You’ve probably heard about Phil’s putting woes and his comments about how "I’ve hit the ball so well and yet my scores haven’t reflected that." You’ve probably also heard about how "Bones" Mackay, Phil’s longstanding caddie, urged him to get help the week before the Tour Championship from Dave Stockton, one of the best putters in golf and twice a major winner. As if those weren’t sufficient reasons, Stockton also putts a bit like Phil does when he’s at his best.

So what major flaws did Dave Stockton notice in Phil’s putting stroke and what major changes did he prescribe? You’d expect them to be fairly severe given Phil’s recent comments about the inconsistent putting that has plagued him off and on over the last two years. He’s also talked about how his poor putting has detracted from the progress Butch Harman’s been making with his swing over the same period.

Well, Phil described the change in an interview as a "minor tweak" and went on to say "No, it’s very minor. It’s very minor. But [my] hands are back ahead like I used to putt, and the ball is just rolling much better." In another interview, he talked about Dave Stockton’s comments just "reaffirming the way I’ve putted since I was a kid."

So what golf psychology lessons can we learn from that then, Andrew, I hear you say? Well first of all, it confirms that if you’ve hit a particular shot well in the past, then you already unconsciously know how to hit it that well again – without changing your technique. All you need to do is to vividly recall one of those earlier successful shots and allow your unconscious golf mind to get on with the job as you get back into your comfort zone. I’d certainly include this type of visualisation in your pre-shot routine.

All that probably happened to Phil was he missed a few putts, lost his confidence and started to fear putting rather than enjoying the challenge. When that happens with any part of our golf game, we stop enjoying ourselves as much as we did and we start consciously analysing things. It doesn’t take too long before we start thinking there’s something drastically wrong with our swing or putting stroke and we start changing things, even though we seemed to have a perfectly effective method before.

This doesn’t just happen over a long period of time. For many of us it can happen in the middle of a round. Have you ever had the experience of playing a series of shots quite well and then hitting a bad shot, maybe a big slice? Did you badly pull or hook the next shot? If you did, you probably consciously thought you needed to make a swing correction, despite already knowing how to hit the ball quite well unconsciously. Well, you did say that you’d hit a series shots quite well, didn’t you.

Another golf psychology lesson was written on Phil Mickelson’s face all day on Sunday, not just when he won. He was clearly enjoying himself immensely, even before he started scoring well. After the round, he commented that, "Today was a lot of fun" and that’s not the way he’s been talking in recent weeks. Isn’t it odd how golfers seem to play so much better when they’re enjoying themselves, even if some, like a certain future Ryder Cup captain, have a hard time convincing us of that fact.

Now I’m talking here about a whole range of complaints. You’ll hear some people whingeing about the conditions. Maybe it’s too hot or too cold for them to play well. Perhaps the wind’s too strong, in the wrong direction or, as Tiger Woods seems too struggle with these days, the wind is swirling unpredictably. Some may be saying that the greens are too fast or too slow for them to putt well on or too hard or receptive for their style of play. Yet more may be complaining about the length of the course, the thickness of the rough, the width of the fairways or the size of the greens. And it doesn’t matter that it’s the same for everyone, most of them can find something to complain or worry about.

The complaining doesn’t stop with the conditions. How often have you heard golfers talking before a tournament and commenting on how they don’t like this particular course and always play it badly, how they don’t play well at this time of year or how they’d rather be paired with a different partner. Sometimes, they’ll talk about a particular competitor that always plays well here and they can never beat. You only have to think about all those PGA Tour Professionals who started out playing for second place as they just knew they couldn’t beat Tiger – "he’s on another planet."

So what does it matter if I complain a little before I play? Well, as I’ve said many times in my articles, whatever you consciously think about, you unconsciously achieve. You may remember me talking about how if you focus your conscious thoughts on not going into a particular bunker or water hazard, you so often hit the ball straight into or at it. The same thing applies to the things you complain about. If you go out to play thinking consciously about how much you don’t like the course, the conditions or your opponent, then your unconscious mind will fulfil your expectations and you will rarely play well.

My first and best golfing hero, the great Jack Nicklaus, told a story about how he used to assess his chances at tournaments by listening to what his fellow competitors were saying. If he heard a player complaining about the conditions or talking in a negative way about anything, then he’d think to himself, "There’s a guy who won’t be in contention", and mentally cross them off his list of competitors to watch out for that week.

So the next time you’re planning to play a round of golf and you start feeling hard done by about the conditions, your opponents or just a string of bad luck, then remember Jack’s comments and turn things round by finding the positives rather than complaining. The conditions are the same for everyone, your opponents are only human and your luck generally balances out over time. Let them complain while you focus on winning.

I was listening to his interview after finishing the round and I was intrigued to notice how much golf psychology he’s learned. I know he used to work with Jim Fannin up until a couple of years ago, but I’m not sure who he’s working with now. Jim still works with a number of golfers on the PGA Tour, including Charles Howell and uses a fairly rigid coaching system focusing on Self-Discipline, Concentration, Optimism, Relaxation, and Enjoyment. Now I won’t deny that these elements are included in my own approach to golf psychology, but I prefer a more flexible approach based on the needs of the individual.

So what elements of golf psychology did I notice in Luke’s interview? Well, the first one that leapt out was his comment, "I guess all good rounds start with a bogey." That highlights his use of Optimism or, as I described it in my recent article about Justin Rose, Positive Reframing for Better Golf Performance. It also took me back to my early days as a competitive golfer with no golf psychology experience. I always felt that if I was one or two over par standing on the sixth hole and was playing well, I would struggle to have a good round. If I was one or two over and playing badly, I then knew that I could only get better and I’d have a good score. It was a shame I didn’t apply what I know as positive reframing to both situations, as I could have scored a lot more consistently.

I also noticed that Luke talked about just focusing on each shot as it comes and "staying in the present" when answering a question about how he handled the streak of six birdies from the 8th hole and playing the last 11 holes in 8 under par. Staying in the present or "In the Now", as we golf psychologists like to say, is one of the key’s to successful concentration in golf. Focusing "In the Now" helps you to avoid dwelling on the shots you’ve already hit and planning the shots you have yet to play. That’s consistent with Luke’s other comment about his run of birdies "It was just kind of a normal, everyday round until I got to the eighth and made a nice putt from the fringe. That kind of sparked off a run of six birdies. Just really got on a hot streak."

The final thing I picked up on was Luke’s comments about his putting – he only had 20 putts in the round. Now when Luke started playing on the PGA Tour, he settled into a rank of 144 in the putting statistics and didn’t see himself as a good putter. It would be fair to say that it was his only real weakness as a golfer. He’s now number 1 in putting on the PGA Tour and it’s clearly down to confidence as much as technique. He talked about confidence on the greens breeding confidence, "Once you feel like you’re a good putter, then it becomes easier," he said.

I thought that Luke must have done some serious work on his confidence using unconscious golf psychology and I wasn’t wrong. Going back to another interview from 2006, I found him using some serious golf psychology language when he said, "Look this confidence isn’t natural, definitely not. I’ve had to work on it." He went on to say "It’s just that I have to keep training my subconsciousness (sic) to believe that I can be the best."

So there’s some strong evidence of the impact of golf psychology on Luke’s recent successes and his magnificent first round 64 at Memorial. Here’s wishing him well for the rest of the tournament.