Canadian LPGA Tour hopeful Selena Costabile takes tips from ex-NFLers

Pro-am rounds can be a fun opportunity for serious golf fans to meet their favourite players and for the golfers to get some extra practice in ahead of that week's tournament.

But for Canadian golfer Selena Costabile and former NFL players Josh Scobee and Marcus Pollard it was a chance to get into the intricacies of the athlete's mindset. The trio were grouped together for the pro-am on Tuesday ahead of the Epson Tour's Atlantic Beach Classic and got into a lengthy discussion as they made their way around the course.

Costabile, who is from Thornhill, Ont., and Scobee bonded over the similarities between being a golfer and a placekicker.

"Because you really just have one shot to perform," said Costabile. "He was giving me a lot of insights about how you have to have two different mindsets. One is in practice, and then once you get in to a competition or the tournament, on the course or on the football field, whatever that may be, you have to almost switch to more of a performance mindset.

"Trying to just get the ball between the posts is similar to trying to get the ball in the hole and do that as best as you can while not really thinking about the mechanical side of it."

Scobee was a kicker on the Jacksonville Jaguars for 11 seasons before being traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2015 and then spending a couple of months with the New Orleans Saints in 2016 before retiring the next year. He connected on 80.1 per cent of his field-goal attempts and 98.2 per cent of his extra-point attempts for a total of 1,046 points.

He said that he developed his "how and where" approach about six years into his career.

"I told her what I've always tried to do — and it's not always easy — but what I tried to do was to separate practice