E It’s drizzling, with nasty showers in between, gusty wind. “We will surely get a golden October,” Rica Reinisch had prophesied weeks ago when we arranged to meet. “Yes, and where is it now, your golden October?” – There, she says, and points to the many colorful leaves on the ground and in the trees. Haha. “Just wait, we’ll get through dry.”
Rica Reinisch, 60, was a three-time Olympic swimming champion for the GDR, in 1980 in Moscow. She was 14 at the time, stuffed by the state leadership with little blue pills, anabolic steroids. Landing in the Rhineland, she long worked as a moderator and discovered the game of golf.
Buoyed by the news? Right at the first hole I manage two shots next to perfect — not even six meters to the hole, a birdie tempts me. The last time I played a round like this was in early summer, when Rica and I were together at a tournament. “That would be something, Rica. It only works with your closeness.” She laughs her pleasantly dirty laugh. The ball rolls just past. I get annoyed. Nothing is more wrong than getting angry, she says, the putt was good after all. Bad luck. “After a bad shot I never complain,” she explains, “but I look forward to the next good one. We’re just playing golf. I don’t have to prove anything.” Rica Reinisch is always positive. Every half-full glass seems about to overflow for her. She likes the image.
We play relaxed, with good shots and bad shots. In both. Her mantra: “Thoughts determine our actions. I always tell myself I am in love, healthy, everything serves my well-being. In golf I want to have my peace and good mood.” Her next shot goes massively off target. “So what,” she says.
Mistakes as Teachers
Since ten years Reinisch has been working as a mental and motivational coach. “I try to bring people back to reflection, often also leaders. To recognize what makes me who I am? What potentials do I have inside me?” The rule applies: “Always strengthen the strengths. Not the weaknesses — then you’d be only mediocre, so normal.” Some clients, she says, are “in their hamster wheels also resistant to advice.” Then it just doesn’t make sense.
“Mistakes are our best teachers. Without mistakes we don’t advance.” This applies especially to golf. I lead by good example and drive a ball into the thick growth. Arrrrh! At least the recovery shot out of the dense growth succeeds: “See? There’s no use in whining and wringing your hands, no woulda-coulda-shoulda… Nowhere is there so much subjunctive as in golf.” My reply: “Well, I can recover shots, as often as I have to.” Again her dirty laugh.
Reinisch also coaches her clients on the fairway. “When someone plays golf, I always ask, do you want to go for a round? Because you don’t meet a person as quickly and as well as on the golf course. There you can’t hide. You have the hotheads, the cheaters, the anxious, the calm, or the players who swing for joy. There you quickly see how someone handles certain situations.”
She also runs seminars at schools. “Just again at a vocational college. It’s about perspectives after school. How should young people know where they’re headed if they don’t even know who they are? Being aware of oneself is so important.”
Whether she still enjoys swimming after the doping abuse back then? “But yes. Water is my element. At the start after my career, during the training, I developed an aversion to swimming pools. That chlorine smell. I’d rather swim in the sea, with the fish.”
Reinisch is truly a water expert of all kinds. After the first tee shot there was not a drop of rain. And it became one of my best rounds this year. Completely in an optimistic, sustained flow, without subjunctives, without anger, eyes always looking forward.
