldo’s success, Leadbetter has also become a mini-conglomerate. He promotes a variety of products designed to lower scores, and endorses other items, such as Rolex watches and rain gear. He also runs an expanding empire of golf schools in the United States, Europe and Asia. The rates vary, but an hour’s lesson with a Leadbetter-trained assistant can cost $125.

Leadbetter has produced three videos and has sold a half-million copies of an instructional book that is published in eight languages. Virtually all of his time is devoted to sharpening the skills of touring pros--except for the two-day retreats he personally conducts about twice a month for a half-dozen amateurs who pay $3,500 each.

“People are always seeking the Holy Grail of golf,” he says.

The search for golf’s Grail can prove elusive. As with professionals, some amateurs benefit greatly by working with a coach. Others may show little progress with one teacher, but may improve with someone else. At the core, veteran instructors say, is the coach’s ability to analyze problems and to help solve them, which can be as much a mental as a physical process.

“A golf coach can certainly help,” says Robert Diamond, a retired public relations specialist and an ardent but high-handicap golfer who has taken lessons from several gurus over the years. “They helped. But the reality remains that I can remember my grandmother’s telephone number in Phoenix from 50 years ago, but I can’t remember my golf swing from day to day. The gurus help me find it.”

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With such high stakes for champions and coaches alike, the Baltusrol Golf Club this week is a gathering place for gurus. And in support of their pros they often call upon an arsenal of other advisers, including nutritionists, physical therapists, exercise trainers and sports psychologists. While the gurus have been around for years, the addition of these other specialists only recently has made big-time golf a team sport.

One reason for the team approach is that many coaches and top players realize that, in a sense, Sigmund Freud walks the fairways with them.

Kite arrived at Baltusrol with his swing teacher and a sports psychologist to help plan mental strategy and relieve the pressure of being the current titleholder. But unlike, Payne Stewart, the 1991 U.S. Open winner, Kite is rooming with his wife, Christy, and not with his sports shrink.

Fellow pro Paul Azinger says that sports psychologist Dr. Richard H. Coop played a vital role in Stewart’s 1991 Open victory. “I know for a fact he helped him win the U.S. Open. . . . What he said to Payne right before he teed off was exactly the right thing to tell Payne.”

Coop, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina, says he realized that Stewart was playing well just before the tournament and simply told him: “You have earned the right to play with confidence out here.”

Stewart credits Coop for helping him win the U.S. Open and the 1989 PGA Championship.

“I was too interested in the end result of winning--and not enough in the process that I had to go through in order to achieve my goals,” he says. “Dr. Coop helped me relax and let my swing take over.”

Azinger, however, takes a different view.

“I saw a sports psychologist one time about five years ago,” said Azinger, who does have a swing coach. “I just sat in there and I just talked, and he didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know. He charged me like $800. I did all the talking and he didn’t say anything. I don’t even remember the guy’s name.”

For both pros and amateurs, golf instruction has become high-tech. Videotaped replays and computers can measure timing, tempo, weight shift, shoulder and hip turn, the path of the club as it passes through light sensors and the precise angle of the club face hitting the ball. Computers also can display personalized models of golf swings. Players can see their faults reproduced instantly, instead of having a teacher try to explain in words what went wrong.

The result, many top teachers say, is that while great past champions like Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson or Sam Snead--if playing in their prime--would be U.S. Open contenders today, the competition is stiffer with many more players possessing superb swings.

“Today’s coaches have probably a little more knowledge of the golf swing based on facts, backing it up with video as opposed to what feels right,” says Dick Harmon, one of the principal teachers of 1992 Masters champion Fred Couples. “The video has taken a lot of the guesswork out of it.”

“A great swing in 1930 could be a great swing in 1980 and a great swing now,” added Jim McLean, another of the new breed of coaches, whose clients include several pros--and former Vice President Dan Quayle. “But there are many more good swings now and much better technique and better fundamentals than there were 30 years ago.”

While high technology has made learning easier, golf teachers say that many fundamentals have not changed over time.

“I’ve been watching golf swings for over 50 years,” says Mamaroneck, N.Y., club pro Tom Nieporte. “I have played with some of the greatest players throughout the years. I have listened to some of the greatest teachers and very few come up with or say anything now that wasn’t said then with the exception of the position of the left arm--its closeness to the left side at impact,” says Nieporte, head professional at the Winged Foot Golf Club, the site of four U.S. Open championships. “Otherwise, I don’t see anything else that’s different then and now.”

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Some sports psychologists believe that golf and the search for the perfect swing may actually be addictive.

“Why do golfers get hooked on the game? What draws people to golf so they’re unable--or at the least unwilling--to let go?” Coop asks in his book “Mind Over Golf.” The reason, he concludes, is intermittent reinforcement--rewards do not come with every shot, hole or round.

Psychological research shows that behaviors acquired through intermittent reinforcement are the hardest to extinguish. Playing a slot machine is one example. A slot does not pay off every time, and that is what keeps gamblers pulling the lever. In the same way, golfers are constantly looking for the next great shot.

Modern golf gurus are far more than swing teachers. They are coaches, advisers, friends, father figures--and sometimes even an extended family. The best are keen students of human nature.

“These days, a player almost puts himself in a coach’s hands,” says Leadbetter. “There is more planning involved. You sit down with a player and work out a program and a plan that they will work on over the next couple of years.

“Sometimes I will recommend a sports psychologist, workout physiologist to help with strength and flexibility. I will recommend a nutritionist. I try to tailor the whole package to the individual. Every player is different.”

Harmon, for example, not only helped Couples with his swing, but also helped him handle the media crush after he won the 1992 Masters.

“He doesn’t like to hurt people,” says Harmon, who lives in Houston. “I told him how he should handle it without hurting any feelings. . . . I went into the pressroom with him and five reporters said we all need 15 minutes of your time. I said if we have to stop and talk with every reporter for 15 minutes, we can’t hit any balls. I said, ‘Fred, this is your office. You have to get your work done.’ ”

With so many players possessing so many excellent swings, golf gurus say that mental toughness often means the difference between winning or losing major championships. Being in contention during the final nine holes of a U.S. Open is life in a psychic pressure cooker.

Sports psychologists say that any golfer, whether competing in the U.S. Open or just trying to win a friendly weekend match, walks a course littered with mental sand traps.

Come, take a stroll on this Freudian fairway.

One huge mental bunker lies straight ahead. Pirozzolo, the chief of neuropsychology services at the Baylor College of Medicine, who advises touring pros, has named that biggest of all traps the “lapse, relapse, collapse cascade.”

Hitting into it spells disaster. Golfers suffering a collapse cascade let one mistake lead to another until their scores soar. It is the equivalent of a dieter succumbing to temptation--eating chocolate cake, feeling guilty, rationalizing that mistakes are human and then wolfing down a banana split.

Nearby is Yerkes-Dodson Lake, named after a psychological rule of performance. It is filled with adrenalin. Strong surges of adrenalin are fine for football, but not in golf because it can result in a loss of rhythm and poor shots. But not being aroused enough also can mean trouble. The Yerkes-Dodson rule preaches that the best performance zone lies in the middle.

Just in front of the final hole is the most seductive trap of all--anticipation. Many golfers have stumbled into it just when a championship was within their grasp.

“If you start writing that victory speech going into the final hole, you can lose the tournament,” says North Carolina’s Coop. “You want to stay very present-centered.”

To avoid these and other pitfalls, coaches and sports psychologists have developed many techniques. Before traveling to a championship, they teach contestants to form a game plan about how each hole should be played, and to review mental “movies” of their best shots. They should “practice positive self talk” to clean their mental attics of “toxic negative thoughts.”

Pirozzolo has timed the play of professionals and found that during a round that lasts more than four hours a golfer needs to concentrate fully on hitting shots for only 48 minutes. Thus, it is important to be able to move efficiently in and out of concentration and to have a pre-shot routine to sharpen focus and eliminate distractions.

As a signal to start entering the “cocoon of concentration,” a golfer may tap his shoe with a club or open and close the Velcro on his glove. Players often will pick an intermediate target between the ball and the hole as they visualize the shot. They will take a Lamaze-style deep cleansing breath to help relieve tension. Just before hitting, some players think of such slogans as “Turn it loose, Mother Goose” to ensure a free-flowing swing.

Coaches and psychologists walk the course with players during practice rounds, stressing patience and even rehearsing how to regain focus after a disaster. Some gurus advocate opening and retying a shoelace, or drying off the grip of a club to bring composure after a ball splashes into the water. The aim is to avoid at all costs the dreaded lapse, relapse, collapse cascade.

But all these techniques would have a hard time beating John D. Rockefeller’s formula for success. According to a 1909 issue of the magazine American Golfer, the oil baron played “a very good game for a man of his years.” During every match he was accompanied by no fewer than three caddies.

The magazine explained: “At every shot, No. 1 steps up and says firmly, yet respectfully, ‘Slow back, Mr. Rockefeller, slow back.’ Number 2 supplements this admonition by saying, ‘Keep your eye on the ball,’ while No. 3 discharges his duty by sternly murmuring, ‘Don’t press, Mr. Rockefeller, don’t press.’ ”

Now that’s coaching.