The “Own the Putting Green” golf hypnosis programme includes three powerful golf hypnosis sessions that address putting confidence, your belief in your putting and your trust in your instinctive green reading abilities. I’ve also included a very effective and imaginative technique for you to learn and take out to the greens to help you make the most of your unconscious putting abilities. The programme is available in MP3 format for download, with each session running for around 20-25 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 6 new Golf Hypnosis audio programmes over the next couple of months. As with “Winning Golf”, “Overcome the Yips” and “Own the Putting Green”, 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 “Own the Putting Green” Golf Hypnosis Programme all about? 

I’ve noticed that the older we get, the more us golfers tend to forget how easy putting really is. We also forget how good we used to putt, maybe when we were younger and more carefree. You often hear the golf pundits on television talking about how some 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..

So is there any truth in this? Well yes there is and the good news is that for most golfers it’s all in the mind and that’s where golf hypnosis really can help. However, it’s not a good idea to tell anyone that it’s “all in the mind” after they’ve just missed a putt!

And what’s included in “Own the Putting Green” I hear you ask? 

Well, I’ve included three powerful freestanding golf hypnosis sessions that address putting confidence, your belief in your putting and your trust in your instinctive green reading abilities. I’ve also included a very effective and imaginative technique for you to learn and take out to the greens to help you make the most of your unconscious putting abilities.

Remember you’re a Great Putter - because just like Jack Nicklaus learned to only remember his good putts, this session helps you to do the same, as you unconsciously learn how to remember and imagine all your great putts, while at the same time systematically forgetting all those other putts you’d prefer not to remember. The session continues to build an unconscious shield to protect you from the putts you’d prefer to forget and build your putting confidence.

Believe in your Putting Stroke - regardless of how technically correct it is. Billy Mayfair has a fairly eccentric and very effective putting stroke, but the only problem he ever had with his putting was when he started listening to the so-called experts. This hypnosis session helps you to build that same unshakeable belief in your putting stroke, protecting you from your own doubts and the doubts of others.

Reading your Putts Instinctively - the third golf hypnosis session starts out by helping you to expand and develop your peripheral sensory awareness through your eyes, feelings of touch and balance and even your hearing. This allows you to unconsciously take in more of the information that’s available to you, as you approach and stand on the putting green. The second part of the session reinforces your trust in this unconscious awareness, allowing you to read the green instinctively, quickly and accurately, using your powerful unconscious resources.

Better Putting in your Unconscious Mind – The three golf hypnosis sessions in "Own the Putting Green" work primarily with your unconscious mind, building your putting confidence, your belief in your stroke and your trust in your green reading. Sometimes, especially in the early days of using this programme, you may need a bit of conscious help out on the golf course and that’s why I’ve included this technique for you to use consciously and conscientiously on the greens to give your unconscious mind the opportunity to participate more in your putting and reinforce the work of all the hypnosis sessions.

Go to the “Own the Putting Green” 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 “Own the Putting Green” there for instant download and have the opportunity to become your own King or Queen of the Putting Green.

Nowhere is this more true than with putting, the game within the game of golf. Putting is the great equalizer in golf and we all have the opportunity for success, regardless of age, sex, build, health and level of fitness. Putting also accounts for approximately a third to a half of our total score. The lower your handicap, the larger the proportion of your score will be putts.

Golfers typically take as many as thirteen other clubs with them when playing golf, and yet it’s rare to see anyone take more than one putter. In addition, most of those other clubs are pretty similar to everyone else’s. My 3-wood is unlikely to be substantially different from your one in terms of length, loft, size, shape or weight and the same is true for every other club in the bag – apart from the putter. How many times have you played in a fourball and every player has had a similar style of putter, let alone the same model. Do you often come across mallet-headed drivers, centre-shafted woods, broomstick sand wedges or long-irons with two-thumb grips?

You’re also likely to see much greater diversity in how people stand, grip and swing their putters than you ever see with the rest of the clubs. That’s probably why Dave Pelz, one of the leading short game experts, can take 387 pages in his Putting Bible to explain the complexities of the "flat stick."

So it should be no surprise that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to putting psychology – any good work here needs to be interactive and iterative. To demonstrate what I mean, here’s my reply to a single-figure handicap golfer who wrote in to tell me about how his putting Yips was driving him away from golf after more than 20 years of enjoyment.

I know what you mean about having the Yips. I remember having putting problems like that back in my younger days when I was playing off a handicap of 2. I still can’t believe that for over 25 years as a category 1 player, I averaged around 35 putts per round. I can even remember going round in 1 over par with 38 putts! Thankfully, that was before I got into golf psychology and things have improved quite a lot for me in that area.

So what can I suggest to help you overcome the yips? Well, it would help to know a bit more about how they started for you and what you’ve tried in your quest to get rid of them. Working face to face or even on the phone, I could soon develop an approach to help you. Now, in the absence of that information, here are a few ideas to consider:

1. Putt while looking at the hole or your target spot, rather than looking at the ball. The separation of the conscious task of looking for the result and the unconscious task of swinging the putter certainly helped me when I used the technique.
2. Relax yourself in a comfortable location and recall some good putts from your past or imagine what they would have been like. Just imagine you were hitting those putts again. It may help to do this after listening to my golf hypnosis recording. You don’t have to listen to the full 25 minutes, just listen for about 10 minutes and then do some putting visualisation in your mind. When you are physically practicing your putting or out playing, imagine the putt you are about to hit and "see" the ball rolling along your chosen line and falling into the hole. Then just step into the shot and let it roll.
3. When you hole a putt, replay it in your mind both at the time and later when you review your practice session or round. If you miss a putt, just imagine that you holed it and replay the imagined successful putt in your mind.

Another, possibly even weirder, approach is to use a technique called EFT. Some people say it’s like a version of acupuncture, except you tap the meridian points with your finger rather than uYsing needles! For me it works like hypnosis, in that you consciously have to focus on the tapping sequence while you unconsciously think about the problem you want to correct – the Yips.

I’ve already documented the process in a series of four articles I posted on my blog back in March. The process requires you to use a "Setup Statement" that’s explained in Part 3. I would suggest that you start out using a simple setup statement such as "Even though I have this putting problem, I completely and utterly accept myself." Now I know this sounds a bit daft, even though it works wonders!

The four articles on EFT for Better Golf are:

• Part 1 – So what is EFT
• Part 2 – Let’s Get Tapping
• Part 3 – Tapping it all together
• Part 4 – Tapping for Golf Success

So, there are a few suggestions to be going on with. If you would like me to give you some more specific suggestions, then email me some more background information or give me a call.

Going back a few weeks to the 2009 Masters, no one would suggest that Kenny Perry, Angel Cabrera and Chad Campbell were the best players in the field, but they were the one’s that got into the playoff, despite their obvious mistakes. Many of the technically and statistically better players looked to be playing really well, but despite some amazing heroics from the likes of Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods, none of them came near getting into the playoff.

You’re often hearing me talk about how I started my golf during the golden years of my golfing hero Jack Nicklaus, the Golden Bear. Listening to me and many other pundits, you’d imagine that Jack was the most technically and statistically perfect golfer of all time. However, I have to admit that although he may still be the best golfer the world’s ever known, he was physically and technically way behind the likes of Tiger Woods.

I was recently picked up my rather well thumbed copy of Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible, published in 1999 and re-read his section on the ideal composite golfer – who he would pick as the top three golfers in each of six key technical areas. Interestingly, Tiger Woods appears only once as Number two behind Greg Norman in Driving and Fairway Woods and Jack Nicklaus doesn’t appear at all!

A more recent article broadly confirms these results, but this time it includes ratings for the Mental Game and Course Management. The truly great golfers, like Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Lee Trevino and Nick Faldo, rise to the top in these categories and demonstrate how they make the best of their all-round technical skills through the strength in the areas of golf psychology.

In conclusion, I suggest that although it’s good to be as technically and physically competent as you possibly can, you’re more likely to achieve consistently good golf by mastering the mental side of golf and your course management first. The time to work on the technical side of your swing and putting stroke is when you are achieving the best results you can with your current ones.