Archive for Lee Westwood
Covert Golf Hypnosis and Secret Plans at the Dubai World Championships
Posted by: | CommentsLee Westwood and Rory McIlroy played amazing golf at the Dubai World Championships. However, their phenomenal play took second place for me as a golf psychologist given the amount of extreme golf psychology and covert golf hypnosis flying about.
Firstly there was Lee Westwood’s much talked about "Secret Plan." When the dust settled he admitted, "Okay, if you really want to know, the secret was making everyone else think I had a secret, when I didn’t really have one." He had the rest of the field nervously waiting to find out what the plan was and not concentrating on their own plans. In my forthcoming book, The Secrets of Hypnotic Golf, I talk about protecting yourself against Covert Hypnosis or "Black Ops Golf", as other people refer to it. Although I’m not comfortable with Covert Hypnosis …
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Use golf psychology to overcome bad luck and play well despite it
Posted by: | CommentsWhat impact does luck have on your game of golf? By that I mean do you treat good luck and bad luck as two sides of the same coin? Statistically, our golfing luck is going to even out over the long term. If you keep tossing a coin, you may get long runs of heads or tails, but I’m sure that deep down we all know that every time there’s an equal chance of one or the other. Luck’s been a part of golf for a long time and the earliest golfer’s defined good luck and bad luck as "Rub of the Green."
So how do you feel if you hit a really good drive down the middle of the fairway only to see it bounce off unexpectedly into a bunker or end up in a divot? Does it make you angry and affect your next shot or even the rest of the round? Did you see Lee Westwood’s tee shot on the 72nd hole when he was in contention to win the Open Championship at Turnberry? He hit it perfectly only to see it roll on and on before veering off into a bunker and leaving him with a seemingly impossible shot to the green. Would your shoulder’s "drop"? Would you feel the world was against you? Or would you just treat it as just one of those things and, like Lee Westwood, just accept the new challenge and hit the best possible shot from where the ball lay under the face of the bunker? …
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Putting psychology and golf hypnosis into perspective at PGA Championship
Posted by: | CommentsPutting was clearly very difficult for all the players at Hazeltine in the 2009 PGA Championship, especially in terms of putting psychology. Now we all saw Tiger Woods missing a lot of mid-range putts that we’d normally expect him to see and I’ve already written about how those were the result of his uneasiness about the swirling wind. I’m more concerned here with a number of really crucial putts missed by Lee Westwood and the massive number of short putts missed by Vijay Singh.
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 …
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Golf Psychology Lessons from the Open Championship at Turnberry – Part 3
Posted by: | CommentsIn parts one and two, I talked about the golf psychology lessons from the performance of veteran Tom Watson and young Ross Fisher at this year’s Open Championship at Turnberry. As a 59 year old myself, I was overwhelmed by Tom’s amazing performance and mental strength around one of the toughest links courses. It almost seems unnecessary to mention his age and recent hip replacement operation. As a golf psychologist helping clients to play the best golf they possibly can, whatever happens, I couldn’t fail to be impressed with Ross’s calm ability to shrug off the disappointment of that quadruple bogey and play on like the consummate professional he has become.
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 contender …
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