Archive for Jack Nicklaus
I’ve been writing a lot lately about the negative and positive golf psychology of fear on the golf course. While I’ve been thinking all about golf fear consciously, it seems that my unconscious mind has been quietly working away on the question of how we actual do this "fear" thing in our golf minds. Using a post-shot routine was the answer – to the problem, not the question.
Now in NLP and golf hypnosis, we have many ways of managing a person’s fears. If it’s a full blown phobia, we can deal with that easily. If it’s a habit or belief that’s blown out of all proportion, we can help there too using techniques like the NLP Swish Pattern. If we need a skill that someone else has we can use modelling and Richard Bandler’s "Stealing a Skill" technique. If the fear is doubt related and, as we might say colloquially, there’s a part of me that wants to play a risky shot and another part that’s saying it’s too dangerous, then we’ve got the NLP Visual Squash parts integration technique. And there are many more NLP tools we can use before we even start looking at golf hypnosis.
So why not use one of these techniques to manage or eliminate fear? Well, you can use these techniques and if they are really deep-seated fears, you may need them. But what about nipping the fears in the bud …
Click here to read the full post »
There’s a danger we treat fear completely as a bad thing in golf psychology. Now I know this goes against a lot of what I’ve been saying, but I’m talking hear about the thin end of fear – nervousness. For many people, nervousness is the buzz of competition, whether we’re competing with other people, ourselves or the golf course we happen to be playing.
For many people the buzz is part of the enjoyment. Perhaps that’s what Mark Twain was referring to when he wrote that "Golf is a good walk spoiled" and HRH Princess Anne meant when she said “Golf seems to be an arduous way to go for a walk. I prefer to take the dogs out."
Personally, I feel that if I’m not nervously shaking when I get near the end of a seriously good scoring round or close game of match play then I might as well give up golf and go and do something else that excites and inspires me. Jack Nicklaus knew that if you didn’t feel nervous at the end of a tournament you’re trying to win then there’s something wrong with you – he thrived on it …
Click here to read the full post »
Have you noticed how good some of the leading professionals are at grinding out a good score, even if they are swinging the club below their best or downright badly. It’s interesting to note that the real greats like Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus always seem to be able to do this, however they’re playing, and whatever the "rub of the green throws" at them when they get to the last nine holes of a championship.
If I look back to my early years in golf, before I had any thoughts about golf hypnosis or golf psychology in general, I was lucky to have a fair amount of natural ability. At the same time, I was rather too inconsistent for my liking. It seemed that if I started out a round playing really well, but not scoring that brilliantly, then my golf would gradually go from good to bad to worse and I’d have a frustratingly high score. On the other hand, if I started off playing relatively badly, but scoring ok, then my golf would often improve as the round went on and I’d have a bewilderingly good score. What was really odd was that my score after 6 to 9 holes in these two types of round was often similar …
Click here to read the full post »
I hear that Darren Clarke’s looking for putting improvement through golf psychology and working again with Bob Rotella. I know that Darren has worked in the past with Golf Psychologist Dr Karl Morris – after all, I’ve read Golf – The Mind Factor, the book they published together back in 2005. However, for some reason I didn’t know that he’d worked with Bob Rotella.
I can’t say how delighted I am to see Darren’s back competing in the 2009 US Open at Bethpage Black after qualifying as one of the top 15 in the European Money List last year. He’s only played in the US Open once, in 2006 at Winged Foot, since he pulled out at Pinehurst in 2005 to be with his wife who was seriously ill.
Moving back to Darren’s putting psychology problems, I was interested to hear that he has considered putting to be his Achilles heel for most of his career …
Click here to read the full post »
I was delighted to see Luke Donald doing so well in the first round of the Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial tournament yesterday, with an opening 8-under par 64 to finish the day 3 shots clear of a very strong field. As a fellow member at Beaconsfield and someone who saw his golfing skills develop there, I’m always delighted to follow his successes.
I was listening to his interview after finishing the round and I was intrigued to notice how much golf psychology he’s learned. I know he used to work with Jim Fannin up until a couple of years ago, but I’m not sure who he’s working with now. Jim still works with a number of golfers on the PGA Tour, including Charles Howell and uses a fairly rigid coaching system focusing on Self-Discipline, Concentration, Optimism, Relaxation, and Enjoyment. Now I won’t deny that these elements are included in my own approach to golf psychology, but I prefer a more flexible approach based on the needs of the individual.
So what elements of golf psychology did I notice in Luke’s interview …
Click here to read the full post »
Do you play golf to win? What about when you’re having a great round, playing confident golf and you only need a few pars to play under your handicap? Some of my best rounds came when I started scoring badly and just persevered. The further I got into the round, the better I found myself scoring. What’s more, I got into the habit of playing better and better. Sometimes, the improvement grew over the space of several rounds.
When I think about this kind of phenomena, a couple of my early golfing experiences quickly spring to mind. Part way through my first year of golf, I had got my handicap down to 7 and I was playing in one of the club competitions at Brookmans Park Golf Club. Well, I started terribly and it only slowly got better. Starting from the tenth hole, I reached the turn in 48 shots, 13 over par! But by that time, my golf was improving and I was hitting the ball a long way. I started my second nine with two pars then had a run of eagle, par, eagle and I was now flying. I parred the par 3 sixth hole, before eagling the par 5 seventh and parring the eighth. I was on such a high that I really went for the par 3 ninth and birdied that to be back in 29, 7 under par and nineteen shots better than my first nine. I even had my handicap cut …
Click here to read the full post »
Have you noticed that the winners on the professional golf tours around the world aren’t always technically or statistically the best players. They often don’t even look like the best player over the four rounds the week they win. Now, I know that’s a contradiction, because if they win the event, then they must be the best in that event.
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 …
Click here to read the full post »
Now I’m confused about golf practice and just how much leads to better golf. More importantly, just how much is good for golf improvement? I’m confused because I keep getting contradictory advice from the books I’m reading, TV programs I’m viewing and the stuff I’m browsing on the web.
As a low handicap golfer for over 40 years, I’ve done a fair bit of work on the practice ground and had lots of golf lessons from lots of good coaches – some of the best in the world in their day. However, I know that much of the technical advice I received left me confused and inconsistent …
Click here to read the full post »
When people write about the top professionals, they tend to talk about the externally visible aspect of their game – their swing technique. Those same writers rarely tell you about the golf mind golf secrets of those same professionals.
So what about Jack Nicklaus and 90% of golf in the mind?
When I started out in golf in the late 60’s I recall hearing Jack Nicklaus talk on TV about golf being 90% in the mind. However, when I eagerly read his first book, The Greatest Game of All published in 1969, I found very little information about golf psychology. In fact, two thirds of the book was biographical and the remaining third was about the golf swing. Maybe that was what the public wanted to hear or what Herbert Warren Wind, his co-writer, wanted to write about …
Click here to read the full post »
I read about so many expert golfers and golf experts – not always the same people – imploring us that golf is a mental game. Yet only a select band of golfers use any form of golf psychology assistance to improve their game. Now, I know you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this on a golf hypnosis website.
Let’s hear what a few of those experts say, beginning with my favourite golfer and ending with one from Bobby Jones …
Click here to read the full post »
Get your FREE “Your Own Virtual Caddy” Article and the amazing FREE 25-minute Golf Hypnosis audio session.
