The “Confident Golf – Free From Fear” golf hypnosis programme includes three long and powerful golf hypnosis sessions that address turning fear into confidence, learning how to play fear-free golf and experience the motivation to play confident golf every time you play and trust your unconscious mind.  The programme is available in MP3 format for download, with each session running for around 25-30 minutes. I developed these sessions on similar lines to the “Your Own Virtual Caddy” programme. You should already have downloaded that free after you signed up for the Golf Hypnotist Ezine. I have outlined the purpose of each track later in this email.

I will also be publishing a further 5 or 6 more new Golf Hypnosis audio programmes over the next couple of months. As with “Winning Golf”, “Overcome the Yips”, “Own the Putting Green” and “Confident Golf – Free From Fear”, I will be including 3, and in some cases, 4 new hypnosis tracks in each programme. Although the programme names may change a little before release, here is the full list I’m working on:

• Winning Golf (Released 15 October 2010)
• Overcome the Yips (Released 30 October 2010)
• Own the Putting Green (Released 4 November 2010)
• Confident Golf – Free From Fear (Released 11 November 2010)
• Anger Management for Better Golf (Released 16 November 2010)
• Golf in the Playing Zone (Released 20 November 2010)
• Overcome the Shanks (Released 24 November 2010)
• Visualisation Skills for Golf (Released 2 December 2010)
• Better Golf with Less Practice: Practice and Play Golf in your Mind
• Learn Better Golf with Your Golfing Heroes

So what’s the “Confident Golf – Free From Fear” Golf Hypnosis Programme all about? 

Fear on the golf course can come in many shapes and sizes and it can result in a multitude of problems. Although you’re born with only two fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noise, according to Richard Bandler the creator of NLP, everything else that makes us nervous, anxious and downright afraid we learn and build up throughout our life.

This applies just as much to our golfing lives. People can and often do experience fear, anxiety and nervousness over things that may embarrass them, upset them or distract them. Now, fear of anything has to be based on past experience, real or imagined, and its influence on the future. A player who’s afraid of getting a bad bounce or mishitting a particular he’s about to make, maybe shanking, yipping or hitting some other disastrous shot, is probably thinking about a similar shot he’s mishit in the past. It doesn’t even have to be a bad shot he’s actually hit himself, it could be one he’s imagined or seen someone else play. If you see a playing partner shank a shot, even if you’ve never hit one before yourself, you can start worrying about the possibility that you might hits a shank yourself. Many people are more nervous about holing a three foot putt after the see someone else miss one of a similar length.

And what’s included in “Confident Golf – Free From Fear” I hear you ask? 

Well, I’ve included three long and powerful freestanding golf hypnosis sessions to help you to turn your fears into golfing confidence, to allow you to play fear free golf and to build an unconscious process to motivate you through your fears to play confident golf automatically.

Turn Fear into Golfing Confidence – given the title, you won’t be surprised to hear that I designed the “Turn Fear into Golfing Confidence” hypnosis session to build you a powerful resource of calm, quiet confidence to help you to turn any fear, anxiety or nervousness into confidence on the golf course.

Fear-Free Golf - this second golf hypnosis track uses the power of your imagination to build an automatic, systematic and unconscious process to cycle through and eliminate all those old fears, nervousness and anxieties you’ve ever experienced, seen or imagined in your golfing past.

Motivation to Confident Golf – helps you to progressively build a library of powerful resources and experiences. Your unconscious mind then automatically calls on these resources whenever you are under pressure or experiencing one of your old fears. As a result you unconsciously turn your old fears into Motivation to Confident

Go to the “Confident Golf – Free From Fear” page at the Golf Hypnotist Store for more information about this exciting new golf hypnosis programme and the other products in the series. You can buy “Confident Golf – Free From Fear” there for instant download and have the opportunity to Overcome Fear – Confidently on the Golf Course.

Now you know from what I’ve written before that I’m very much against slow play in golf, if for no other reason than that it’s bad golf psychology. You only have to read my earlier article entitled "The fast track to better golf in your unconscious – slow play kills your golf mind" to see why.

Coming back to Sunday, you have to admire Padraig Harrington’s whole approach to the final round and especially the unfairness and ridiculous timing of John Paramor’s intervention. Isn’t it obvious that anytime Tiger’s playing, the size, enthusiasm and rowdiness of his supporters means that his pairing is going to be slower than normal?

You also have to admire Tiger’s very fair comments about the incident as well. And decry the latest news stories that suggest that he’s going to be fined for criticising John Paramor. Now I’m even more incensed! This is going to test my powers of Self Hypnosis for Anger Management!

I know that rules are rules, but commonsense tells us that Tiger and his playing partners are inevitably going to take longer to play every hole. It takes more time for a large gallery to get into position and to quiet down. Given Tiger’s wider appeal, many in his galleries are new to golf and to the etiquette of watching golf quietly and respectfully. That also causes delays.

So although Padraig can be a little slow and deliberate at times, you rarely hear of him being warned for slow play unless he is paired with the likes of a Tiger Woods. Is it fair that he should speed up his play to compensate for Tiger’s gallery and perhaps the inadequacy of the crowd control? Could it be the officials who are at fault rather than the players? I know that criticising sports officials can be seen as sacrilegious, but let’s be fair to a golfer of Padraig’s outstanding ability.

Come on John Paramour, conduct yourself in the manner of a fair and reasonable golfer rather than an over zealous "jobs worth" official. You’ve just ruined what may have been an exciting and memorable finish for the viewing public. Golf should be about enjoyment not petty bureaucracy.

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. I was also interested to read how hard he’s been pushing himself over the years to improve his putting. It’s interesting to note that Bob Rotella has tried to get him to go much easier on himself. In fact, Darren’s been quoted recently as saying "He says just go and play and let the results happen themselves." That sounds like good advice to me!

It’s intriguing how similar that is to what Bob’s been telling Padraig Harrington about his over practising and excessive focus on his swing changes. As I suggested in my earlier article, entitled Play your Best with Golf Psychology Before Changing your Unconscious Golf Swing, the destructive shots you hit are more likely to come from your conscious thoughts than from your unconscious golf swing.

If I was advising Darren Clarke "blind", so to speak, then apart from helping him to use golf hypnosis of course, I’d encourage him to build on a couple of mental golf approaches from the great Jack Nicklaus. Firstly, I’d suggest that before he strikes a putt he imagines "seeing" the line the ball will run on and "watching" the ball rolling along that imaginary line and dropping in the hole before popping back out and running back along the line back to his putter head.

Secondly, I’d help him find a way to remember every good putt he’s ever holed and to develop amnesia for every bad one. There’s a story I’ve heard about Jack Nicklaus that illustrates this perfectly.

Jack was giving a presentation to a group of eager and attentive golfers at his son’s university. During the speech, Jack makes the comment that he has never three putted on the back nine of a major championship or missed from inside of six feet on the last hole.

As Jack opens the floor to take questions, a man puts up his hand and says "Jack you say you have never missed from inside of six feet on the last hole in a major, but I was watching you last year in the US Seniors Open and that’s exactly what you did." Jack looked at the man with those piercing blue eyes and repeated what he had said. "But Mr Nicklaus," the man insisted, "I saw it, I have it on film, I can send it to you if you like." "No need", Jack replied, "I have never missed from inside six feet on the last hole of a major. Any more questions?"

Now, has Jack ever missed from inside of six feet on the last hole of a major? Of course he has! Does he remember it? Not a chance. And do you think he cares that he can’t remember? Some people would probably say that Jack is deluded in his thinking, that it is not based on reality. Well, we all create our own realities and Jack’s seem pretty good to me!

Here’s hoping that the weather clears and Darren has a good US Open at Bethpage.

What’s more important, in the context of his much reported and lengthy annual swing changes, is that it seems that Padraig’s unconscious golf mind simply knew instinctively how to do it. Sure it took a few tries to get the hang of actually doing it, but he seemed to be learning the technique by trial and error. Not unlike Milton Erickson learning to walk, as described in my earlier article entitled Milton Erickson Learned to Walk as Tiger Woods Learns to play Better Golf.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m really looking forward to watching Padraig getting back into his natural and instinctive unconscious golf swing at Bethpage Black this weekend in the US Open. With the narrow fairways and thick rough, let’s hope Padraig’s forgotten all about playing like Happy Gilmore!

One way to find out how well you can score with your existing unconscious golf swing is to add up the lowest number of shots you’ve ever scored on each hole – your eclectic score. Ideally assess your scores on a course you play regularly. Now to add some reality to it, forget about any hole-score that included holing a long shot, chip or bunker shot, unless that’s a part of your regular game! I’ve just done that and I’m astounded to find out that my eclectic score around Beaconsfield’s par 71 adds up to 50, even after adding 3 shots to allow for 3 rather improbable eagles on par 4′s that resulted from holing long shots or driving the green. So, even if I on average I play one shot above my best on every hole, I should still go round in 68 on average – 3 under par! I think I can cope with that, although my friends will struggle with the permanent silly grin on my face.

So given that I have the capability of scoring that well, why is it that whenever I used to have a bad round, I’d head for the practice ground to find out what was wrong with my swing or visit yet another golf guru to try and change it? I’m sure that sounds like many of the golfers you know as well. If a similar game exists in your unconscious resources, why not access it through your mind with golf hypnosis rather than just learning to swing the club again. You already have a blueprint for a great golf game, why not follow it rather than tear it up and start again?

If you’ve been following the annual saga of swing changes from current British Open and US PGA champion, Padraig Harrington, you’ll know that the same thing occurs with the very best golfers. That said, Padraig tends to change his swing when he seems to the rest of us to be playing his best golf ever, rather than after a bad round! I read recently that he justifies this by saying that it’s in his nature to seek to improve his swing every year. He backs this up by saying, "The reason I improve is I actually stop and start rebuilding every year and change things. I think guys who stay constant are on a slippery slope to retirement. It’s all about pushing yourself to get better."

Now unless you have the consistency and are approaching the level of success regularly achieved by Padraig Harrington, I suggest that you focus using your golf mind on getting the best out of the swing you already have. There’s no harm in seeing your regular golf instructor, if you need to, to make sure you haven’t slipped into bad habits. Remember that the destructive shots you hit are more likely to come from your conscious thoughts than from your unconscious golf swing.