Even with their well polished mechanics and a good understanding of ball flight physics, the top players still hit a less than perfect shot every now and then. Even if they don’t actually hit a bad shot, the course and conditions and outside agencies can turn a good shot into a bad one. We even have a term for that in golf – “Rub of the Green”.

So what else do the top players do when they experience one or more bad or unlucky shots? Well, I was listening to Rory McIlroy giving a clinic to a large group of young players at the Grand Final of the Faldo Series. Someone asked, to a ripple of laughter, “If you can’t stop making bogeys, how do you bounce back on the next hole?”

The gist of Rory’s reply was, “If you’ve just made a bogey on the 5^th green, you can’t walk on to the 6^th tee going ‘I have to make a birdie because I bogeyed the last’, you have to stick to the process”. He went on to say, “You’re not thinking about bogeys or birdies, all you’re thinking about is the shot at hand and just going through your processes, if you do all these things right, your score at the end of it will take care of itself”.

Focus on the shot in hand

So, in striving for perfection, you need to focus on the shot in hand, and make use of your routines or processes, especially your post shot routine, regardless of what went before. Remember that each shot you play just counts for one shot on the scorecard. And it’s equally important, regardless of whether it’s for a birdie or a bogey. That’s the secret of Winning Golf.

One of the best exponents of this approach is Luke Donald. Yes, I know I’m biased, because he’s a member of my club and I can remember giving him shots in matchplay!

Well what better way to finish my last blog of 2011 than with a reference to Luke Donald. His approach to perfect golf has driven him to be number one in the world and to top the money lists on the European and PGA Tours. What more can I say?

Here’s what GOLFMagic had to say in the Instruction Articles section of their website under a dramatic headline and a rather worrying sub-heading! There’s a similar article on the Golfshake.com website.

Hypnotist offers solution to dreaded yips
Go “under the knife” to solve your wedge game

It goes by many names, although the most literal term itself sends shivers down our spines.

Twitches, staggers, jitters and jerks are enough to make the palms sweaty, but the one that gives us sleepless nights is the yips.

How often does it happen? One week you’ll be pulling off shots like that Tom Watson effort at the 1982 US Open, the next you’re using your wedge as a gardening tool. And that is generally the form that sticks. Suddenly you’ve forgotten what it’s like to hit the dancefloor and the 56 stays in the bag gathering rust.

So why not try something a bit different? Andrew Fogg (pictured below) is the UK’s leading golf hypnosis expert, and is offering golfers a real, permanent solution to this dreaded golfing conundrum.

Every year, thousands of golfers sift through hordes of instruction articles searching, praying and pleading for a cure. Inevitably, the problem persists as no amount of tuition; comfort of grip or shaft length can ever heal the mental scarring caused by the yips.

Instead, there’s a real solution that a growing number of golfers in the UK can vouch for. And that’s a visit to The Golf Hypnotist, who has worked with everyone from high-handicap amateurs to Tour professionals.

Several individuals within the industry have visited Mr Fogg, usually following a torrid few months with the chipping yips, and since their session have confirmed their short game has improved no end.

“I honestly can’t believe how much my short game has improved in such a short period of time,” admitted one golf industry figure and student of Mr Fogg. “Like most people, I guess I was a little sceptical at first but I’d recommend it to absolutely anyone now.”

An hour-and-a-half long session with Mr Fogg costs £100, including a follow-up. For more information, visit www.golf-hypnotist.com.

You can find out about all my Golf Hypnosis Programmes, including “Overcome the Yips“, for putting, chipping and wedge play, at the Golf Hypnotist Store.

This new “Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes” programme is available in MP3 format for download, with three powerful golf hypnosis sessions, each running for around 20-30 minutes. I developed the individual sessions on similar lines to the “Your Own Virtual Caddy” programme, so you’re getting more than three times the hypnosis from each programme. I have outlined the purpose of each track later in this email.

This is the final golf hypnosis in this series – for now at least. So here’s the complete list for the time being.

• Winning Golf – Start playing Winning Golf without changing your swing
• Visualisation Skills for Golf – Imagine Your Way to Better Golf
• Golf in the Zone – Anchor Hypnosis Unconsciously for Golf in the Playing Zone
• Confident Golf – Free From Fear – Overcome Fear – Confidently on the Golf Course
• Anger Management for Better Golf – Release and Eliminate Your Anger
• Better Golf with Less Practice – Practice and Play Golf in your Mind
• Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes – Borrow a Skill from your Golfing Heroes
• Own the Putting Green – Become the King of the Putting Green
• Overcome the Yips – Overcome the Yips Unconsciously in Your Mind
• Overcome the Shanks – Eliminate Your Old Shanking Habit Forever

So what’s the “Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes” hypnosis programme about?

By observing other players, especially the leading professionals and their day to day mind coaches – their caddies, you can learn from them to improve your own game. You can also learn from watching yourself hitting your best shots.

When you watch the top professionals, maybe your golfing heroes, on TV, it’s easy to get absorbed in the way they swing, particularly if you have the volume turned down to protect you from the frequently negative comments and the ooh’s and ahs of the crowd. You can get the same experience live by watching your favourite players on the practice days before a big tournament, when the crowds are often much smaller and quieter. You can even use some sort of self-hypnosis or relaxation technique to eliminate all the conscious distractions.

Whichever way you do it, notice how you can some sort of sensation or feel in your own muscles for how the pro’s are swinging. Your muscles will make micro movements without you actually swinging. Research has shown that the brain and nervous system activates the same circuitry when making these micro muscle movements as actual movements.
Remembering good shots from your past can help you to recover your lost swing feelings and, even if you can’t fully remember an exact model shot from your past, you can still imagine one that you might have hit. Your unconscious has the ability to generalise your past experiences to do its best to recreate the shot you imagined. So why not imagine how your role model thinks, plans and executes each shot.

So what have you included in “Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes to help me Borrow some Skills from my Golfing Heroes, I hear you ask?

Well, I’ve included three powerful freestanding golf hypnosis sessions to help you to:

• Allow you to step into the shoes of your golfing heroes and learn from playing as they do. You’ll also learn a lot about they way they think and plan their shots and rounds of golf.
• Identify and learn from the professional golfer within you. Noticing and isolating the great shots you can and do play and the positive ways you can and do think on the golf course.
• Assemble your own personal Golf Hall of Fame and imagine what it would be like to ask them for their knowledgeable and honest advice and guidance to help you to play better golf.

Borrow a Skill from your Golfing Heroes – I’ve built this session around wonderful technique I learned from Richard Bandler, who co-founded NLP, and Paul McKenna, the famous hypnotist. In this session, you’ll have the opportunity to observe and then step into the shoes of your golfing heroes and experience what it’s like to think, play and act as they do. You’ll then have the opportunity to integrate the parts you want to keep into your own game and thinking on the golf course.  

In my own first experience of this technique, I “stepped” into the shoes of Tiger Woods circa 2006, hoping to find out why he seemed so distant out on the golf course. Notice, I wasn’t interested in his swing, as Tiger is so much younger, lighter and fitter than I am. After all, I’m more interested in the psychological aspects of his amazing golfing abilities. So what did I “borrow” from Tiger Woods or learn about him? Well the experience was really illuminating and nothing like I had expected. By assuming Tiger’s persona, built by my unconscious mind from what I had seen of him on television and read about in books, articles and on the web, I realised that his apparent arrogance on the course was more a slightly hypnotic and patient embarrassment.

Unleash the Professional Golfer Within – One of the wonderful things about the game of golf is that, whatever our level of ability, we can and often do hit really good shots and putts, occasionally. If you don’t believe me, just think about the lowest score you’ve ever had on each hole on your regular course. If you add all those together you’ll get your eclectic score, an indicator of how good your best shots and holes are. I’ll bet your eclectic score is something of an eye opener. How many shots below your handicap did you say? 

So that should tell you that you have a lot of good shots within your capability and a lot that you can learn from your own golf. That’s why I’ve called this second hypnosis session, Unleash the Professional Golfer Within. In this session, you’ll explore and learn from all those great shots you can and do play and all the positive ways you can and do think on the golf course.

Your Personal Golf Hall of Fame - What would it be like to sit down around a table with maybe one or even four or five of your all time golfing heroes? You could even assemble your own personal Golf Hall of Fame. Now imagine what it would be like to ask them for their knowledgeable and honest advice and guidance to help you to play better golf. That would be pretty cool, as some would say. Why not take it a step further and imagine that, even though you may never have met them, they somehow seem to know all about you and your golf. 

Now that’s what the third hypnosis session, Your Personal Golf Hall of Fame is all about. In this session, you’ll choose one or more members of your personal Golf Hall of Fame to mentor you, advise you and generally help you to improve your golf.

Go to the “Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes” page at the Golf Hypnotist Store for more information about this exciting new golf hypnosis programme, including some of the stories behind the individual sessions. You can buy “Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes” there for instant download and start using the programme to Step into the Shoes of Your Golfing Heroes and Borrow some Skills.

This new “Better Golf with Less Practice” programme is available in MP3 format for download, with three powerful golf hypnosis sessions, each running for around 20-30 minutes. I developed the individual sessions on similar lines to the “Your Own Virtual Caddy” programme, so you’re getting more than three times the hypnosis from each programme. I have outlined the purpose of each track later in this email.

I will also be publishing just one more new and intriguing Golf Hypnosis MP3 audio programme before the end of 2010. As with the other new programmes, I will be including at least 3 new golf hypnosis sessions in this final programme of 2010.

Although the final programme name may change a little before release, here is the full list, for now:

• Winning Golf (Released 15 October 2010)
• Overcome the Yips (Released 30 October 2010)
• Own the Putting Green (Released 4 November 2010)
• Confident Golf – Free From Fear (Released 11 November 2010)
• Anger Management for Better Golf (Released 16 November 2010)
• Golf in the Playing Zone (Released 21 November 2010)
• Overcome the Shanks (Released 24 November 2010)
• Visualisation Skills for Golf (Released 2 December 2010)
• Better Golf with Less Practice: Practice and Play Golf in your Mind (released today)
• Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes

So what’s the “Better Golf with Less Practice” Hypnosis Programme all about?

Although I’ve recorded this programme to help you to Practice and Play Golf in your Mind for Better Golf, I chose to use that as the subtitle as the programme is really about playing Better Golf with Less Practice, the name I finally chose. I derived the name from a fascinating old book I found in a bookshop a few years ago. It was called Better Golf Without Practice, written by Alex J Morrison and published in 1940. That seems to predate a lot of the so-called modern golf psychology I keep hearing about!

Now, modern research shows that the act of “Imagining” yourself doing something fires up the identical parts of the brain that would be activated if you were actually doing it. So if you’re imagining yourself playing golf, the neurons you’re using in your brain are the very same ones that you’re using when you’re physically playing the game. Indeed, some of the actual muscles involved in playing a real shot are activated and make the same movements at a barely noticeable level. You really do “physically” practice your swing when you imagine hitting the ball and you have no reason to hit a bad shot when you’re practicing and playing in your imagination.

One of my favourite stories about the power of imagination in golf comes from an American Major, James Nesmeth. He was an average golfer consistently scoring in the mid 90’s, until he developed a unique way of improving his golf game. It came when he spent seven years in North Vietnam as a prisoner of war. During those tortuous years, Nesmeth lived in solitary confinement inside a prison cell that measured four and a half feet high and 5 feet long. To keep from losing all hope, he realized that he needed to do something to occupy his mind. So, every day he played 18 holes of golf in his mind. He imagined everything in vivid detail from the country club he was playing at, to the smell of freshly cut grass in the summertime. He would imagine the grip of the clubs and practice his swing mentally many times until he perfected it. In reality, he had no place to go, so he spent four hours a day on the course in his mind never leaving any detail out. When he was released from prison and returned home, he played his first real game of golf for 7 years. He scored 74!

If all of that isn’t enough for you, there are countless studies done on the effects of mental practice in sports. You see, it has now been scientifically proven that the brain and nervous system do not fully know the difference between real events and vividly imagined ones! So you can practice perfect golf in your mind and only have to visit the practice ground to warm up before playing the game we all love.

Practicing and playing golf in your mind really does work and generates the appropriate muscle responses for whatever you’re vividly imagining. It’s not clear why, although the recent discovery of mirror neurons may provide the answer. Whichever theory you subscribe to, the implication is that imagined performance really does exercise much of the brain’s motor function. It isn’t all imagination, after all.

So what have you included in “Better Golf with Less Practice to help me Practice and Play Golf in My Mind, I hear you ask?

Well, I’ve included three powerful freestanding golf hypnosis sessions to help you to:

• Help you to play golf in your mind, whenever you have the time and wherever you imagine, rehearsing and playing your shots, building your confidence and raising your expectations in a fraction of the time it would normally take.
• Learn how to practice in your mind, as if you were on the practice range, to practice and try out swing changes integrate the changes you wish to make. Using the concept of Hypnotic Time allows you to speed up your practice and repeat new drills and techniques.
• Learn how to practice and play golf in your dreams using lucid dreaming techniques.

Play Golf in your Mind - The first hypnosis session, helps you to visualise and experience playing any course you know, mentally playing every shot and every putt. You’ll be using all your existing pre-shot routines and developing your strategy for playing the course. With the power of your unconscious mind, you’ll see yourself hitting the good shots you are capable of as you build your confidence and expectation of hitting great shots.

Unconsciously, your mind doesn’t really know the difference between a good shot you hit and a good shot you imagine, so I think you should take the opportunity to “play” rounds of golf in your mind. Imagine arriving at the ball for each shot in the round and going through your full pre-shot routine, including visualising the shot you want to hit. Then imagine taking a good rehearsal swing before stepping into the ball, checking your alignment, taking one last look at your target and starting your swing – just as soon as your eyes are back on the ball. The only thing you should be thinking about is your visualisation of the shot or putt you want to hit, as you trust your unconscious mind to swing the club.

As an additional bonus, this hypnosis session uses the concept of Hypnotic Time to speed things up when you Play Golf in your Mind. That means that you can unconsciously play entire rounds of golf in your mind in just a few minutes.

Practice Golf in your Mind - You’ve probably been told for all your golfing life that the only way to better golf is practice, practice and more practice. I remember when I started out in golf in the 1960’s hearing Gary Player responding to Henry Longhurst’s suggestion about his luck in a tournament. Gary’s response, in a clipped South African accent, was, “Yes, Mr Longhurst. And the more and harder I practice, the luckier I get.”

Now I’m not saying that practice doesn’t work at all. It clearly does, especially if you know you’re practicing what the pro wants. We can all hit good shots during a golf lesson, can’t we? The problem is that when the pro’s not there, the swing goes with him and we are left practising a suspect technique and ingraining our bad habits. What makes it worse psychologically is that without the pro watching us, we’re often not sure if we’re doing the right things.

With this second hypnosis session, you’ll mentally rehearse playing all those shots you want to learn or improve and hitting them right every time. This is also a great session for implementing the swing changes you’d like to make.

This hypnosis session also uses the concept of Hypnotic Time to speed things up when you Practice Golf in your Mind. So if you have a swing drill to work on, why not go through it physically then go into hypnosis and visualise doing 1,000 repetitions in your mind in 20 minutes? It doesn’t take that many sessions to achieve the 10,000 repetitions the experts tell us is needed to implement a swing change In addition, every one of those repetitions will be perfect, just as you imagined them. Now that doesn’t often happen on the practice tee!

Play Golf in your Dreams - When it comes to playing golf in your dreams, I have to hand over for a few moments to a quote from my golfing hero, Jack Nicklaus in 1964. Here’s what he had to say about the power of dreaming about golf.

“Wednesday night I had a dream and it was about my golf swing. I was hitting them pretty good in the dream and all at once I realized I wasn’t holding the club the way I’ve actually been holding it lately. I’ve been having trouble collapsing my right arm taking the club head away from the ball, but I was doing it perfectly in my sleep. So when I came to the course yesterday morning I tried it the way I did in my dream and it worked. I shot a sixty-eight yesterday and a sixty-five today.” Jack had been in a serious slump, when one night he dreamed he was playing much better and noticed, in his dream, how he was holding the club the way he used to. He reverted back to his old grip and suddenly started playing well again.

In this third hypnosis session, you’ll unconsciously learn how to use modern lucid dreaming techniques to control and shape your dreams to allow you to continue rehearsing successful golf in your mind as you sleep. Hypnosis works by communicating with your unconscious mind. And your dreams, the ones you have when you sleep or daydream, are also the work of your unconscious mind. We all spend a lot of our time sleeping, so why not use some of that time to practice and improve your golf with lucid dreams.

Go to the “Better Golf with Less Practice” page at the Golf Hypnotist Store for more information about this exciting new golf hypnosis programme, including some of the stories behind the individual sessions. You can buy “Better Golf with Less Practice” there for instant download and start using the programme to Practice and Play Golf in your Mind.

I developed this “Visualisation Skills for Golf” programme for two reasons. Firstly, to address one of the things that really annoys me about so many of the hypnotists I know. That’s because they simply assume that, because they can see pictures clearly in their minds, then so can their clients. If like used to, you’re struggling to visualise things clearly in your conscious minds, then you’re also frustrated with their insistence that everyone can visualise. The second reason is that the ability to visualise easily and well is a great asset to your use of all the other golf hypnosis programmes in this series.

This new “Visualisation Skills for Golf” programme is available in MP3 format for download, with the three powerful golf hypnosis sessions, each running for around 25-30 minutes. I developed the individual sessions on similar lines to the “Your Own Virtual Caddy” programme, so you’re getting more than three times the hypnosis from each programme. I have outlined the purpose of each track later in this email.

I will also be publishing two more new and intriguing Golf Hypnosis MP3 audio programmes over the next couple of weeks. As with the other new programmes, I will be including at least 3 new golf hypnosis sessions in each programme.

Although the programme names may change a little before release, here is the full list, for now:

• Winning Golf (Released 15 October 2010)
• Overcome the Yips (Released 30 October 2010)
• Own the Putting Green (Released 4 November 2010)
• Confident Golf – Free From Fear (Released 11 November 2010)
• Anger Management for Better Golf (Released 16 November 2010)
• Golf in the Zone (Released 21 November 2010)
• Overcome the Shanks (Released 24 November 2010)
• Visualisation Skills for Golf (Released 2 December 2010)
• Better Golf with Less Practice: Practice and Play Golf in your Mind
• Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes

So what’s the “Visualisation Skills for Golf” Hypnosis Programme all about?

One of the things that really annoys me about so many hypnotists I know is that they simply assume that because they can see pictures clearly in their mind then so can their clients. If like me, you used to struggle to visualise things clearly in your conscious minds, then you’d also be frustrated with their insistence that everyone can visualise. In fact they often go on to say things like, if you couldn’t visualise, how would you know what to wear every day and how would know where to look for your car.

Now they are right about the fact that every normal person can and does visualise things in their minds, but they are wrong to assume that every person actually sees those pictures consciously. Research suggests that at least 40 percent of the population are not consciously aware of the pictures they make in their minds. If you are one of this 40 percent, then if I was to ask you questions about the colour, style and handle of your front door, you may not see a clear picture of your front door. However, I’m sure that you do somehow know the answers to those questions. Maybe the answers come to you in words or in terms of feelings.

When I think of the handle on my front door, I can feel the shape and texture of it before I can picture it. I used to have the same experience remembering people’s faces. I could tell you a few details about someone’s appearance and maybe remember their name, but I didn’t use to see them in my mind’s eye when asked to describe them. My wife, on the other hand, tells me that she can “see” the faces of people she hasn’t seen for 20 years as if they were standing right in front of her. She just assumed that’s the way it works for everyone.

Now there’s no doubt in my mind about the power of visualisation in golf, especially when I read about the way Jack Nicklaus, one of the best mind game players golf has ever “seen”, uses visualisation to such good effect. I think Jack made that clear in this famous quotation:

“I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. First I see the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes and I see the ball going there – it’s path, trajectory and shape, even its behaviour on landing. Then there is a sort of fade-out and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality.”

The good news is that we all have the mental ability to visualise our golf in the same or possibly an even better way than Jack and that’s what this programme is all about.

So what have you included in “Visualisation Skills for Golf to help me visualise like Jack Nicklaus, I hear you ask?

Well this time, I’ve included three powerful golf hypnosis sessions for you to use in sequence to develop your visualisation skills by helping you to:

• Practice describing your better shots from successful past rounds in ways that allow you to unconsciously reveal your unconscious imagery to your conscious awareness
• Imagine your way round your favourite golf courses as if you were caddying blindfold for a good player – yes I know that sounds weird
• Learn what it will be like when you can visualise through using this programme and experience using your newly uncovered visualisation skills on the golf course.

Open your Eyes to Better Golf - As with many aspects of life, perfect practice makes perfect, so the more you describe things visually to other people, and yourself, the better you see the picture in your mind’s eye. So in this first hypnosis session, you’ll practice, in hypnosis, describing your better shots from successful past rounds in ways that allow you to unconsciously reveal your unconscious imagery to your conscious awareness.

Golf with your Eyes Closed - The second hypnosis session is a bit weird and very effective. I based it, with an unusual twist, on an intriguing experience I had many, many years ago. I was selected to play with a good friend of mine as my partner in the Hertfordshire County Foursomes team event at the old East Herts. Golf Club, a course I had never played before.

Despite my best endeavours, I didn’t have the time to play the course before the event, so I had to play it blind, so to speak. Back in those days, there were no yardage charts available and no distance markers on the course, so my foursomes partner, who had played there several times and knew the course well, suggested that he would have to tell me where to hit the ball and act as my caddy when it was my turn to hit our ball, as there were many doglegs and blind shots on the course.

So what’s the unusual twist with this session? Well this time you’re going to be my caddy, as I play one or other of your favourite courses in your mind. What makes it an interesting learning experience is that you will be caddying blindfold for me and you’ll have to picture and visually describe the shots I have to play. Before you say it, yes I know that sounds weird, but I think you’ll find it quite revealing

Imagine Your Way to Better Golf - The power of the unconscious mind is truly phenomenal, especially when it comes to synthesising new ways of working from our lifetime of experiences and resources. This third hypnosis session builds on your successful work with the first two sessions to help you build a vivid imaginary future experience of playing great golf using all your newly rediscovered visualisation skills. I then ask your unconscious mind to work out how that could have happened. After all, if your unconscious mind can create that vivid imaginary future, then it can also work out a plan to get you there without interference from your conscious analytical mind under hypnosis.

The power of the imagination and the ability to see things in the “mind’s eye” is often very obvious to us as spectators when we see golfers thinking out their most difficult shots. You only have to think of some of those amazing chip shots Sergio Garcia and Jose Maria Olazabal play, the pitch shots of Padraig Harrington and those unbelievable shots that Phil Mickelson pulls off, to name but a few.

Visualisation is also a key part of the pre-shot routines of these top players and I suspect that most of them consciously or unconsciously think about it in a similar way to Jack Nicklaus.

Go to the “Visualisation Skills for Golf” page at the Golf Hypnotist Store for more information about this exciting new golf hypnosis programme, including some of the stories behind the individual sessions. You can buy “Visualisation Skills for Golf” there for instant download and start using the programme to Imagine Your Way to Better Golf.

This new “Overcome the Shanks” programme is available in MP3 format for download, with the three powerful golf hypnosis sessions, each running for around 20-25 minutes. I developed the individual sessions on similar lines to the “Your Own Virtual Caddy” programme, so you’re getting more than three times the hypnosis from each programme. I have outlined the purpose of each track later in this email.

I will also be publishing a further 3 more new Golf Hypnosis MP3 audio programmes over the next month or so. As with the other new programmes, I will be including at least 3 new golf hypnosis sessions in each programme.

Although the programme names may change a little before release, here is the full list, for now:

• Winning Golf (Released 15 October 2010)
• Overcome the Yips (Released 30 October 2010)
• Own the Putting Green (Released 4 November 2010)
• Confident Golf – Free From Fear (Released 11 November 2010)
• Anger Management for Better Golf (Released 16 November 2010)
• Golf in the Zone (Released 21 November 2010)
• Overcome the Shanks (Released 24 November 2010)
• Visualisation Skills for Golf (Released 2 December 2010)
• Better Golf with Less Practice: Practice and Play Golf in your Mind
• Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes

So what’s the “Overcome the Shanks” Hypnosis Programme all about?

As a golfer for over 40 years, I’ve met with more people who complain of the yips than almost every other golfing affliction I can think of. I’ve see and spoken to far more shankers than I have yippers. However, as a golf psychologist and golf hypnotist, it’s the other way round and I work with four times as many people to help them overcome the yips as I do to help eliminate their shanking habit.

So why is this? Well I can only come up with two explanations. The first is that people are more prepared to accept that their yips might be a problem in their mind. After all, very few people yip on the practice green, while many golfers can and occasionally do shank a whole series of shots on the range. What’s odd is that they often talk about the inconsistency with their swings as the reason for their shanking, but you have to be very consistent to hit the hosel ten times or more in a row. Someone just the other day told me that they went to the range and shanked 50 balls in the row and came out the next time and hit the ball perfectly. As he explained to me, once I hit one shank the rest were inevitable.

So is this just a problem for the club golfer? Well actually no, I’ve seen it happen to club golfers, top flight amateurs and world class professionals – I’ve even experienced it myself! It’s a fearful problem that’s in the back of the mind of an awful lot of golfers, and many don’t even want to hear the word shank! I love the description by CBS commentator Gary McCord when talking about shanking, “it’s an airborne virus” and “If you say it, you might catch it”. He went on to say “Once you’ve done it, the next shot is always really interesting”. And there’s no psychological element in that reaction, now is there.

For many of us, there’s a real chance that just one shank is all it takes to start of an irrational fear that we can’t explain. It’s a bit like the way a phobia starts out. A lady I know well fell out of a boat into a lake when she was a child and was quickly rescued and, to her surprise, survived happily if rather wet to tell the tale. Ever since that time, whenever she sees a lake or a river or the sea, she unconsciously links it to that original experience and feels all the fear and emotion again. Not only does she feel bad when that happens, it also reinforces her fear of water and the cycle of fear escalates upwards.

Now doesn’t that sound like most people’s experience of shanking, even if they can’t actually consciously pinpoint the original traumatic event? They have one bad experience at a critical time and they start worrying about playing that shot again. That makes them feel worse, so they fear the next shot even more. You can see the same thing happening with people who struggle to hit shots over water, or have a hole or course they “just can’t play”. If you need any more proof, think about someone you know who shanks his shots from time to time. You’d think it was a life and death experience!

And what have you included in “Overcome the Shanks I hear you ask?

So what’s in this programme to help me Eliminate my Shanking Habit? I hear you ask. Well, I’ve included three powerful freestanding golf hypnosis sessions that approach your problem from different angles, to help you to

• Overcome your shanking problem as if it was a full blown phobia
• Access so many embarrassing experiences of your old shanking habit that they become your final straw, exploding your old shanking habit
• Unconsciously associate feelings of confidence and relaxation to every memory you ever had of shanking.

I’ve also included my favourite NLP anchoring technique, the Circle of Excellence”, to give you something you can consciously do, out on the golf course, to help you Overcome the Shanks.

Coping with your Shanking Habit – This first hypnosis session in this programme treats your “fear” of shanking as if it had been a full blown Phobia, such as a fear of flying or public speaking. Treating it in that way allows you to rapidly learn to get over it and see your old shanking problem as something that used to happen to someone else – someone from your past. There’s a fun element too with you taking your seat in your own private grandstand on a wonderful golf course somewhere in your imagination. Yes, I know that sounds a bit odd, but your imagination knows no bounds. This is very powerful stuff.

No more Shanking, That’s the Last Straw – There are some things we do in life that frankly seem ridiculous and embarrass us deeply. And shaking is one of them – certainly from my own hands-on experience! And to have a profound fear of something that’s in no way life threatening is simply unreasonable. If you kept doing something that silly and annoying, over and over, week in and week out, in other areas of your life, then pretty soon you’d lose your temper with yourself and big switch would turn off in your brain.

This hypnosis session helps you to do that with your old shanking problem. You’ll access a number of embarrassing and ridiculous experiences of your fear of shanking and play them back in your mind over and over until you say to yourself, very emphatically, words to the effect of, “That’s the Last Straw”, or perhaps something considerably worse.

Shank Free Golf - I know this may seem odd, but the biggest problem with shanking is not the fact that you can shank a shot. What makes shanking so difficult is the anticipation, fear and anxiety that you might shank the shot you are about to make. I think you’ll agree that those negative emotions increase the likelihood of the thing you fear most actually happening.

This third golf hypnosis session helps you to unconsciously associate feelings of confidence and relaxation to every memory you ever had of your old shanking problem. As a result, you’ll remember that you used to have shank some shots, but without the damaging negative emotions.

Circle of Excellence - One of the great things about the three golf hypnosis sessions in this “Overcome the Shanks” programme is that they work primarily with your unconscious mind. That means that while they are doing their work and starting to deliver the results you are looking for, you are not consciously aware of actually doing anything different.

That’s why I’ve included this powerful NLP anchoring technique to give you something you can consciously do, out on the golf course, to help you “Overcome the Shanks”. Once you’ve built up a strong series of positive memories and resources into your imaginary “Circle of Excellence”, you’ll be consciously in control of using them to replace the negative emotions of fear and anxiety with positive and resourceful ones. And you can use this wherever and whenever you need to, out on the course.

Go to the “Overcome the Shanks” page at the Golf Hypnotist Store for more information about this exciting new golf hypnosis programme, including some of the stories behind the individual sessions. You can buy “Overcome the Shanks” there for instant download and use it to enjoy golf again, free from shanking.

This new “Golf in the Playing Zone” programme is available in MP3 format for download, with the three long and powerful golf hypnosis sessions, each running for around 22-32 minutes. I developed the individual sessions on similar lines to the “Your Own Virtual Caddy” programme, so you’re getting more than three times the hypnosis from each programme. I have outlined the purpose of each track later in this email.

I will also be publishing a further 4 more new Golf Hypnosis MP3 audio programmes over the next month or so. As with the other new programmes, I will be including at least 3 new golf hypnosis sessions in each programme.

Although the programme names may change a little before release, here is the full list, for now:

• Winning Golf (Released 15 October 2010)
• Overcome the Yips (Released 30 October 2010)
• Own the Putting Green (Released 4 November 2010)
• Confident Golf – Free From Fear (Released 11 November 2010)
• Anger Management for Better Golf (Released 16 November 2010)
• Golf in the Zone (Released 21 November 2010)
• Overcome the Shanks (Released 24 November 2010)
• Visualisation Skills for Golf (Released 2 December 2010)
• Better Golf with Less Practice: Practice and Play Golf in your Mind
• Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes

So what’s the “Golf in the Playing Zone” Hypnosis Programme all about? 

For most players good golf is primarily based on making use of both the analytical conscious and automatic and instinctive unconscious parts of our minds. Nowhere is this more important in what I call the Playing Zone, the time that starts when you arrive at your ball and begin your pre-shot routine and ends after you’ve hit the shot, learned from it and released it to the past. That’ rarely adds up to more than a quarter of the time you spend on the golf course. The rest of the time you’re free to simply enjoy the scenery, share the company of your playing partners and relax as you move between shots. That’s another zone or state completely.

The first time I heard about what we now refer to as the Zone was back in 1970 when I heard Tony Jacklin talk about being in a “cocoon of concentration” in an interview after he won the Open Championship at Royal Lytham St. Annes in 1969. In fact, I recall him saying much the same thing to me, when I played with him in 1970, just a few weeks before he won the US Open at Hazeltine. He wasn’t the only one experiencing that sort of thing back then, with the legendary Arnold Palmer talking of “a tautness of mind but not a tension of the body”, “concentration on the shot at hand” and “the heightened sense of presence and renewal that endures through an entire round or an entire tournament”.

Years later, I remember Nick Faldo talking about getting into a trance-like state when playing in major championships and calling it a “cocoon” of concentration. He went on to describe it as, “a state of oblivion where I shut out all the people on and off the course.”

Have you noticed that, apart from their being in the Zone when they were winning, the common factor with Tony, Nick and Arnie was that they were all trying stay in the zone for entire whole rounds and even tournaments? You have to be really focussed and mentally strong to stay in the zone for that length of time. Maybe that’s why Nick Faldo and Tony Jacklin often seemed so emotionally drained at the end of a championship.

So what about some of the other major winners, people like Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington and Lee Trevino? Well, they seem to be in the zone only for the time it takes them to plan and play their shots. Between shots, Lee would talk to anyone who’d listen to him and many who wouldn’t, while he entertained the galley with jokes. However, he certainly seemed to be in the zone for the few seconds it took him to hit the ball. Tiger’s considerably less talkative, but you couldn’t lose your temper after a bad shot like he often does and stay in the zone. Again, he’s well into the zone from the moment he gets to his ball to the moment he either twirls his club in celebration or beats it in anger. Padraig’s eyes tell us everything we need to know about his focus and concentration when he’s in the Playing Zone, and the next moment he’s walking jauntily along the fairway laughing and joking with his caddy.

And what have you included in “Golf in the Playing Zone” I hear you ask? 

Well, I’ve included three powerful freestanding golf hypnosis sessions to help you to:

• Build a series of unconscious triggers or anchors to take you automatically into the Playing Zone and step you systematically and unconsciously through your pre-shot routine, your rehearsal swings, your shot routine and your post-shot routine.
• Zone out your inner critic and reinforce your positive inner guardian or champion so you naturally play golf more positively and confidently
• Isolate and set aside all distractions that interfere with your concentration in the Playing Zone.

The Playing Zone – This first session runs for over 32 minutes – I had so much to pack in to it. The recording helps you build a series of unconscious triggers or anchors to take you automatically into the Playing Zone and step you systematically and unconsciously through your pre-shot routine, your rehearsal swings, your shot routine and your post-shot routine. Now I’m not specifying the contents of those routines. As I’ve said before, I feel those are individual to you. What I want to achieve is a set of cascading triggers that take you automatically through from the moment you arrive at the ball through to the time you release the results of the shot and walk on to the next one. For me, that’s the Playing Zone, the time for concentration. The rest of the time you’re out on the golf course, you should be relaxed and unfocussed as you’re walking, talking and enjoying what’s going on around you.

Zone Out your Inner Critic - The second hypnosis session starts by building a powerful, calm, relaxed and resourceful set of feelings. This prepares you to learn more about your inner critic and the hidden meaning behind its negativity. The session also helps you unconsciously learn more about and strengthen the powers of your much more positive and resourceful inner guardian or champion. Finally the session uses and NLP “visual squash” technique to help your inner guardian overwhelm the inner critic while capturing any positive intention from all your old negativity. I know that sounds odd, but it’s a very effective and rewarding process.

Concentration on the Zone - I recorded the third golf hypnosis session in this programme to help you isolate and set aside the thoughts and distractions that interfere with your concentration and enjoyment on the golf course. Some of these will be the usual golf related things, like thinking about your score, your swing, course conditions – the list is endless. There are also the thoughts you bring to the course that have nothing to do with golf apart from getting in the way of Golf in the Playing Zone.

Go to the “Golf in the Playing Zone” page at the Golf Hypnotist Store for more information about this exciting new golf hypnosis programme, including some of the stories behind the individual sessions. You can buy “Golf in the Playing Zone” there for instant download and start to Anchor Hypnosis Unconsciously for Golf in the Playing Zone and Silence your Inner Critic.

This new “Anger Management for Better Golf” programme is available in MP3 format for download, with the three golf hypnosis sessions, each running for around 25-30 minutes, and a 15 minute NLP session. I developed the individual sessions on similar lines to the “Your Own Virtual Caddy” programme, so you’re getting more than three times the hypnosis from each programme. I have outlined the purpose of each track later in this email.

I will also be publishing a further 5 more new Golf Hypnosis MP3 audio programmes over the next couple of months. As with the other new programmes, I will be including 3, and in some cases, 4 new hypnosis sessions in each programme.

Although the programme names may change a little before release, here is the full list, for now:

• Winning Golf (Released 15 October 2010)
• Overcome the Yips (Released 30 October 2010)
• Own the Putting Green (Released 4 November 2010)
• Confident Golf – Free From Fear (Released 11 November 2010)
• Anger Management for Better Golf (Released 16 November 2010)
• Golf in the Playing Zone (Released 20 November 2010)
• Overcome the Shanks (Released 24 November 2010)
• Visualisation Skills for Golf (Released 2 December 2010)
• Better Golf with Less Practice: Practice and Play Golf in your Mind
• Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes

So what’s the “Anger Management for Better Golf” Hypnosis Programme all about? 

Anger management is often the initial reason for clients approaching me for help with golf hypnosis. I’m pleased to report that it’s often one of the most straightforward and quickest problems for you to overcome. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given that NLP and hypnosis are primarily about giving people choices and what the angry golfer lacks is choice. It’s acceptable to be annoyed and frustrated when you hit a bad shot, but it’s disastrous if you’re still annoyed, frustrated or worse when you hit your next shot.

Now people bring anger with them to the golf course for a wide variety of reasons that go beyond the frustrations and difficulties of this sometimes challenging game. Apart from any anger you may bring with you to the course, the main causes of anger in golf are from players’ reactions to the bad and unlucky golf shots they hit, the anticipation of those shots and other fears, the things their opponent does, any outside distractions or interference, real or imagined, the condition of the course, other individuals, crowds, outside agencies, etc. The list is endless.

So what does all this mean for your golf? Well, ask yourself how many shots you would have saved if you never lost your temper, never gave yourself a hard time, always developed a strategy before you hit the ball, and always played within your own capabilities.

And what’s included in “Anger Management for Better Golf” I hear you ask? 

Well, I’ve included three powerful freestanding golf hypnosis sessions and an NLP session to help you to:

• Systematically release, eliminate the things that make you angry
• Control your anger habit by defusing all your past anger experiences
• Plan for a wonderful anger free future for your golf
• Automatically soften your reaction to all the things that make you angry out on the golf course.

Release and Eliminate your Anger – This is a very long and powerful hypnosis session that you should use exclusively for your first few weeks or at least until you are starting to notice some results. The session starts by building a strong resource of confidence and calm before systematically taking you through all the things that used to make you angry and releasing and eliminating all the bad feelings you used to associate with them. all about.

Control your Anger Habit – Once you’re getting some positive results from “Release and Eliminate Anger”, it’s time to start using the second golf hypnosis session, “Control your Anger Habit” to upgrade your unconscious programming to change your old automatic reaction to all the things that used to make you angry. It’s ok to feel angry for a few moments after a bad shot, that’s natural, but it isn’t ok to carry it forward to the next shot.

Enjoy Anger Free Golf – You can use this third golf hypnosis at any time throughout your use of this programme, as it’s all about choosing the right path away from anger and experience a more enjoyable and increasingly rewarding golfing future.

Anger Management on the Golf Course – In addition to the three hypnosis sessions, this special NLP session uses an equally powerful NLP technique for collapsing the old anchors that used to trigger your anger. It captures that trigger and automatically uses it to fire off good feelings of comfort and confidence that overwhelm and replace the old explosive feelings of anger.

Go to the “Anger Management for Better Golf ” page at the Golf Hypnotist Store for more information about this exciting new golf hypnosis programme, including some of the stories behind the individual sessions. You can buy “Anger Management for Better Golf” here for instant download and start to Release and Eliminate Your Anger and Play Better Golf .

The “Confident Golf – Free From Fear” golf hypnosis programme includes three long and powerful golf hypnosis sessions that address turning fear into confidence, learning how to play fear-free golf and experience the motivation to play confident golf every time you play and trust your unconscious mind.  The programme is available in MP3 format for download, with each session running for around 25-30 minutes. I developed these sessions on similar lines to the “Your Own Virtual Caddy” programme. You should already have downloaded that free after you signed up for the Golf Hypnotist Ezine. I have outlined the purpose of each track later in this email.

I will also be publishing a further 5 or 6 more new Golf Hypnosis audio programmes over the next couple of months. As with “Winning Golf”, “Overcome the Yips”, “Own the Putting Green” and “Confident Golf – Free From Fear”, I will be including 3, and in some cases, 4 new hypnosis tracks in each programme. Although the programme names may change a little before release, here is the full list I’m working on:

• Winning Golf (Released 15 October 2010)
• Overcome the Yips (Released 30 October 2010)
• Own the Putting Green (Released 4 November 2010)
• Confident Golf – Free From Fear (Released 11 November 2010)
• Anger Management for Better Golf (Released 16 November 2010)
• Golf in the Playing Zone (Released 20 November 2010)
• Overcome the Shanks (Released 24 November 2010)
• Visualisation Skills for Golf (Released 2 December 2010)
• Better Golf with Less Practice: Practice and Play Golf in your Mind
• Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes

So what’s the “Confident Golf – Free From Fear” Golf Hypnosis Programme all about? 

Fear on the golf course can come in many shapes and sizes and it can result in a multitude of problems. Although you’re born with only two fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noise, according to Richard Bandler the creator of NLP, everything else that makes us nervous, anxious and downright afraid we learn and build up throughout our life.

This applies just as much to our golfing lives. People can and often do experience fear, anxiety and nervousness over things that may embarrass them, upset them or distract them. Now, fear of anything has to be based on past experience, real or imagined, and its influence on the future. A player who’s afraid of getting a bad bounce or mishitting a particular he’s about to make, maybe shanking, yipping or hitting some other disastrous shot, is probably thinking about a similar shot he’s mishit in the past. It doesn’t even have to be a bad shot he’s actually hit himself, it could be one he’s imagined or seen someone else play. If you see a playing partner shank a shot, even if you’ve never hit one before yourself, you can start worrying about the possibility that you might hits a shank yourself. Many people are more nervous about holing a three foot putt after the see someone else miss one of a similar length.

And what’s included in “Confident Golf – Free From Fear” I hear you ask? 

Well, I’ve included three long and powerful freestanding golf hypnosis sessions to help you to turn your fears into golfing confidence, to allow you to play fear free golf and to build an unconscious process to motivate you through your fears to play confident golf automatically.

Turn Fear into Golfing Confidence – given the title, you won’t be surprised to hear that I designed the “Turn Fear into Golfing Confidence” hypnosis session to build you a powerful resource of calm, quiet confidence to help you to turn any fear, anxiety or nervousness into confidence on the golf course.

Fear-Free Golf - this second golf hypnosis track uses the power of your imagination to build an automatic, systematic and unconscious process to cycle through and eliminate all those old fears, nervousness and anxieties you’ve ever experienced, seen or imagined in your golfing past.

Motivation to Confident Golf – helps you to progressively build a library of powerful resources and experiences. Your unconscious mind then automatically calls on these resources whenever you are under pressure or experiencing one of your old fears. As a result you unconsciously turn your old fears into Motivation to Confident

Go to the “Confident Golf – Free From Fear” page at the Golf Hypnotist Store for more information about this exciting new golf hypnosis programme and the other products in the series. You can buy “Confident Golf – Free From Fear” there for instant download and have the opportunity to Overcome Fear – Confidently on the Golf Course.

Before I answer his question, here’s a bit of background to that round back in the 1970′s when I was regularly competing as an amateur in national events.

The Hertfordshire Stag, at Moor Park, was the premier open amateur competition in the county, and I was drawn to play with someone I’d never played with before and such was my focus, I didn’t take in his name, even when we exchanged scorecards. However, I was intrigued to be playing in front of a small gallery. That wasn’t something that normally happened to me.

Anyway, I felt I was playing well at the time and this was reflected in the fact that throughout both rounds, I seemed to strike the ball much better than my playing partner on every shot and putt. In fact, he commented on it a number of times. However, when we added up the scores at the end of each round, I was a couple of shots over par and back in the pack, while he was 3 or 4 shots under par and won the event, as I recall! I later found out more about Nick Faldo, my mystery playing partner, when he turned professional a couple of months later – the rest is history, as they say.

Looking back, what I remember most of all, is sitting in my car for a long time at the end of the day puzzling over how he was playing winning golf while I was playing better golf technically and coming nowhere near winning.

So how did I respond to my client’s question about the difference between Nick and me that day?

Well, you know, I never did work out what made the difference between us that day. It was a long time later that I got deeply into golf psychology, so the details of the shots he played aren’t that clear to me now. However, I suspect it was that he believed he could deliver on his intentions, while I was less sure of myself. Maybe it would have been different if I’d been listening back then to my favourite Winning Golf track, Make the Most of Your Game!

I think Nick’s attitude that day was very similar to that of Tiger Woods when he’s at his best. In the introduction track of my Own the Putting Green programme, I talk about that amazing horseshoe chip that Tiger Woods holed on the 16th at the Masters a few years ago. Even with all his talent, I’m sure he didn’t honestly expect to hole it, but I suspect that he did intend to and believed he could. That’s more than enough direction for the unconscious instinctive mind to work on, unhindered by doubt.

The Winning Golf, Own the Putting Green, and Overcome the Yips golf hypnosis programmes are all available from the Golf Hypnotist Store.