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, I have to admit that Lee’s approach isn’t that much different from Jack Nicklaus taking advantage from "The golf psychology of letting everyone else complain while you win", as I wrote about in September.

Then there was the Lee’s personal success story of how he regained his form when he explained that. "The reason for the big turnaround in my confidence and stuff like that was catching my caddie, Billy Foster, at the beach party on Tuesday evening when he probably had enough Heineken to tell me what he really thought." Lee went on saying, "He said I’d not been myself recently. I’d paid too much attention to other people around me. He told me I’d been out here 16 years, which is longer than all three of them (McIlroy, Ross Fisher and Martin Kaymer) put together and have won 30 tournaments, which is more than they’ve all won. You’ve got to bully them on the golf course. You’ve got to be yourself again and get back to the instinct you had in the late 90s and 2000′."

I suspect that Billy’s comments had a much more positive golf psychology impact on Lee than any negative one his "Secret Plan" had on his opponents. Having said that, his anticipation of the disadvantage his "Secret Plan" would have on them would clearly help improve his own state of confidence. He certainly seemed to think it had a detrimental effect on Rory McIlroy.

That leads me nicely on to Rory’s apparent golf psychology disaster after playing with Lee in the first round at Dubai. Whatever impact that had on his game, it was his putting that let him down, if you consider coming third at Dubai and runner-up in the Order of Merit a let-down. In contrast, it was Lee’s phenomenal putting that made the difference between him and Rory and that was what really sealed his victory.

So if you want to play your best golf, you need to increase your psychological strength and confidence with golf hypnosis and protect yourself from covert hypnosis and other people’s "Secret Plans."

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? Wasn’t that an amazingly well thought out and executed recovery shot he hit onto the green from there?

I know I’m labouring this point, but how would it affect you, if you had not just one, but a whole series of unlucky breaks in the middle of a round of golf? Would you notice any good breaks along the way? I suspect not. Maybe you’d start to feel like the course was against you or it was just not your day. Either way, you’d probably not be in the right frame of mind to play well and you’d start thinking more about your bad luck than the shot you’re about to hit. If you just knuckle down and focus all your attention on playing the next shot, then you’re either brain dead or, like Lee Westwood, you’re using good golf psychology.

Good luck can have an equally strong positive impact on the golf mind as bad luck can have a negative one. Looking back on my early years of playing golf, long before I knew anything about golf psychology, I now realise my perception of whether I was being lucky or unlucky early in the round had a major effect on my final score for the round. There was a long walk around a lake to the par 3 sixth hole at Brookmans Park, my home club back then, and there was often a long wait on the tee. As a result, there was plenty of time to ponder on how the round was going. If I was around 2 over par after those first five holes and hitting the ball poorly, I felt lucky despite already using up all my shots as a 2 handicap golfer. My ball striking would gradually improve through the round and I’d usually have a really good score. If, on the other hand, I was over par after those same five holes and striking the ball really well, then I’d feel resentful about that bad luck, my swing would deteriorate and I’d have a really terrible score.

If I’d looked at my bad luck objectively back then, accepted it and simply played each shot as it came, it would have cost me at most 2 or 3 shots in the round not the 10 or 15 shots it often cost me through bad golf psychology. In all probability, it wouldn’t have cost me even that as I’d probably have some good luck elsewhere in the round to compensate.

So how do I just accept my bad luck, I hear you say. Well just about everything I’ve learned about golf psychology helps and most importantly, it’s the ability to have a good post-shot routine supported by golf hypnosis. After you hit any shot or putt, regardless of whether it’s a good or bad and lucky, unlucky or just a normal one, you should learn from it, release it and consign it to the past. It can’t hurt you there. If it’s a really good shot, then savour the moment and file it away in your mind as a resource for a future time when you need inspiration and confidence.

If a bad or unlucky shot’s difficult to get over, then fire off a strong Resource Anchor to change your state. If you’re familiar with self-hypnosis, you can use that to achieve the same result or use the Finger Breathing technique I described recently. Another approach is to use the Positive Reframing approach to consider how much more unlucky and worse off you could be.

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.