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Now, it’s not that uncommon for enthusiastic golfers to play a practice round before playing an unfamiliar course. Maybe it’s to help them play their best in a friendly game or to score their best in an upcoming competition.

Either way, you generally have so much more time for mental and general practice than you do for actual practice on the courses you are going to compete on. That means that you really have to make the most of those practice rounds and gather as much information as you can to help you with your mental and general physical practice.

The most important information you can get from a practice round comes on and around the greens. When you are looking at each green, assess the likely pin positions and, for each one, consider where you would ideally choose to take your first putt from. Then think about how best to get the ball to finish there. What would be the best choice of target, distance, direction, club and style of shot to safely achieve the result you want?

I was watching Miguel Angel Jimenez in the Pro Am before the PGA Championship at Wentworth. After holing out his real putt and while his amateur partners lined up their putts, he hit a number of approach putts to different parts of the green. Maybe he was doing something similar.

Now you have the options for each likely pin position, you can decide on where best to be for your approach shot. If it’s a tee shot, then which side of the tee would be best. If it’s a fairway approach, evaluate the position you want to hit from in terms of the risk and reward of hitting the ball there. Maybe revise you’re desired approach shot accordingly.

Once you’ve done this, you have a set of options to use in your mental and general physical practice. Even better, when you get out on the course in competition, you just have to identify the approximate pin position to already know the best shot to play.

So, there are many ways to make the most of extra time you have to practice your golf. And even if you don’t have all the time for practice that you’d like, you’ve seen a number of ways to make the most of whatever time you do have to practice.

Finally, don’t forget that you can achieve Better Golf with Less Practice using golf hypnosis.

Research shows that the act of “Imagining” yourself doing something fires up the identical parts of the brain that would be activated if you were actually doing it. So if you’re imagining yourself playing golf, the neurons you’re using in your brain are the very same ones that you’re using when you’re physically playing the game. Indeed, some of the actual muscles involved in playing a real shot are activated and make the same movements at a barely noticeable level. You really do “physically” practice your swing when you imagine hitting the ball and you have no reason to hit a bad shot when you’re practicing and playing in your imagination.

This means that if you can augment your physical practice by using your mind to follow the same suggestions that I gave you earlier for best general practice between rounds. Find a quiet, comfortable relaxing place and let your imagination run free. You can use the Finger Breathing technique as an easy way to achieve a good state of relaxation.

If you want to take this even further, then why not have a look at my Better Golf with Less Practice hypnosis audio programme. It includes hypnosis sessions for Playing Golf in Your Mind, Practicing Golf in Your Mind and Playing Golf in Your Dreams.

In my next Golf Hypnotist blog post, I’ll continue this series on Best Practice for Better Golf with part 5, “Best Practice Rounds for Better Golf”.

How do you make the most of extra time to practice your golf? What’s the best way to practice for better golf? Those are questions a lot of my clients have been asking me in recent weeks. For some it’s the long summer evenings, for others it’s holiday time and, for a lucky few, it’s about devoting themselves to playing golf full time.

Whatever your reason, one of the first things to consider is what form of practice will help you the most. Remember that practice doesn’t just have to be confined to beating balls on the range. What about

• working on your swing – perhaps after a session with a coach
• warming up before a round – loosening up and seeing what works today
• general practice between rounds
• mental practice – away from the golf course
• practice rounds before a competition – especially away from home.

So starting in this post with Best Practice for Better Golf Swing Change, I’d like to start by suggesting you keep your swing change practice completely separate from the other types of practice and especially from your golf on the course. The last thing you want, when you are playing, warming up and rehearsing your golf, is to think consciously about your swing. It’s so much better to be thinking about how well you can score with your current swing when you’re confidently following your routines and trusting your natural ability.

When you are working on a swing change on the range, there are two key things to remember. Firstly, treat every practice shot as if it were a real shot in a round of golf. That means going through your routines and only consciously thinking about the swing changes during the pre-shot planning and rehearsal swing elements. Once you get the feeling you are looking for, just step into your shot routine and begin trusting your unconscious mind to integrate the swing changes.

Secondly, after every three shots you hit while concentrating on your swing change, select another club and hit three shots the way you would on the golf course. That means following your normal routines without thinking about the swing change. With your natural ability, you can make any swing change work to some degree after three practice shots. By switching back to your normal routines for a few shots, you give your unconscious mind the chance to integrate the new techniques into your natural game. This will help you to practice for your next round while at the same time working on your swing changes.

You can also work very effectively on your swing, in the comfort of your own home or anywhere else for that matter, using hypnosis techniques. That’s why I developed my hypnosis audio programme for Better Golf with Less Practice.

In my next Golf Hypnotist blog post, I’ll continue this series on Best Practice for Better Golf with part 2, “Warming Up to Winning Golf”.

You may remember my recent article about mental foursomes practice with golf hypnosis the other week. Now shortly after writing that I was watching a rerun on television of a recent US PGA Tour event and enjoying the overhead pictures from the blimp, when I had a sudden flash of inspiration. Why not visualise my shots in 3D and incorporate an overhead shot of how I visualised the shot I was about to play. It sounded difficult until I realised that if I can see it on TV, then surely I can visualise it. After all, I already had the overhead view on the course planner, so why couldn’t I incorporate it in my pre-shot routine visualisation and mental golf practice.

So, later that evening I took myself into a light trance using self-hypnosis and played an imaginary round of golf at Beaconsfield, my home course. I visualised playing every hole and every shot in 3D, even the putts. It worked great and I couldn’t wait to take the idea to the course. That Friday, I got the chance to use it in my pre-shot visualisation on the real course and it worked amazingly well. Initially I found that I got the best results from visualising the shot normally, as a picture in 2D, and then "seeing" it again as if from a blimp, just as I stepped into the shot. By the time I’d played a few holes, visualising the shot in 3D just became a natural part of my routine.

What surprised me most was that it gives me so much more confidence, especially when hitting over a hazard or trees to my target. Instead of seeing the trees or hazards and estimating how far to hit past them, I’m finding myself seeing the whole shot from above. I’m getting a much clearer idea of the shot I’m playing and that’s taking away a lot of the normal doubt I normally have when playing these shots.

Vivid visualisation, using all the senses, is an essential part of the pre-shot routine you should be using when physically playing golf. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you about what Jack Nicklaus says about how he never played a shot without having first watched himself execute the swing perfectly and seen the ball flying or rolling to his target before finishing up, "sitting there and shining white on the bright green grass."

So try this out when you’re next out playing on the course and on the practice ground, especially when you’re practicing your golf in your minds eye. Maybe you’ll see a new low score up on the leader board – in 3D.

Well, I’m not qualified to comment on the technicalities of the golf swing. However, I am qualified to comment on what for me is an even more important transition in golf psychology. It’s the transition from the conscious analytical planning phase of your pre-shot routine to the unconscious instinctive phase of actually hitting the ball. Unlike the pause at the top of the backswing, the faster you can comfortably make this transition, the better and more consistently you’ll find yourself striking the ball or rolling the putt.

If you watch the top players in the world, like Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods, you’ll notice that they take very little time between taking their chosen club out of the bag and hitting the ball. A recent study suggested that Tiger and Phil consistently take around 11 to 12 seconds to do this and they are very consistent with the timing. If they took any longer, they often hit a less than good shot – these guys don’t hit many downright bad shots.

So what do they do in those 11 to 12 seconds? Well, every player has his own idiosyncrasies, including re-gripping, waggling, breathing, blinking and countless other rituals. However, they all seem to

1. take one or two practice swings to get the feel of the shot they visualise playing
2. step forward to the ball and take their stance
3. align their body and clubface
4. take a final look at their target
5. finally, hit the "start button" and swing the club or putter.

What’s interesting is that they don’t seem at all rushed in fitting all that into such an apparently short time. They certainly don’t have any spare time for self doubt and that little voice in their head telling them they’re doing it all wrong! In fact, they complete the process like they’re in some sort of trance and that means that they are leaving the whole process to their unconscious golf mind, just like driving a car or riding a bike.

Now some of the players you watch on TV or out on the course take a lot longer to make this transition and the time they take is less consistent. How well did you see them play? If you watched Sergio Garcia playing golf a few years ago, you’d have often seen him take an inordinately long time to hit the ball. He had a pained expression on his face that suggested he was experiencing a lot of negative self-talk and he seemed to be wringing the life out of the club as he repeatedly re-gripped his hands. It’s no surprise that his golf was inconsistent at best and he certainly didn’t seem to be enjoying his golf.

So how do I speed up my transition from taking my club out to hitting the ball, I hear you say. Well one way is to make the whole process an instinctive or unconscious activity. Streamline your own transition process and use it every time you hit a shot on the golf course, at the driving range, on the practice putting green and in your mental golf practice. You do practice and play golf in your mind, now don’t you?

But there’s a problem. How do you imagine hitting shots from difficult lies if you’re playing an imaginary round? Surely you’d have to hit bad imaginary shots in order to get into the difficult positions. Wouldn’t that be bad golf psychology?

When you play golf for real, you’ll probably hit the odd bad shot now and then. Hopefully, you’re already using a good post-shot routine, so you’ll be able to learn from the bad shot and release it to the past. It can’t hurt you there. Maybe you could use the "Reset Button" technique Nick Faldo spoke of when commentating on Tiger Woods the other week.

You may remember my earlier article about mental golf practice and recall the story about an American Major, James Nesmeth. He practiced golf in his mind for much of the seven year’s he spent as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Every day, he played 18 holes of golf in his mind. He imagined everything in vivid detail from the country club he was playing at to the smell of freshly cut grass in the summertime. He would imagine the grip of the clubs and practice his swing mentally many times until he perfected it. In reality, he had no place to go, so he spent four hours a day on the course in his mind never leaving any detail out. When he was released from prison and returned home, he played his first real game of golf after 7 years, he scored 74!

Having said all that, you wouldn’t want to see yourself hitting bad shots in your imaginary round, now would you? That would be counterproductive and defeat much of the purpose of practicing with the secrets of hypnotic golf.

So how do you get the opportunity to hit some shots from bad lies and difficult positions around the course without playing the imaginary bad shots that get them there? Well, one way would be to just imagine walking round the course dropping the ball in all those difficult positions. Unfortunately that wouldn’t be an actual round of golf and you’d have to unconsciously take responsibility for deciding where might have hit bad shots to. There has to be a better way.

Well, there is a better way. How about playing some of those imaginary rounds in golf hypnosis as foursomes, playing alternate shots with an imaginary partner? You could choose a partner who is a less than consistent player. It could be someone you know that hits a lot of bad shot or just an imaginary partner. That way you’ll get to play all sorts of difficult shots, without taking any conscious or unconscious responsibility for the bad shots. After all, you didn’t play them that partner of yours did. What’s better is that you don’t need to worry about his golf, as you’ll never play with him in real life!

Now, when you’re doing this mental practice, remember to visualise the whole process of playing golf, including your pre-shot routine. And remember to imagine all the usual shot planning, lots of visualisation and comfortable practice swings, before stepping into the shot and hitting it quickly after just one last look at the target. Finally, remember to watch the shot fly and/or roll to a finish, appreciate the good shot and consign it to your memory – just like you would a good shot on the course.

I’m assuming that you don’t hit bad shots in your head, so there’s no need to learn from them and release them to the past before you hit Nick’s "Reset Button."

So what do you actually do in the time between assessing and hitting your shots and putts? It really should take a lot less than a minute on average to size up a shot, decide on how to play it, set up to the ball and hit it. I seem to recall from somewhere that the US PGA allows 45 seconds for all this per shot and very few people take that long over a short putt. So all that should add up to a maximum of 54 minutes actually playing golf to go round in 72 strokes and 72 minutes to go round in 90 strokes. If you take just 4 hours to play a round then you’re not actually playing for approximately 3 hours in every 18 holes.

What many people do in this spare 3 hours in every round is to get down on themselves mentally. Just watch how many golfers trudge between shots with their heads down and seemingly just staring at the ground a few feet ahead. Many of them are talking to themselves and often what they’re saying is not usually fit for publication. Thankfully, they normally keep the voice inside their heads, but I’m sure you’ve played the odd round with a playing partner who berates himself loudly during the course of a round – I know I’ve done that in the, hopefully distant, past and I’m not proud of it.

So what’s wrong with keeping your head down between shots? Well just watch how people typically stand when life is on the up. Yes, they stand erect with their head held high. And when they are feeling down, their heads tend to be down. Psychological research also demonstrates that this works the other way too, so if you walk between shots with your head down and your shoulders a bit slumped, you’ll automatically feel down. In the same way, you will feel like things are looking up if you’re walking erect with your head raised high.

Have you ever noticed how depressed people seem to be in many nursing homes and how many of them walk around in a bent over posture? Well I met a husband and wife recently, both doctors, who are incorporating NLP concepts into posture management. They’ve found that they can improve the posture and, more importantly, increase the level of happiness and optimism of patients in nursing homes by simply replacing the lounge chairs with ones that encourage a more upright sitting posture and hanging televisions from the ceilings rather than sitting them on the floor. Those simple changes lead to wholesale improvements in people’s posture, health and happiness.

Next time you play golf; try walking between shots with your back straight and your head held high. You could even use golf hypnosis to help you to remember not to forget to do it when you play. However you’re actually feeling when you start and regardless of any bad shots you hit, I suspect you’ll be amazed at how much better and more positive you’ll feel as the game progresses. It may even have an impact on your enjoyment of this wonderful game of golf and, who knows, you may even score better.

Now, whatever Ian does in today’s second round doesn’t matter, he’s made it back to the game he loves – and in a classy way. That said, seeing him make the cut and have a good result at the weekend will be wonderful for him, and the world of golf. I’ll be glued to the television this evening to give Ian my support.

Come on Nick Faldo; don’t let Ian beat you in the comeback stakes. We like to hear you both as commentators, but we’d much rather hear your clubs do the talking.

I’ve seen Nick playing at very close hand and even played with him in an open amateur tournament, the Hertfordshire Stag, at Moor Park back in the 70′s. I recall that it was just a couple of months before he turned professional and I was amazed at his confidence and scoring ability. I felt like I outplayed and outscored him both morning and afternoon. The scorecard told a different tale with me scoring to my handicap with a couple of 76′s against an SSS of 74 and Nick scoring well below par in both rounds.

Coming back to Nick’s current attitude to golf psychology, I was fascinated to find this fairly recent video article on YouTube with Nick giving a masterclass in Thailand on golf concentration and his mental approach to golf.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m particularly in agreement with Nick’s emphasis on not using the word "Don’t" when thinking and talking about your shot – "don’t hit it in the trees"; "don’t hit it in the water"; etc. As Nick reminds us, your unconscious golf mind doesn’t know the meaning of "don’t" and does its best to deliver what you are thinking about – "hit it in the trees"; etc. I also like his ideas around visualising the shot you want to play, making a rehearsal swing to achieve that shot and then hitting it.

I’m certainly looking forward to watching Nick playing at Turnberry.

The video includes the swings of 16 golfers ranging from the sublimely mild eccentricity of Seve Ballesteros – who I don’t think deserves to be on the video – through the extremes of Eamonn Darcy, Jim Furyk, John Daly and Raymond Floyd to truly outrageous lunge of Charles Barkley – an odd one out in this list of top class golfers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The key thing about all of these golfers and their far from perfect golf swings is that through golf psychology and the strengths of their golf mind and their great course management, they’re all consistent golf tournament winners – except of course for Charles Barkley!