Archive for Golf News
Darren Clarke and the Six Steps to Better Putting in Your Unconscious Mind
Posted by: | CommentsHave you seen the putting pre-shot routine that Darren Clarke’s using at the Open Championship this week and used to such great success in coming second in the Scottish Open last week? And did you notice how he seems to be incorporating my “Six Steps to Better Putting in Your Unconscious Mind” that I detailed in my Golf Hypnotist Ezine the other week?
Now I’m not suggesting that Darren started doing that after he or one of his support team read about it in my ezine. However, it is obviously helping to overcome some of the “demons” that seemed to be afflicting his putting confidence in recent years. The six steps and his action of gripping left hand low and then re-gripping right hand low are clearly keeping his conscious mind occupied while he’s just trusting his unconscious mind to hit the putts. It certainly seems to be working for him.
Why not give it a try? You can still read that ezine edition here and subscribe to regularly receive my free Golf Hypnotist Ezine using the box on the right hand side of this page. The new edition of the ezine comes out later today and includes the opportunity to download a free audio recording of the Finger Breathing relaxation technique I’m always talking about.
The bad golf psychology of listening to negative TV golf commentators
Posted by: | CommentsHow much do you listen to the commentators on televised golf? Do you think they’re good for your golf? Well I used to think that watching golf on TV was good golf psychology. Now I’m not so sure.
So what happened? Well after writing my recent article about talking yourself into better golf, I sat down to watch a replay of the television coverage of the World Cup from Mission Hills in China. Now I ‘m always thinking very positively after completing an article, so I was amazed at how quickly I was becoming negative watching the golf and more importantly listening to the negative messages coming from the commentators. Here’s a list of the ones I remember from just 30 minutes of watching and listening …
Click here to read the full post »
Talk yourself into better golf with golf hypnosis for positive self talk
Posted by: | CommentsDo you talk to yourself when you’re playing golf? Well, if you don’t, you may have a serious problem. It’s called brain death! Self-talk, otherwise known as internal dialogue or intrapersonal communication, is one of the main functions of our conscious mind. It allows us to make sense of our conflicting thoughts and to express our ideas and feelings to ourselves. Most of the time we talk to ourselves internally and sometimes, particularly after a bad shot, we share our self-talk with everyone in earshot. That can be a large distance with some of the golfer’s I’ve played with!
Self talk really comes into its own when we are internally analysing and evaluating complex choices in our lives. A good example is when you are starting your pre-shot routine and deciding on the type of shot you’re going to play. Have you ever had one voice in your head proposing an ambitious shot with a driver and another one encouraging you to make a more conservative shot with an iron? Don’t worry about it. It’s perfectly normal and unlikely to be a symptom of schizophrenia!
Now, I’ve often written about the concept that whatever we consciously think about our unconscious mind does it’s best to deliver. And self-talk is the most powerful and influential mechanism for conscious thought …
Click here to read the full post »
Covert Golf Hypnosis and Secret Plans at the Dubai World Championships
Posted by: | CommentsLee Westwood and Rory McIlroy played amazing golf at the Dubai World Championships. However, their phenomenal play took second place for me as a golf psychologist given the amount of extreme golf psychology and covert golf hypnosis flying about.
Firstly there was Lee Westwood’s much talked about "Secret Plan." When the dust settled he admitted, "Okay, if you really want to know, the secret was making everyone else think I had a secret, when I didn’t really have one." He had the rest of the field nervously waiting to find out what the plan was and not concentrating on their own plans. In my forthcoming book, The Secrets of Hypnotic Golf, I talk about protecting yourself against Covert Hypnosis or "Black Ops Golf", as other people refer to it. Although I’m not comfortable with Covert Hypnosis …
Click here to read the full post »
The putting tip that won the Tour Championship in the unconscious mind
Posted by: | CommentsNow you know I almost always write about the conscious and unconscious golf mind in my articles and rarely, if ever, say anything about the technical aspects of the golf swing or putting stroke in my blog.
Well today is different, as the man who can give such an effective putting tip that it helps Phil Mickelson to win the Tour Championship just has to be seen and heard. So here’s a brief video of Dave Stockton describing his approach to putting.
Don’t worry, as I’ll be back on track with Golf Psychology and Golf Hypnosis in my next article.
See yourself putting better and enjoying golf more with golf psychology
Posted by: | CommentsThere were some amazing golf and putting psychology lessons on show with Phil Mickelson’s stunning win at the Tour Championship at East Lake this weekend. Yes I know Tiger won the FedEx Cup and the $10 million with an amazingly consistent series of results. But given Phil’s year, both on and especially off the course, his victory on Sunday was a simply joyous and breathtaking turnaround. Phil had looked out of sorts in recent weeks and after his quadruple bogey 8 on the 14th hole in the first round, I had sadly anticipated him failing again over the weekend.
You’ve probably heard about Phil’s putting woes and his comments about how "I’ve hit the ball so well and yet my scores haven’t reflected that." You’ve probably also heard about how "Bones" Mackay, Phil’s longstanding caddie, urged him to get help the week before the Tour Championship from Dave Stockton, one of the best putters in golf and twice a major winner. As if those weren’t sufficient reasons, Stockton also putts a bit like Phil does when he’s at his best.
So what major flaws did Dave Stockton notice in Phil’s putting stroke and what major changes did he prescribe …
Click here to read the full post »
Play better golf psychology in the now and one shot at a time
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the key success factors of better golf psychology is learning to unconsciously play one shot at a time – in the moment, in the zone or "in the now." And this applies equally to every shot you play on the practice ground, in a friendly game and in the most important round of your golfing life. Playing in the now means that you’re protected from any poor, indifferent shots and ill-judged shots that went before. It also means that you’re protected from future uncertainties and expectation.
Now why am I talking about this today? Well, isn’t the world’s golf press just amazing, if a little predictable? They see Benn Barham score a fourth round 69 for a phenomenal total of 19 under par and they say he failed and focus their attention on his few bad shots, like his drive down the last hole "that cost him a birdie." If he’d played like that, scored like that and won, then they’d be talking about his amazing success and knocking Rafael Cabrera Bello’s disastrous failure …
Click here to read the full post »
The golf psychology of self hypnosis and imagination for winning happiness
Posted by: | CommentsI felt so sad watching Sergio Garcia looking so miserable and failing to close out a much needed win in the Wyndham Championship at Greensboro on Sunday. It reminds me of how important our internal state is to good golf psychology and how we can use self-hypnosis to manage and control our state of mind.
One of the fundamentals of modern psychology is the idea that whatever we consciously think about our unconscious mind does its best to deliver. This manifests itself in many ways and if we’re consciously looking at something, then pretty soon we find ourselves physically heading towards it …
Click here to read the full post »
Putting psychology and golf hypnosis into perspective at PGA Championship
Posted by: | CommentsPutting was clearly very difficult for all the players at Hazeltine in the 2009 PGA Championship, especially in terms of putting psychology. Now we all saw Tiger Woods missing a lot of mid-range putts that we’d normally expect him to see and I’ve already written about how those were the result of his uneasiness about the swirling wind. I’m more concerned here with a number of really crucial putts missed by Lee Westwood and the massive number of short putts missed by Vijay Singh.
In my humble opinion, Lee Westwood is striking the ball as well as he ever has, especially in the major championships. As a result, he keeps getting himself into contention in the last round before throwing away the opportunity in the last nine holes on Sunday. How many times did he miss apparently easy putts at Hazeltine, including a three putt from not much more than 3 feet? At the Open Championship we saw him three-putt the 72nd hole after recovering well from a few bad putts earlier in the round. The same sort of thing has plagued him for such a long time that it can’t just be coincidence and I keep reading about Lee working with golf psychologists, so it can’t be that; or can it?
Well, I’ve seen Lee’s name mentioned as a client of a number of high-profile golf psychologists here in the UK, like Dr Karl Morris and Jamil Qureshi, the official psychological performance coach for the European Ryder Cup team last year. I also noticed, in the Westwood Academy page on Lee’s website, that the list of sessions participants will receive includes psychology.
Imagine my surprise when I heard about Lee’s comments about golf psychologists in an interview at Hazeltine. "Look at them all," he said, "They all look a bit odd …
Click here to read the full post »
Windy golfers and windy golf psychology blown away at the PGA Championship
Posted by: | CommentsSo, were you blown away by the golf at the 91st PGA Championship at Hazeltine this weekend? With 8 hours of TV coverage on Saturday and again on Sunday, I was just riveted to the screen and amazed by both the spectacle and the windy golf conditions. The TV commentators also contributed to the windy feeling with all their hot air and false hopes for a certain golfer named Tiger Woods. Didn’t they just love Y.E. Yang’s quote about how the odds against him beating Tiger must be 70 to 1, based on Tiger having just won his 70th PGA Tour event last week while he had won his first earlier this year.
Although I’ve never played there personally, I vividly remember Tony Jacklin telling me, and our other two playing partners at Brookmans Park Golf Club, all about Hazeltine’s challenges, just a week or so after his US Open win back there 1970. The course certainly seems to have got even harder and so more picturesque since Dave Hill’s scathing comment back then that "all it really lacks is 80 acres of corn and a few cows." …
Click here to read the full post »
Get your FREE “Your Own Virtual Caddy” Article and the amazing FREE 25-minute Golf Hypnosis audio session.
