You’ve probably heard about Phil’s putting woes and his comments about how "I’ve hit the ball so well and yet my scores haven’t reflected that." You’ve probably also heard about how "Bones" Mackay, Phil’s longstanding caddie, urged him to get help the week before the Tour Championship from Dave Stockton, one of the best putters in golf and twice a major winner. As if those weren’t sufficient reasons, Stockton also putts a bit like Phil does when he’s at his best.

So what major flaws did Dave Stockton notice in Phil’s putting stroke and what major changes did he prescribe? You’d expect them to be fairly severe given Phil’s recent comments about the inconsistent putting that has plagued him off and on over the last two years. He’s also talked about how his poor putting has detracted from the progress Butch Harman’s been making with his swing over the same period.

Well, Phil described the change in an interview as a "minor tweak" and went on to say "No, it’s very minor. It’s very minor. But [my] hands are back ahead like I used to putt, and the ball is just rolling much better." In another interview, he talked about Dave Stockton’s comments just "reaffirming the way I’ve putted since I was a kid."

So what golf psychology lessons can we learn from that then, Andrew, I hear you say? Well first of all, it confirms that if you’ve hit a particular shot well in the past, then you already unconsciously know how to hit it that well again – without changing your technique. All you need to do is to vividly recall one of those earlier successful shots and allow your unconscious golf mind to get on with the job as you get back into your comfort zone. I’d certainly include this type of visualisation in your pre-shot routine.

All that probably happened to Phil was he missed a few putts, lost his confidence and started to fear putting rather than enjoying the challenge. When that happens with any part of our golf game, we stop enjoying ourselves as much as we did and we start consciously analysing things. It doesn’t take too long before we start thinking there’s something drastically wrong with our swing or putting stroke and we start changing things, even though we seemed to have a perfectly effective method before.

This doesn’t just happen over a long period of time. For many of us it can happen in the middle of a round. Have you ever had the experience of playing a series of shots quite well and then hitting a bad shot, maybe a big slice? Did you badly pull or hook the next shot? If you did, you probably consciously thought you needed to make a swing correction, despite already knowing how to hit the ball quite well unconsciously. Well, you did say that you’d hit a series shots quite well, didn’t you.

Another golf psychology lesson was written on Phil Mickelson’s face all day on Sunday, not just when he won. He was clearly enjoying himself immensely, even before he started scoring well. After the round, he commented that, "Today was a lot of fun" and that’s not the way he’s been talking in recent weeks. Isn’t it odd how golfers seem to play so much better when they’re enjoying themselves, even if some, like a certain future Ryder Cup captain, have a hard time convincing us of that fact.

Let’s hear what a few of those experts say, beginning with my favourite golfer and ending with one from Bobby Jones.

Your mind holds the key to your success at golf and your enjoyment of the “Greatest Game of All” – Jack Nicklaus.

“I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very 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: its 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.” – Jack Nicklaus

The biggest strength of Tiger Woods you can’t see. It’s his mind – Butch Harmon

You can will something to happen, with your body, with your mind. The mind is that strong. You can say, ‘I want to get this close to the hole.’ That’s where the mind comes in. The mind has to produce positive thinking. All the great players do that – Byron Nelson

Once you’re on the Tour, the mental part of the game is 85-90 percent – David Duval

Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course – the distance between your ears – Bobby Jones

So what about this survey? Well, despite all the sage advice above, a recent survey suggests that only 12% of golfers think that the mental game is the most important thing to work on for golf improvement. That’s astounding.

Here’s the final table from the survey: