The average golfer is often preoccupied with his current set of – sometimes conflicting – technical swing thoughts, from coaches, books, websites and golf magazines and TV programmes. And even if he isn’t, someone may have given him a set of the tee pegs I saw recently that had different swing thoughts printed on each one!

Now to be absolutely clear, I do believe that you should take adequate time to consciously plan your shots before stepping up to the ball and taking your stance. And this should include time to fully visualise and rehearse the shot or putt that you are about to make. I’ve written before about Jack Nicklaus describing how he’s never hit a shot without first seeing himself playing it.

I also believe that once you have that clear visualisation of the shot you are about to make and the confidence of the short-term recent memory of your rehearsal or practice swing, then the sooner you hit the ball with that thought in your mind, the better. If your rehearsal swing was adequate, then there’s nothing more to do than to take your stance, briefly check your alignment, take one last look at your target and start your swing – before you forget how you rehearsed it. If you needed any specific swing thoughts, then you must really have incorporated them in your rehearsal swing.

That’s what I mean when I keep harping on about unconscious golf. Your unconscious mind knows all about the shot you’re visualising and it also knows about the rehearsal swing you just made. Now’s the time to get your conscious mind out of the way and let your unconscious mind do its job and hit the ball the way you visualised and rehearsed. It’s that simple.

How I wished I’d understood this back in my youth when I played off 2-handicap. I even had regular demonstrations of it when I played with my father’s friend. If you haven’t already read the article that comes with my free "Your Own Virtual Caddy" golf hypnosis programme, then let me explain. He was a fanatical newcomer to golf – yes we’ve all been one – and whenever I played with him he would try to get to my ball before I did so that he could ask me how I planned to play the shot. What I didn’t realise at the time was that by describing my thoughts in detail, I had to visualise the shot to describe it.

By the time I’d finished explaining it all, I was rushing to hit the ball and didn’t have any time for any swing thoughts. I just quickly took a practice swing and hit the ball without further conscious thought. If only I’d realised how much better my shots went and how well I scored playing with him. I didn’t realise until I started developing my own approach to golf psychology and understood the power of trusting my unconscious.

Now I’ve written here before about the perils of Analysis Paralysis , the benefits of Visualisation and the need to Speed up your shot routines, but I’m not alone. In researching this article I found an interesting question asked by Karl Morris,

"Whenever you have played your very best golf, is it usually down to MORE or LESS thinking?"

I’ll leave you to answer that one for yourself.

In my humble opinion, Lee Westwood is striking the ball as well as he ever has, especially in the major championships. As a result, he keeps getting himself into contention in the last round before throwing away the opportunity in the last nine holes on Sunday. How many times did he miss apparently easy putts at Hazeltine, including a three putt from not much more than 3 feet? At the Open Championship we saw him three-putt the 72nd hole after recovering well from a few bad putts earlier in the round. The same sort of thing has plagued him for such a long time that it can’t just be coincidence and I keep reading about Lee working with golf psychologists, so it can’t be that; or can it?

Well, I’ve seen Lee’s name mentioned as a client of a number of high-profile golf psychologists here in the UK, like Dr Karl Morris and Jamil Qureshi, the official psychological performance coach for the European Ryder Cup team last year. I also noticed, in the Westwood Academy page on Lee’s website, that the list of sessions participants will receive includes psychology.

Imagine my surprise when I heard about Lee’s comments about golf psychologists in an interview at Hazeltine. "Look at them all," he said, "They all look a bit odd, like they need to see somebody, I find it hard to take anybody like that seriously." He continued by saying, "Well, they do. I’m sorry. That’s the way I see it. I’ve always felt mentally quite stable. Don’t feel like I need it.” He must have forgotten what he said in an interview at the PGA Championship 4 years earlier when he explained how he was using a golf psychologist to help him think a little bit clearer.

So Lee, if you aren’t using a golf psychologist, then perhaps you need one now. And if you are using one, maybe you need more help in that area.

So, taking my tongue firmly out of my cheek, I’ll move on quickly to Vijay Singh.

Vijay was majestic all through this year’s PGA Championship, as he almost always is, from tee to green. Sadly, trying lots of golf psychology tricks, doubtless including telling himself what a great putter he is, his putting was absolutely awful. In fact, if he’d putted in all four rounds as well as Tiger did on Sunday, he would have won by a street.

Now clearly Vijay is very strong psychologically and that shows through in his focus and belief in his long game. Any lesser mortal would be so overwhelmed by his psychological failure on the greens that they would lose their long game confidence as well. He’s also strong physically and we know how hard he works on his game. So why doesn’t someone help him to apply that psychological strength to his putting. I’m not a teaching pro and I can see that there’s nothing much physically wrong with his putting stroke, whichever length or style of putter he’s using.

So does Vijay make use of the services of a golf psychologist? Well, my research says yes. And it also says no! Yes, Vijay is a long term client of Dr Joseph Parent, the highly respected corporate speaker, PGA Tour instructor and best-selling author of "Zen Golf: Mastering the Mental Game." He’s also often quoted in support of Dr Parent’s work.

On the other hand, in an interview at the 2009 Masters, when asked if he works with a sports psychologist, he responded "Not really. I can’t say I’ve actually worked with anyone." He added, "I’ve worked with Joe Parent, who wrote Zen Golf, two or three years ago, but we kind of discussed – he probably learned some from me and I learned some from him. So it was kind of a give-and-take thing."

I was also intrigued to find the marketing blurb about Dr Parent’s "Putting with Confidence" video and read the question, "Tired of missing short putts under pressure? Learn how to turn those "knee-knockers" into "tap ins" and never miss a three-footer again! Does your putting frustrate you?" I guess that Vijay ought to watch that video!

So far, the only golf psychology quote I’ve found from Vijay about putting suggests that he’s been using affirmations to convince himself that he’s the best putter. How exactly is that going to work when he consistently disproves that with his poor putting?

So what’s the solution for Lee Westwood and Vijay Singh? Normally, I’d recommend they see a golf psychologist. They already seem to be doing that and with highly respected and well qualified golf mind coaches. The problem appears to be that whatever they’re doing it’s not working automatically at the most critical time for these players. That means it’s not part of their unconscious habits and beliefs.

All three golf psychologists are very experienced with a wealth of wonderful golf psychology techniques to help their clients. So it looks to me like these clients are trying to implement the techniques consciously using will-power. If you’re a regular reader of my articles, you won’t be surprised to hear that I think that Lee and Vijay should be using hypnosis to install these ideas into their unconscious golf minds – as habits and beliefs.

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.

So, what exactly did Jos do for his clients? Well, they gave him lots of credit for their success – Retief Goosen handing him much of the credit for his US Open Win at Southern Hills in 2001. But what was he actually doing with his clients to help them? I’m scouring the web for answers to that question and finding absolutely nothing, apart from his having no apparent training or qualification as a golf psychologist. Neither are there any clues in his background and despite his 50+ years, his career history only seems to mention his leaving school at 14, becoming a Belgian pop singer and working as an advertising salesman.

I have found references to his being inspired by Edward de Bono, best known for his ideas on Lateral Thinking, and Timothy Gallwey, the man behind the Inner Game books. Jos seems to have had a very direct approach to life and apparently spent a lot of money getting to spend time with Gallwey. He continued this approach by following the European Tour for 3 years touting for business before becoming an overnight sensation.

Although I’m finding very few examples demonstrating his methods, he does appear to have based his approach on the Inner Game idea of changing your thinking to change your golf performance. The only quote I’ve found from hours of searching suggests that he may be a fan of visualisation and unconscious golf.

“Even if you don’t believe that you can change a particular feeling, pretend that you believe it. If you pretend, then you can fool your subconscious. The good thing is that your subconscious doesn’t know the difference between truth and pretending …”

Although he appeared to have a strong following among the top professionals for a few years, he dropped off the radar almost instantly and I’m finding nothing to say what happened to him.

So where am I going with all this? Well, for a short time each of these professionals seemed eager to attribute some of their success to Jos Vanstiphout and clearly believed in him. However, I’m finding nothing to say what he actually did for them or the golf psychology techniques he was teaching them. Maybe that’s why the effect wore off so quickly.

The lesson for me is that before you commit to working with a golf psychologist, you should know as much as possible about what techniques they are likely to use to help you and how qualified they are to use those techniques.

By the way, if anyone out there knows what happened to Jos, please let us all know. You can add a comment to this post using the form below

Number 6: ”Trying” to consciously control your swing mechanics

Do you remember how hard it was to tie your shoe laces the first time and how it’s just an automatic process? To see what I mean, write down the step by step instructions for how you tie your shoelaces and then give them to someone else and ask them to follow them to the letter. Even if they succeed, it’ll take them much longer than just using the unconscious program. Now imagine consciously following those instructions in the time it takes to swing a golf club.

The only effective way to swing a golf club is to switch off your conscious mind and all its thoughts about swing mechanics and trust your unconscious mind – you’ve already programmed it to repeat the best shot you’ve ever hit. And the way to make sure you do that is, as before, to get a good hypnotist to install an appropriate post-hypnotic or use self-hypnosis.

Number 7: Criticising your shot and looking for flaws in your swing

Even using hypnosis, you’ll occasionally mishit a shot or be unlucky. However, that’s no cause for criticism and certainly no reason for changing your swing mechanics out on the course. Just learn from the shot and move on as described in my response to the dwelling on your mistakes and bad shots.

Number 8: Comparing yourself to some other golfer

You can learn a lot in golf from watching a good player at his or her best, but the real challenge of golf is you playing against the course. It really doesn’t matter how well or badly your playing partners or opponents are playing. If you play to the best of your ability and lose, then well done you and well done them. That’s one of the many special things I love about golf.

If it still bothers you then install the post-hypnotic suggestion that you’ll treat every shot as if it’s the last one you’ll ever play There’d be no reason to dwell on your past shots and there wouldn’t be any in the future, so you might as well make the most of the one you’re playing now.

Number 9: Thinking about what could go wrong

In your mind this is interpreted in a similar way to telling yourself what NOT to do. Your unconscious mind will have to think about the thing that could go wrong happening and it will do your best to make it happen. If you want to evaluate what could go wrong, that’s fine, before you make up your mind what you do want to happen. Then you can use your post-hypnotic suggestion or self-hypnosis to switch off your unconscious mind and let your unconscious programming get on with hitting your desired shot.

Number 10: Worrying about other people watching you

If you’re using hypnosis and NLP to manage your state and concentration during the round, you will be consciously unaware and untroubled by the actions of others. Even if they are thinking bad or critical thoughts about you, those thoughts are in their heads and not yours. Once you go into your playing trance you will be blissfully unaware of your conscious self-talk.

So are my overall conclusions changing today?

Well, no they aren’t and you’ll notice I’m avoiding naming the “someone” who published the original list and hidden his responses. I know that if you really want to read them, you can probably find them on the web, but I don’t want them on my website.

Now, it won’t surprise you to hear that my suggestions still revolve around the use of a good hypnotist helping you with appropriate post-hypnotic suggestions and tying those suggestions to carefully chosen golf psychology techniques for your specific golfing issues and opportunities.

One of the reasons that I failed to benefit from the Inner Game of Golf and the many other books, DVDs and CDs I purchased over my earlier the years is that none of them installed any way of remembering not to forget to do their techniques when I needed them.  The nearest anyone has ever got to achieving that has been Dr Karl Morris with his Circle Game, but that worked very intermittently for me.

It would be an improvement if I had a caddy every time I played and the caddy had a checklist of all the golf psychology instructions I had to remember. Even then, I would still need something like hypnosis to manage the interference from my conscious mind while I hit the shots. That’s why I developed my “Your Own Virtual Caddy” golf hypnosis programme that you can download free when you sign up for my Golf Hypnotist Ezine.

Now, when I first started playing golf, like most beginners, I focussed all my attention on developing my golf swing. I was lucky to start out with a good swing teacher in Colin Christison, who hailed from Blairgowrie and learned his golf on the picturesque Rosemount Course. He instilled many of the basics and taught me to play well enough to get down to 4 handicap in my first year and to play off 2 handicap for the next decade or so. Colin also took me with him to caddy or just watch from inside the ropes when he went to play tournaments. I remember watching him play in the Agfa Tournament at Stoke Poges with the legendary Dave Thomas, one of the UK’s foremost golfers in the 1950’s and 1960’s winning many European tournaments and later designing the Brabazon, Derby and PGA National courses at The Belfry and many others . Dave tied for the 1958 British Open at Royal Lytham St Anne’s, losing to the legendary Peter Thomson in the playoff. He also finished second to Jack Nicklaus at Muirfield in 1966 and played in four Ryder Cups. The other member of their threeball was Ian Connelly who later taught Nick Faldo when he started out in golf at Welwyn Garden City. Some experience for an 18 year old playing off 4 handicap.

What Colin didn’t teach me was anything about the mental side of golf. Pros didn’t teach those things then and in many cases still don’t now. He did give me every encouragement and always told me what I was doing well with my swing before suggesting a few small improvements. What a contrast to a few later coaches who seemed to delight in focussing on what I was doing wrong before giving me a long list of the changes “you have to make…”

Although I had progressed through some really good coaches over the next 15 years and read a library full of golf instruction books, I was still “trying” to develop a consistent swing when I started to hear about golf psychology. One of the first really good books on the subject I came across was The Inner Game of Golf.

I read Timothy Gallwey’s book from cover to cover so many times it fell apart. What’s more it seemed to work when I remembered to follow the instructions. The problem was that the only time it seemed to work with any consistency was on the practice range when I was hitting shots repeatedly without thinking too much about the target and there were no hazards and opponents to think about. Mind you, it didn’t work on the practice range if I was working on one of the many swing ideas that my teachers regularly gave me.

On the course, I simply forgot to remember to follow the instructions on every shot as I was too preoccupied with every thing else that was going on and “trying”, that word again, to keep my swing together.

This “forgetting to remember” problem seems to apply, at least for me, to every golf psychology book, DVD, CD and MP3 recording I’ve used since and I’ve got a library full of them. I’m sure that the many of these products would work for me if I had someone to remind me to follow the instructions every time I play a shot, but I don’t have a caddy to remind me. That’s why I came up with the idea for my “Your Own Virtual Caddy” golf hypnosis programme that comes free when you sign up for my Golf Hypnotist Ezine.

It seems that I’m not the only one to recognise this problem in that a number of golf psychologists have devised drills to help remind you to remember what to do. One of the most creative comes from Dr Karl Morris’s “Golf – The Mind Factor” and his “Circle Game”, where you circle the hole number on your score card after each hole, if you remember all the things you wanted to on every shot in the round. You know how well you’re doing by the number if circles at the end of the round. The problem is that it doesn’t work and when I challenged him at one of his clinics, Karl said that circling just a few holes per round would be a real sign of progress. It didn’t sound like he expected me to succeed with it on every hole.

So what’s my solution? Well it won’t surprise you to hear that it involves hypnosis, self-hypnosis and your unconscious golf programming. Unless you are seriously ill, you don’t have to remember to perform other unconscious tasks like breathing, controlling your body temperature, digesting the food you’ve eaten or to ride a bicycle, assuming you already learned how to. So why not install the things you want to remember as unconscious programming. You can learn to remember this way by years of consistent practice or overnight with hypnosis. With an unconscious approach, you won’t forget to remember what to do.

I’ll be writing more about this in future posts and especially in my forthcoming book “The Secrets of Hypnotic Golf.”

So what do I mean by Golf Hypnosis Homework

Well don’t worry; it’s not like going back to school. This homework is often just a task that changes your routine or increases your awareness of something you do. I often use tasks to help interrupt habitual patterns of behaviour or thinking. Sometimes I may give a task to directly intervene in a pattern of behaviour and other times the task may appear to my client as completely unrelated to their problem. Despite seeming unrelated, carrying out the task usually brings about a new understanding or allows the client to look at his or her problem in a new light.

The father of modern hypnosis, Milton Erickson, used to give people the most extraordinary tasks. My favourite was when he gave a rather depressed man the task of counting the chimneys on the buildings on his walk to work each day and to note anything unusual he saw up there. Erickson knew that when we in a positive happy state, we tend to hold our heads with our shoulders back. It’s difficult to feel down when you’re looking up.

Dr Karl Morris, one of Europe’s leading sports psychologists recommends that you keep your eyes above the flag while walking between shots for the same reason. As Karl says, “change your body and you will change your mind.”

Homework Task for Your Own Virtual Caddy

If you’ve signed up for my Golf Hypnotist Ezine, then you already have the free 25-minute “Your Own Virtual Caddy” golf hypnosis mp3. If you haven’t, then you can get it now by completing the form on the right sidebar of any page of my website. Just fill in your name and email address and click on the “Subscribe Now” button.

Listen regularly to the audio recording and complete the “Caddying” Homework Task. The purpose of this task is to give you the experience of thinking about and planning every shot rather than just walking up and hitting it. As a caddy, you don’t get to hit the shot yourself and have to hand over that task to someone else – like their unconscious ability.

So all you have to do is to caddy for someone else for a few holes or ideally a full round. Alternatively get somebody to caddy for you. If you’re not sure what caddying involves, then go to a tournament or watch one on TV and focus on the interaction between player and caddy.

Once you know roughly what to do then here’s a few different approaches, in descending order of effectiveness.

1. Caddy for a golf professional – may be difficult to arrange
2. Caddy for a good amateur golfer – 4 handicap or lower
3. Caddy for a friend – the better the player, the better the results and there may be mutual benefit from the exercise
4. Watch Tiger Woods in a tournament on TV and imagine being his caddy
5. Imagine a round of golf with you as your own caddy.

If you work at it, you may suddenly surprise and delight yourself by finding your golf improving dramatically with the unconscious help of your own virtual caddy.