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 .

Now I’m sure that like the rest of us, you’re experiencing all sorts of emotions every minute of every day of your life. It’s a key element of living whether we are playing golf or doing something less important.

So what are these emotions I’m talking about? Well, as the article says, we all see different ones, but the consensus seems to include what psychologists apparently call the Big Six – Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Surprise and Disgust. Well they all crop up on a regular basis in golf, now don’t they? And they all appear either as desires or problems with many of the people who seek help from golf psychologists. My new book, The Secrets of Hypnotic Golf has chapters directly devoted to three of them – Enjoying your Golf; Fear of Golfing Failure and Success; and Anger Management in Golf.

More indirectly, I guess that Sadness, Surprise and Disgust are also addressed in the chapters on Positive Framing on the Golf Course; Post-Shot Routines: Planning your Shot, State Management in Golf; and Protection from Covert Hypnosis.

So what about the Five emotions you never knew you had? Well, according to New Scientist, these are Elevation, Interest, Gratitude, Pride and Confusion. You may not be surprised to hear that these fit in well with golf psychology as well.

Elevation, the uplifting emotion, is something we feel when we are inspired and motivated. In fact we have many expressions for it in our language like “things are looking up”. In golf psychology, I relate it to the concept of managing our physiology between shots. As I describe in the chapter on Physiology and Between Shots, if we walk the fairways with our head held high, we feel uplifted and positive. As a result, we play better golf.

Curiosity is one of the key things that make us human. It’s also the key element to planning our shots – an essential part of our pre-shot routines. I know that I’m always talking about trusting your unconscious mind for better golf. However, the conscious mind with its analytical curiosity has a part to play as well.

What about Gratitude? Isn’t that just the way we feel about a good shot? Well, that’s true, but there’s more to it than just that. As I describe in Positive Framing on the Golf Course, you can feel a lot better about a bad lie on the golf course if you think about how much worse it could have been. Being grateful for small mercies can have a very positive effect on your golf.

Pride can be a two edge sword – the New Scientist article describes it as the emotion with two faces. However, feeling proud about what happens on the golf course is what many of us play for. There’s nothing wrong with feeling proud of a good drive or breaking 90, 80 or even 70 – whatever level you aspire to. You can store that pride as a resource when using NLP Anchoring for Better Golf.

That leaves us with the most enigmatic of the five – Confusion. Surely there’s nothing positive to say about that, Andrew! Well perhaps I should leave that one to Richard Bandler, the co-founder of NLP, to describe why even confusion is a positive emotion for golf and life.

“Confusion is the doorway to reorganizing your perceptions and learning something new. If you were never confused, that would mean that everything that happened to you fit your expectations, your model of the world, perfectly. Life would simply be one boring, repetitive experience after another.”

Did I happen to mention anywhere that my long awaited book The Secrets of Hypnotic Golf is now available in paperback and e-book format from lulu.com? And remember that you can download the “Your Own Virtual Caddy” golf hypnosis recording, that goes with chapter 12, free when you sign up for my free Ezine.

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."

Anyway, there I was watching the golf and really looking forward to the cut and thrust of another battle between Tiger Woods and Padraig Harrington over the weekend, with Padraig seemingly putting his demons from Firestone behind him and in the past. I was also hoping to see some heroics from the many contenders from Europe and to see a real return to form from the likes of Ernie Els and Vijay Singh. Given all the excitement, I almost forgot to watch out for all the golf psychology lessons that were blowing across the screen.

Now I’m sure that you watched most if not all of the weekend’s cut and thrust on TV or, if you’re really lucky, you were there in Minnesota to watch it for real. So I’m focussing here on the golf psychology of all that windy golf, windy golfers and, in my next article, all that windy putting from the likes of Lee Westwood, Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and many others.

Now I don’t want to take anything away from Y E Yang and his outstanding performance this week. It takes something really special to beat Tiger Woods from 2 shots behind on the final day in a major. It’s also worth noting that his final 2-under par 70 tied the low score of the day with just 2 other players. Having said all of that, what happened to Tiger?

Well I think I noticed the first real flaw that I’ve seen in Tiger’s amazingly strong mental game. It’s been staring me in the face for some time now, especially with his occasional bad results in the Open Championship. The problem is with the parts of golf he can’t control and, more importantly, predict. Here at Hazeltine, as so often at Open Championship venues, the players are faced with the uncertainty of a strong and swirling wind. The wind at the tee is blowing one way, the clouds are moving in another and the flag on the green is fluttering in yet another. Tiger can’t predict what will happen to his ball and, unlike his wonderful ball-striking, it’s out of his control. That’s what he doesn’t seem able to handle.

I was taken by the contrast between Tiger’s reaction to two particular shots during his last 9 holes on Sunday. Both were unlucky and neither resulted from a bad shot execution, but one really upset him and the other he accepted philosophically. The first shot was a flier hit with a six iron that flew way over the back of the green on one of the many long par 4s. You could tell that he was half expecting it as he quickly acknowledged what had happened and quietly and confidently played the next shot. His reaction suggested that he hadn’t accepted it as a bad shot, just an unlucky one.

The second one was his tee shot on the tough short 17th where he backed away several times as the wind swirled and changed direction. He looked panicked and more like a rabbit in the headlights than a tiger. Nevertheless, he used his golf psychology training and hit what looked, and probably felt, like a really good shot. The ball sailed over the flag and landed no more than a foot too long and nestled down in the rough. A foot shorter and it would probably have spun back towards the hole. Tiger almost collapsed and still didn’t appear his normal confident and resourceful self as he chipped out short from a difficult lie and missed the putt. It must be remembered that Tiger didn’t capitulate totally and Yang hit one of the best shots I’ve ever seen into the 18th green to close out his victory.

So what do I think was the real difference between those two shots of Tiger’s? Well, he seemed to accept the flier as just plain bad luck that could happen to anyone and he just got on with the short without hesitation – it was out of his control and he accepted it. However, he didn’t seem to accept the swirling wind in the same way and hesitated several times. For a golfer with such supreme ball control and the ball on a tee, he didn’t seem able to accept the possibility of plain bad luck. I recorded the final days play and watching it again I saw that same hesitation from Tiger on many of his shots, especially when he had a good lie.

So there’s a definite flaw in Tiger’s mental game when it comes to a variable or swirling wind. The bad news for everyone else is that once he recognises it, he has his own mental skills and the golf psychology skills of Jay Brunza to help him handle it.

Now you know from what I’ve written before that I’m very much against slow play in golf, if for no other reason than that it’s bad golf psychology. You only have to read my earlier article entitled "The fast track to better golf in your unconscious – slow play kills your golf mind" to see why.

Coming back to Sunday, you have to admire Padraig Harrington’s whole approach to the final round and especially the unfairness and ridiculous timing of John Paramor’s intervention. Isn’t it obvious that anytime Tiger’s playing, the size, enthusiasm and rowdiness of his supporters means that his pairing is going to be slower than normal?

You also have to admire Tiger’s very fair comments about the incident as well. And decry the latest news stories that suggest that he’s going to be fined for criticising John Paramor. Now I’m even more incensed! This is going to test my powers of Self Hypnosis for Anger Management!

I know that rules are rules, but commonsense tells us that Tiger and his playing partners are inevitably going to take longer to play every hole. It takes more time for a large gallery to get into position and to quiet down. Given Tiger’s wider appeal, many in his galleries are new to golf and to the etiquette of watching golf quietly and respectfully. That also causes delays.

So although Padraig can be a little slow and deliberate at times, you rarely hear of him being warned for slow play unless he is paired with the likes of a Tiger Woods. Is it fair that he should speed up his play to compensate for Tiger’s gallery and perhaps the inadequacy of the crowd control? Could it be the officials who are at fault rather than the players? I know that criticising sports officials can be seen as sacrilegious, but let’s be fair to a golfer of Padraig’s outstanding ability.

Come on John Paramour, conduct yourself in the manner of a fair and reasonable golfer rather than an over zealous "jobs worth" official. You’ve just ruined what may have been an exciting and memorable finish for the viewing public. Golf should be about enjoyment not petty bureaucracy.

So what’s left to comment on and learn from this year’s Open Championship at Turnberry? Well, I started to talk about Tiger Woods in part 2, but put that on hold so that I wouldn’t detract from the praise I wanted to lavish on Ross Fisher. I also feel that there’s a lot to learn from Lee Westwood’s sad failure over the last few holes, as he was playing as well as we all know he can and probably better than the other leading contenders.

I was so impressed with the way Lee accepted the "rub of the green" of that unlucky roll into the fairway bunker on the 72nd hole. The way he focussed on the shot that he was left with was just amazing and the bunker shot onto the green left me stunned and speechless – not a normal state for me. With Dr Karl Morris as his golf psychologist, I have to believe that Lee knows all the golf mind techniques he needs to unleash his true talent and close out major championships. I just feel that he needs to be using those techniques unconsciously and for me the best way to achieve that is with golf hypnosis. Oh I’d just love to have the opportunity to work with him on that.

Now Tiger has had the benefit of working with a really good golf psychologist in Jay Brunza for the last 20 years and at his best Tiger is clearly the leading exponent of mental golf in the history of the game. If that’s not enough, he also makes good use of self hypnosis, especially when he’s winning tournaments.

So why, oh why does Tiger get so angry on the golf course? Watching him on Thursday and Friday, well he wasn’t there for the weekend, it seemed like every time the camera focussed on him, he has making angry gestures, banging his club on the ground or even hurling his club away. At the same time, he was demonstrating the ability to calmly stop in mid swing if someone moved or a camera clicked, so he hadn’t totally lost it.

I’ve heard people dismiss his anger by suggesting that these displays of petulance are just his way of releasing bad luck and the very occasional bad shots he may hit. However, it doesn’t seem to help him and it’s only when he really focuses on his game that he calms down and capitalises on all that golf mind training. It seems like whenever he loses his cool like this, he eventually realises that he has to knuckle down to make the cut or to win the tournament. He only just failed to make the cut on Friday with one of these focused charges.

So Tiger, please remember your golf psychology training and act more like a true professional on the golf course. We know you are the best golfer in the world when you’re using your golf hypnosis. In addition, your playing partners and the paying public will get even more enjoyment from watching you play and win.

Now I haven’t forgotten that it was Stewart Cink who took the Claret Jug home with him, it’s just that I haven’t forgiven him for depriving Tom Watson and oldies like me of a famous and rejuvenating victory.

What about the top professional golfers? These are the men and women who have the sorts of swings we mere golfing mortals dream of having. They also hole a lot more puts than many of us and they have access to the top coaches and golf psychologists whenever they need help. What about financial security? Well, unless they have serious behavioural problems, they have more than enough money stashed away and the prospect of earning and winning more.

So, do the professionals enjoy their golf? Well clearly some do and clearly some don’t – a picture of Colin Montgomerie just zoomed into focus in my mind’s eye. No, he doesn’t look like he’s enjoying himself, whatever he’s saying to the press recently. And what about the people around him? His playing partners all cringe and look away, his caddy appears to hide behind the bag and the spectators feel uncomfortable – apart from the ones who enjoy watching his discomfort.

So what about you and your golfing friends? I know that there have been times in the past when I’ve been very unhappy on the course and I suspect I have impacted the enjoyment of some of my playing partners – thinking about it, I know I have, because a couple of them have told me about it.

Now I’ve devoted a huge part of my life to playing and improving my golf over the last 40 years. Even at one round per week, that would be 2,000 rounds or 36,000 holes and it would have taken at least 55,000 hours at 3 hours and 45 minutes per round. And then there’s all that practice, lessons, reading books and playing CDs and DVDs. And of course, there’s the 19^th hole to consider as well. I wonder how much of that time I really enjoyed. At least it‘s probably more than Monty has!

I’ll be writing more about this issue of golf enjoyment and how you can enjoy your golf more in a in a future edition of my Golf Hypnotist Ezine, so I’ll leave you for today with a couple of my favourite quotes on enjoying your golf.

"If you can’t enjoy the time between golf shots, then you are going to have a pretty difficult life because most of your life is the time spent in-between."
Peter Jacobsen

"Achieving a certain level of success in golf is only important if you can finally enjoy the level you’ve reached after you’ve reached it."
Anon

"He enjoys that perfect peace, that peace beyond all understanding, which comes at its maximum only to the man who has given up golf."
P.G. Wodehouse

And finally, one of my many favourite quotes from Bob Hope:

"I get upset over a bad shot just like anyone else. But it’s silly to let the game get to you. When I miss a shot I just think what a beautiful day it is. And what pure fresh air I’m breathing. Then I take a deep breath. I have to do that. That’s what gives me the strength to break the club."

Milton Erickson, the father of modern hypnotherapy, often used the story of how he learned to walk again, at the age of 18 after severe bout of Polio, by watching his baby sister learning to walk. He describes it in his book The February Man.

“When she first learns to walk, she picks up her right foot and moves it one step ahead. And then after that she has had the experience of moving her right foot so she moves the right foot again and takes another step ahead. She doesn’t learn to walk all at once, by putting one foot up and then the other, so she learns to walk this way and then she tumbles. But the baby has to learn to do it one foot after another. She makes mistakes in learning to walk, and she learns how with the fewest possible tumbles and without trying to hurry too much.”

He goes on to describe how, when we are very young, we seem to be programmed for this trial and error style of learning and we gradually piece together our experience of what works. That way we come up with our own personal method of doing things. That’s probably how you learned to walk, to tie your shoes, to ride a bike and to drive a car. Hopefully with more trial than error with that last example!

Erickson often used this story as a metaphor for a wide range of learning situations and it applies equally well to our lifetime learning of the wonderful game of golf.

So every time you make a mistake on the golf shot and maybe hit a bad shot, learn from it then release it to the graveyard of all the bad shots anyone ever hit. You’ve taken your learnings from it and discarded it. It will never bother you again, unless you dwell on it. You can also use the same technique to learn from other people’s successes and failures whether they be your playing partners or the players you’re watching in a tournament.

Maybe Tiger’s learning from and then rapidly releasing his bad shots when he rants, raves and cusses after a bad shot. I’d rather he didn’t, but it seems to work for him. And he seldom follows one bad shot with another – unlike a lot of people I know – not you or me, of course!

You only have to look back to this year’s Masters to see what they’re talking about. I used to agree with them, before realising that this may be a part of his anger management technique for releasing a bad shot. It may upset the golfing public and his playing partners, but it doesn’t seem to have any long-term affect on him. Although he’s clearly in hypnosis while he’s hitting the ball, he appears to come out the moment he completes the swing. If it’s a good shot, he calmly moves on to the next shot. If it’s a bad shot he cusses and again moves on. He’s certainly calmed down before he hypnotically plays his next shot, so his bad shot and his temper don’t have any lasting effect.

I’m sure I’m repeating myself here, but here’s a very telling quote from Tiger that supports my analysis, "The person who can control his state can control his world". There’s seems to be no doubt in my mind that he’s the master of State Management

Now, if only dear old Colin Montgomerie had some of Tiger’s anger management skills and the ability to control his state. He could still be just about as unbeatable as Tiger. I’ll be talking more about Colin in a future post about enjoying your golf – no surprise there then. Colin tells us that he does enjoy his golf, but who’s he kidding?

I don’t know if you saw much of Sergio Garcia during the weekend and saw just how unhappy he seemed to be with himself and the course. It was no surprise to hear his negative comments about the course after his final round. One quote really stuck in my mind, "I don’t think it’s fair," he said. "It’s too tricky. Even when it’s dry you still get mud balls in the middle of the fairway. It’s too much of a guessing game. They can do whatever they want. It’s not my problem. I just come here and play and then go home."

Now, he clearly wasn’t the only one exhibiting similar feelings through their body language and in one particular player through his obvious anger. I saw many players having apparently mishit shots resulting from “mud balls” and I saw many different reactions. I didn’t notice any anger from Kenny Perry when his “mud ball” on the second playoff hole veered off to the left – he was disappointed, but just got on with the job of playing the ball as it lies, without complaint. I suspect he would have said that it was the same for everyone. Maybe that attitude got him into the playoff, even if his mental game seemed to desert him over the last few holes.

I wonder what Justin Rose would have done if he had been in Sergio Garcia’s shoes. If you read my post Positive Reframing for Better Golf Performance like Justin Rose on 3^rd April you’d know the answer.

Golfers who complain bitterly about the “Rub of the Green” rarely enjoy their golf that much or perform to their best and I know that before I got into golf psychology I used to suffer in that way. One possible exception is Tiger Woods with his clear annoyance and sometimes outright anger over things like “unfair” gusts of wind affecting his shots. He still scores amazingly well despite the anger. Perhaps he would score even better if he could manage it as well as he handles the rest of his mental game.

On a final happy note, I was delighted to read of Sergio’s later apologies in the press, as I think he has the potential to be the real successor to his mentor, the great Seve Ballesteros.