Archive for Golf Psychology
As a golf psychologist using hypnosis and NLP, I am often asked about the merits of taking swing thoughts or keys out onto the golf course when they play. I’m thinking here about some of the classic ones like “keep your head down”, “keep your eye on the ball”, “swing back in one piece”, “left shoulder under the chin”, etc.
Now, my major concern about swing thoughts and keys is not so much about their content, but rather about when you think of them. Some would argue that there’s no place for them at all during a round of golf and they should be confined to the practice ground. While I broadly agree with this, I feel it’s more important to eliminate conscious thoughts about the swing once you step in to address the ball.
There are parts of a golfer’s routine that require conscious though and there are parts where it’s better to trust your unconscious …
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Perfect Golf Psychology
Posted by:There’s nothing wrong with striving for perfection, just as long as recognise that Golf is Not a Game of Perfect, to quote Bob Rotella. That’s why I stress the importance of acceptance and release in the Post-Shot Routine. It’s also why I so liked Nick Faldo’s comment about Tiger Woods “hitting the reset button” after a bad shot that made him angry.
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?” …
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Strangely for someone who promotes the benefits of Unconscious Golf, I’ve always been fascinated with golfing statistics, especially about my putting! One thing I always seemed to notice was that I played better in certain forms of golf than others, especially with particular partners in foursome and fourball golf.
Well, I always seemed to putt better when I had a playing partner, so I’ll set aside 2-ball match play and stroke play for the moment. Now that I come to think about it, I generally seemed to putt better when I had a partner than when I was just playing for myself.
So why did I putt better with certain partners than I did with others? Well I fairly certain that I putted better when I played with a confident partner who I trusted to read my putts for me. The odd thing is that the partner I remember putting best with was not in my league in terms of handicap. He just seemed to read greens instinctively and he was certainly a good putter. He knew my putting style and trusted my judgement of distance, so he simply told me where to aim and I holed the putts – far more than my fair share.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone like that caddying for you now, I hear you say …
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Have you noticed how some people can just walk onto a green, take a cursory glance around and then hole a simply unbelievable breaking putt? I don’t know if you’ve holed one or two like that yourself. I’m sure you have, if you cast your mind back. It happens with other shots as well. Think 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. That’s more than enough direction for the unconscious instinctive mind to work on, unhindered by doubt.
The older they get, the more golfers tend to forget how easy putting really is. They also forget how good they used to putt when they were younger and more carefree. You often hear the golf pundits on television talking about how some or other up and coming young professional hasn’t yet learned how difficult putting really is. They sometimes go on to talk about how the accumulation of years of missed putts slowly frazzles the nerves and undermines the confidence of the older and more experienced golfers. Maybe that’s how they justify their own inability to maintain their competitiveness on the tour. It’s small wonder that they’re now commentating rather than playing.
I work regularly with an American Senior Professional Golfer …
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Six Steps to Unconscious Putting
Posted by:Learn the Six Steps to Unconscious Putting, a key part of the pre-shot routine that Darren Clarke used so effectively at Royal St Georges in wining the Open Championship.
Unusually for me, there are no instructions here about using any formal self hypnosis technique before following these six steps. You’ll usually be using this technique as you transition from the conscious process of planning your putt in your pre-shot routine to the, hopefully, unconscious process of stroking the putt in your shot routine. Having said that, if you’re an experienced user of the “Finger Breathing technique, you’ll only need a couple of deep breaths at this point to get into just the right state.
Step 1: …
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Better Putting in Your Unconscious Mind
Posted by:Shortly after first publishing my technique for “Six Steps to Better Putting in Your Unconscious Mind” over a year ago, I was surprised and delighted a few weeks later to see Darren Clarke using virtually the same technique in his dramatic return to form to finish second at Scottish Open at Loch Lomond.
I remember avoiding the suggestion, at the time, that Darren started doing that after he or one of his support team read about it in my ezine. However, it was obviously helping him in overcoming some of the “demons” that seemed to be afflicting his putting confidence back then. The six steps and his action back then of gripping left hand low and then re-gripping right hand low were clearly keeping his conscious mind occupied while just trusting his unconscious mind to hit the putts. …
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Well that’s the opinion of two senior marketing executives who’ve been telling the golf industry about my success as the Golf Hypnotist. I think they may be a bit over zealous in describing me as, “the UK’s leading golf hypnosis expert”. How do you measure that? However, they are clearly impressed with the help I gave them in overcoming their Yips problems.
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.
Have you thought of using Golf Hypnosis to get the best out of golf training devices? If you’re anything like me, you’ve been tempted to buy almost every new golf training device that’s ever been invented. Well, I was certainly more than tempted a few times, but that was a long time ago and before I got into golf hypnosis.
The problem I’ve found back then was that, however well conceived and constructed these training aids are, I only used most of them a couple of times before they start gathering dust!
If you still want to use golf training aids, then here’s a way to use Golf Hypnosis to get the most out of them …
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The idea of using hypnosis as part of a swing coaching technique for golf is one of my pet projects. That’s partly because I meet so many golfers whose minds are full of swing thoughts that get in the way of their golfing enjoyment and their unconscious, instinctive abilities.
My second reason is that I believe that hypnosis and NLP can and should play a big part in the learning process for the golf swing. As I talk about in my “…
Better Golf with Less Practice” hypnosis programme, repetitions are key to ingraining swing changes, but only if they are good repetitions and there are thousands upon thousands of them. It pains me to think of all those balls I hit on the range in my 20′s in the hope of hitting a dozen shots the way I wanted to. What’s the point of all those bad repetitions? Click here to read the full post »
Why do golfers talk themselves into playing the shots they don’t want to hit? I’m talking here about saying or thinking to yourself something like, “Now, don’t hit it into the water”. If it wasn’t the water, it could have been the bunker, the trees or the wrong side of the green that they were trying to avoid. If it wasn’t one of those, it could have been about not slicing, hooking, topping, shanking or yipping, for all I know. …
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