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 and the first time we met was in a practice round for the British Senior Open Championship. He explained that he couldn’t read greens very well. It was a major problem for him and put unnecessary added pressure on the rest of his game.

After walking a few holes with him in his final practice round, I noticed that there was a little white cross painted on each of the greens. I guessed that these were to show the greens staff where to cut the holes on the first round of the tournament, the next day. So I suggested to my client that it would be worth rolling a few balls to these marks to get the feel of these pin positions. As he’d been practicing with several balls and to save time, I suggested that he walked in a 20 foot circle around these “holes” and rolled a few balls by hand to them. It was a lot quicker than putting them, as he didn’t bother to line them up.

I kept quiet for the first few greens where he tried this and just let him do this without much conscious thought. Then I pointed out to him that around 40 percent of the balls he’d rolled this way would have gone in the hole and the rest had finished within 12 inches of the white mark. He burst out laughing when I asked him if he was still sure that he couldn’t read greens. He could when he didn’t try too hard consciously!

Why don’t you try it out for yourself? It’ll confirm how good you really are at reading greens unconsciously and instinctively. All you have to do is to roll a few balls on a few greens. It’s a great way to reinforce the “Reading your Putts Instinctively” golf hypnosis track in my Own the Putting Green” programme.

Own the Putting Green

Own the Putting Green” is one of my most popular programmes and is used by many of my professional clients to very good effect. The programme addresses putting confidence and belief in your putting, as well as learning `to trust your instinctive green reading abilities.

The programme won’t teach you how to putt or how to read greens. What it will do is help you to make the most of the unconscious, instinctive putting abilities you already have.

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: When you approach a putt, start following your normal pre-shot routine and doing whatever you would normally do to read and visualise the putt.

Step 2: If you haven’t already marked the ball, then mark it now, clean it and replace it ready to putt. I suggest that you avoid making any particular conscious effort to line up the markings on the ball with the target. If you normally draw a sighting line on your ball, either ignore it or don’t do it for now.

Step 3: Now stand 2-4 yards behind the ball on the line to your target. Face straight at the target, so that both your eyes are seeing the ball and the hole using your binocular vision.

Step 4: Recall your visualisation of the putt and do your best to imagine the feeling and/or picture of the ball rolling along your expected line before hearing it fall in the hole.

Step 5: Now, keeping that feeling and/or picture in your mind and, while maintaining your gaze at the ball and the hole, take your stance for a practice swing. Take a couple of practice swings while still looking simultaneously at the ball and hole.

Step 6: As soon as you feel the practice swing is a good rehearsal for the putt you want to play, move as quickly and smoothly as you can and take up your stance to the ball. Only roughly align yourself to the hole – your unconscious will automatically allow for any misalignment. Then take one slow look at the hole and as soon as your eyes return to the ball, notice how you automatically and unconsciously start your putter stroke and then stroke the putt. It really is that easy!

So why does this work? Well, the object is to get all the conscious thought and analysis out of the way before handing over to your unconscious mind to finally assess the shot and hit the putt. Looking at the hole with both eyes while you get the feel of the putter stroke allows your unconscious mind to take in all the information it needs to deliver the putt that you saw and/or felt in step 1. Finally, the faster you can smoothly take your stance, look at the hole and start your swing, the more of that unconscious information you’ll retain and the less time there is for the conscious mind to step in and start analysing things again – and potentially sowing the seeds of doubt.

Remember that you can use a similar technique for chips and, with practice, for longer shots as well. It’s also a good technique for helping overcome the Yips for both putting and chipping.

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.

The technique was so effective I included it, along with three golf hypnosis sessions, in my “Own the Putting Green” golf hypnosis programme.

Imagine my delight a year later when he was still using those six steps in his magnificent win in the 2011 Open Championship at Royal St Georges.

Remember you are a great putter

I first used the Six Steps to better Putting in Your Unconscious Mind technique when I was working with a young tournament professional having serious problems with his putting. He’d been struggling to put a good score together despite often hitting 15 greens in regulation in a round. It wasn’t his putting stroke, because he’s already spent a lot of time working with his coach on his putting and everything was looking good there. The problem was that he seemed to have forgotten that he was a good putter. And that was putting more and more psychological pressure on his game.

We spent some time on a very undulating putting green and experimented with various techniques until we came up with the Six Steps to Unconscious Putting that I’ll post tomorrow. My client was uncomfortable at first, but after about 45 minutes, I suddenly noticed him relax and smile as he said something quietly to himself. I’m not sure what the exact words were, but it was the cheeky nickname he’d been given by his friends at college when he kept holing putts as they played for candy bars and sodas.

He remembered how good a putter he was and the following week, he went out and won his first pay cheque as a professional. He putted rather well that day!

Tomorrow, I’ll take you through those 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

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.

Most of these devices are designed to help you to physically repeat some part of the golf swing the way the designer feels you should. The good news is that they help you to make flawless repetitions of that swing element. The problem is that I get bored or want to get out on the course, long before I complete the thousands of repetitions needed to ingrain the new action.

So how can golf hypnosis help? Well, one way is to use self hypnosis to take you into a receptive hypnotic state and then use the training aid while remaining in an eyes-open trance. I used that technique with a hoop style swing trainer I had some years ago called an Explanar – www.explanar.com. It’s a very effective training aid invented by Luther Blacklock, a top UK teaching professional and head pro at Woburn Golf and Country Club.

Another way golf hypnosis can help is in speeding up the learning process using a concept called “Hypnotic Time”. It is not uncommon for people to fall asleep for a few minutes and wake up from a dream that they seemed to “live” for hours or even days. In a similar way, people in hypnotic trance can often experience time distortion allowing them to speed up their unconscious experience.

All you need to do is to practice a drill for a short while using the training device of your choice, then use hypnosis to rehearse the drill over and over in Hypnotic Time. You can achieve this either using self-hypnosis or by listening to the hypnosis tracks in my “Better Golf with Less Practice” hypnosis audio programme. That way, you can to unconsciously complete hours of practice or rehearse rounds of golf in just a few minutes.

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?

I have a third reason, a personal one, and that’s to use these techniques to learn a new, more biomechanically correct swing. One that will protect my 61 year old body after more than 40 years of “trying” to swing like Jack Nicklaus did in his prime. Thankfully, my hips have survived better than his! The new swing I’m just starting to work on is called the RST swing from a guy called Chuck Quinton at www.rotaryswing.com.

In his RST programme, Chuck is very heavily into a series of drills and “reps”, gradually building up the elements of the full swing. The problem is that you need to practice each of these drills serially and thousands of times. That takes many months. In addition, most of the early drills do not even involve swinging a club, let alone hitting a ball. So you have to be very dedicated and prepared to give up playing golf for a couple of months. I didn’t like that idea at all.

So my approach is to physically run through each drill consciously, until it looks and feels right. Immediately after that I sit down and listen to the “Practice Golf in Your Mind” hypnosis track from my “Better Golf with Less Practice” programme and do 1,200 perfect reps in my mind in the next 30 minutes using “Hypnotic Time”. If I repeat that daily for a couple of days, I’ve done over more than enough reps to internalise the drill. I’ll also build up many more layers of myelin on the new neural pathways than I would get from many months of less consistent practice.

There’s even a valid argument that says that, as long as I really understand and feel the drill internally, I probably don’t even need to do the physical bit at the beginning. Either way, the repetitions in your mind really will be flawless and identical – won’t they!

If you want to complete the reps even faster, then once you’ve used “Practice Golf in Your Mind” on a drill, you can use “Play Golf in Your Dreams”, the third hypnosis track in the “Better Golf with Less Practice” programme. That way, you’ll get even more perfect repetitions while you sleep.

© Phartisan

Now, it’s not that uncommon for enthusiastic golfers to play a practice round before playing an unfamiliar course. Maybe it’s to help them play their best in a friendly game or to score their best in an upcoming competition.

Either way, you generally have so much more time for mental and general practice than you do for actual practice on the courses you are going to compete on. That means that you really have to make the most of those practice rounds and gather as much information as you can to help you with your mental and general physical practice.

The most important information you can get from a practice round comes on and around the greens. When you are looking at each green, assess the likely pin positions and, for each one, consider where you would ideally choose to take your first putt from. Then think about how best to get the ball to finish there. What would be the best choice of target, distance, direction, club and style of shot to safely achieve the result you want?

I was watching Miguel Angel Jimenez in the Pro Am before the PGA Championship at Wentworth. After holing out his real putt and while his amateur partners lined up their putts, he hit a number of approach putts to different parts of the green. Maybe he was doing something similar.

Now you have the options for each likely pin position, you can decide on where best to be for your approach shot. If it’s a tee shot, then which side of the tee would be best. If it’s a fairway approach, evaluate the position you want to hit from in terms of the risk and reward of hitting the ball there. Maybe revise you’re desired approach shot accordingly.

Once you’ve done this, you have a set of options to use in your mental and general physical practice. Even better, when you get out on the course in competition, you just have to identify the approximate pin position to already know the best shot to play.

So, there are many ways to make the most of extra time you have to practice your golf. And even if you don’t have all the time for practice that you’d like, you’ve seen a number of ways to make the most of whatever time you do have to practice.

Finally, don’t forget that you can achieve Better Golf with Less Practice using golf hypnosis.

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.

This means that if you can augment your physical practice by using your mind to follow the same suggestions that I gave you earlier for best general practice between rounds. Find a quiet, comfortable relaxing place and let your imagination run free. You can use the Finger Breathing technique as an easy way to achieve a good state of relaxation.

If you want to take this even further, then why not have a look at my Better Golf with Less Practice hypnosis audio programme. It includes hypnosis sessions for Playing Golf in Your Mind, Practicing Golf in Your Mind and Playing Golf in Your Dreams.

In my next Golf Hypnotist blog post, I’ll continue this series on Best Practice for Better Golf with part 5, “Best Practice Rounds for Better Golf”.

I feel that it’s best to think of and use your general practice time as an opportunity to rehearse every aspect of your physical and mental game in a controlled environment. On the golf course, success is only really measured by what’s written on your score card, not by the quality of your shot making and your mental game. On the practice tee and green, we have the opportunity to measure every shot objectively and precisely, using feedback from cameras, coaches, shot monitors, alignment tools, etc.

So what I’m talking about here is:

· Rehearsing “real” rounds of golf

• thinking about the courses you plan to play
• considering all the likely pin positions on each green
• thinking about the ideal position to be hitting your first putt from
• deciding on the best place to land the ball for those pin positions, allowing for contours and balancing risks
• choosing the best possible position and distance to hit each of those possible approach shots from – where on the fairway or which side of the tee
• deciding on how to get the ball into your ideal positions on the fairway.

· Simulating playing those “real” rounds of golf

• playing each rehearsal shot, each practice swing, in turn using the clubs and shots you’ve decided on
• using your pre-shot, shot and post-shot routines on very shot.

· Enhancing your post-shot routine by taking advantage of all possible feedback information.

· Walking away and taking your time between shots, so that you take an hour or more to hit a bucket of 60 balls.

· Making every shot count – just like you do in a real round of golf.

· Practicing your putting and chipping with one ball.

And don’t forget that you can extend all this using hypnosis to imagine stepping into the shoes of any golfer you admire to Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes.

In my next Golf Hypnotist blog post, I’ll continue this series with part 4, “Best Mental Practice for Better Golf”.

Now, I don’t think I have to tell you or any experienced golfer about the benefits of gradually warming up your body before every round of golf. However, I do think you need to do something to “warm up” your golfing mind at the same time. Exploring what types of shot are working well for you today, will also help your scoring. Remember, this is a time to learn about making the most of the game you’ve brought to the course, not a time to fix faults or make swing changes.

This is why I named the final hypnosis track of my Winning Golf hypnosis programme, “Making the Most of Your Game”. Perhaps I should have added the word today at the end because with so many variables in golf, our game often seems to change so much from day to day. Have you ever seen hit every shot on the practice tee with a fade and then try in vain to draw their first approach shot on the course. They probably try again on the next hole as well and when that still doesn’t work, they start making changes to their swing!

One of the best ways of “warming up” your mind before a round is to make every shot on the practice tee count. That means picking the shot you want to hit and then following your pre-shot, shot and, most importantly, post-shot routines for every shot – just like you do on the course.

Remember that your post-shot routine includes learning from every shot. By the end of your warm up session, you should have a good idea of the game you’ve brought with you to the course – the shots you are capable of hitting well today. You may also get some other feedback about things like how far the ball will travel today.

In my next Golf Hypnotist blog post, I’ll continue this series on Best Practice for Better Golf with part 3, “Best General Practice for Better Golf”.

How do you make the most of extra time to practice your golf? What’s the best way to practice for better golf? Those are questions a lot of my clients have been asking me in recent weeks. For some it’s the long summer evenings, for others it’s holiday time and, for a lucky few, it’s about devoting themselves to playing golf full time.

Whatever your reason, one of the first things to consider is what form of practice will help you the most. Remember that practice doesn’t just have to be confined to beating balls on the range. What about

• working on your swing – perhaps after a session with a coach
• warming up before a round – loosening up and seeing what works today
• general practice between rounds
• mental practice – away from the golf course
• practice rounds before a competition – especially away from home.

So starting in this post with Best Practice for Better Golf Swing Change, I’d like to start by suggesting you keep your swing change practice completely separate from the other types of practice and especially from your golf on the course. The last thing you want, when you are playing, warming up and rehearsing your golf, is to think consciously about your swing. It’s so much better to be thinking about how well you can score with your current swing when you’re confidently following your routines and trusting your natural ability.

When you are working on a swing change on the range, there are two key things to remember. Firstly, treat every practice shot as if it were a real shot in a round of golf. That means going through your routines and only consciously thinking about the swing changes during the pre-shot planning and rehearsal swing elements. Once you get the feeling you are looking for, just step into your shot routine and begin trusting your unconscious mind to integrate the swing changes.

Secondly, after every three shots you hit while concentrating on your swing change, select another club and hit three shots the way you would on the golf course. That means following your normal routines without thinking about the swing change. With your natural ability, you can make any swing change work to some degree after three practice shots. By switching back to your normal routines for a few shots, you give your unconscious mind the chance to integrate the new techniques into your natural game. This will help you to practice for your next round while at the same time working on your swing changes.

You can also work very effectively on your swing, in the comfort of your own home or anywhere else for that matter, using hypnosis techniques. That’s why I developed my hypnosis audio programme for Better Golf with Less Practice.

In my next Golf Hypnotist blog post, I’ll continue this series on Best Practice for Better Golf with part 2, “Warming Up to Winning Golf”.