He's a PGA pro. He has co-authored two golf bestsellers and regularly contributes to Golf Wo r ld . He's on beck and call to some of the best golfers in the world. He coaches golf coaches. He delivers seminars to apprentice pros. He even uses his canny golflore to enlighten corporate clients about business. Yet leading sports psychologist Dr Karl Morris reckons that it was the years he spent away from the Royal and Ancient game and its mysterious inner workings which have proved most valuable in making him brain coach-cum-counsellor to stars like Darren Clarke, Paul McGinley, Michael Vaughan and Jimmy White.

From the off Morris wanted to be a golf teacher rather than tour player and once he had graduated from PGA school in the mid-'80s he took up a teaching post and spent several enjoyable and profitable years teaching golf.

Morris even collaborated on a book with current Ryder Cup captain Ian Woosnam but by the 1990s he decided to take a break.

Having trained in NeuroLinguistic Programming he worked as a counsellor among people with real, as distinct from golf, problems.

A rush of flying elbows or a plague of Lucy Lockets seem somewhat nugatory set against flesh and blood and mind problems such as depression, addictions and phobias. His experience of working with those afflicted by serious problems granted him "an entirely different perspective on everything, including golf". When he returned to the world of frustrated duffers and underperforming pros he was anxious to share that different perspective with them.

"Walter Hagen's advice to 'stop and smell the flowers' during your round wasn't just a throwaway line. He meant that one should enjoy and take some de-stressed time between shots, " says Morris.

There were few flowers to smell or linger over in Manchester in 1966 when Karl was born, a year when only two Europeans finished in the top 15 in The Open . . . one of them being Christy Senior.

His parents, though blessed with a surname that reeked of the bonnie game, were actually of Welsh extraction. "No I'm not related to Old Tom or Young Tom, " he says wistfully. He's clearly been asked before.

As a youngster he was good at both cricket and golf and torn between the two sports.

He was and is a keen Manchester United supporter who never fails to be impressed by the legions of Irish Red Devils fans who make the Saturday pilgrimage to Old Trafford. By the age of 15 he had made his decision and he had no sooner completed his O levels than he hiked off to PGA school where he qualified after the mandatory three years.

His initial enthusiasm for teaching the mental side of the game brought him to exotic locations which even the wandering European Tour didn't visit back then. In the mid 90s he taught golf at the first green grass course in Saudi Arabia.

But his determination to be an ace teacher of golf also brought him regularly across the pond to study and learn from top golf instructors like David Leadbetter, Hank Haney and "the most knowledgeable of all", Michael Hebron. Hebron, who is based on Long Island, eschews the world of celebrities and the cut throat world of celebrity gurus. He prefers to teach the little folk.

As a young coach Morris witnessed and empathised with the anguish of club golfers who "were getting frustrated by their inability to transfer their improved practice ground game to the course proper". The importance of the mental game became glaring obvious to him and he determined to deploy the knowledge he had obtained in acquiring a Doctorate in Neuro-Linguistics Programming to good effect.

One thing that was immediately apparent to him was that the whole golf instruction business had become "shrouded in academic complexities".

Morris set out from the outset with a joint plan to "demystify sports psychology" and "to clarify" golf instruction. People, he believed, where being overwhelmed with Kabbalistic instructions about swing planes, club speeds and the mechanics of the game. Like Timothy Gallwey, a pioneering guru of the 'inner game' whom he admires, he believes that the over-instructed were suffering from paralysis by over-analysis. He believes in "thinking less and simplifying more" and letting the natural game take over. Of course the skills and the game have to be there too but they must be given space and time to flourish.

Apart from that general point he has loads of tricks and techniques which he delights in passing on. Techniques such as mentally drawing a 10-yard line in front of ball . . . "once you've passed that line the shot is over" . . .

and keeping a diary of your three best shots in every round. "Writing empowers the memory and you will learn to repeat those shots, " he says. He talks about the employment of realistic practice swings which relate directly to the impending shot . . . a greenside bunker shot envisioned as a delicate bacon slice rather than an excavated Sunday roast . . . and the banishment of the lexicon of defeat, self-doubt and selfbullying.

Drawing on the research of psychologist Martin Seligman into optimism and pessimism in sport, Morris is convinced that elite and club golfers self-talk themselves into mishits and fluffed putts by internalising the language of failure. He doesn't wish to produce a crop of Polyannas . . . "there is no point in fooling yourself about a bad shot" . . .

but he does try to encourage a positivity which becomes self-fulfilling.

Like many other gurus he draws on Oriental sources, particularly the martial arts, for breathing and relaxing techniques. He believes in smelling flowers and chatting to fellow players. Yes, like mobile phone marketers, he believes it is good to talk and fears that too many club golfers clam up when they feel they are in a "serious competition".

Some of Morris's teachings may seem like trite dressed as science and may not work for everyone but there is little doubt that his no nonsense approach is paying dividends for many and the proof is that he is more and more in demand.

While his business, Trained Brain, is based in Warrington, he is regularly flitting hither and yon, attending to new and old clients or providing seminars for the corporate sector where he teaches clients as diverse as Volvo, and Red Bull to apply sports psychology to business and life situations.

The demands of elite athletes vary greatly from client to client and the needs of a particular athlete can also change. He may speak with Darren Clarke "once a month or at another period every day".

Though he was in attendance at Hoylake, he didn't speak to Clarke. "Everyone respects the fact that he is facing a difficult situation, " Morris says. Last year the two of them collaborated on penning Golf . . . The Mind Factor, a book which he feels is a big improvement on Masterstroke, his 1996 co-creation with Ian Woosnam which he feels was too complex. He is not working with the Ryder Cup captain now and, unlike Bernhard Langer, hasn't any expectation of being pressed into service by Woosie.

His services were enlisted by Graeme McDowell back in 2003 when the Ulsterman had slipped to 96th in Order of Merit. By 2004 he was up to sixth. Paul McGinley is also a valued client.

Apart from some of the oldish guard Morris has been hired by some new Irish boys like Stephen Browne, Michael Hoey and Colm Moriarty.

"The Irish are very good to me, " says Morris, "in fact I'm over so often the guys in Immigration Control just nod me by with a smile." Apart from his pro golf and corporate clients in Ireland he also got a call from Neil Manchip and David Kearney to help out with the ladies' and mens's amateur national squads.

He is also patently chuffed to be golf psychologist to the English Ladies Golf Association and to being responsible for running a Diploma Programme at his PGA alma mater.

"My passion is coaching other coaches, " he declares with the unabashed enthusiasm of an evangelical preacher who abandons his mountainy holding for Saturday preaching on High Street. He does want to spread the faith of the inner game. But he is anxious to stress that while he sees the benefits of Eastern meditation and relaxation techniques he "draws the line" at the spiritual side which some celebrity gurus are into it.

He's not into "hugging trees stuff" either. If the ball goes up a tree you go up and spank it out, as Langer did in Fulford in 1981. Tree shaking or hugging won't put the ball in the cup.

He may spend much of his time 'in the zone' but his spiked feet are still anchored on the ground and he frankly admits you have to have the outer game too. The inner game can augment the real game, but it won't create it.