Even with their well polished mechanics and a good understanding of ball flight physics, the top players still hit a less than perfect shot every now and then. Even if they don’t actually hit a bad shot, the course and conditions and outside agencies can turn a good shot into a bad one. We even have a term for that in golf – “Rub of the Green”.

So what else do the top players do when they experience one or more bad or unlucky shots? Well, I was listening to Rory McIlroy giving a clinic to a large group of young players at the Grand Final of the Faldo Series. Someone asked, to a ripple of laughter, “If you can’t stop making bogeys, how do you bounce back on the next hole?”

The gist of Rory’s reply was, “If you’ve just made a bogey on the 5^th green, you can’t walk on to the 6^th tee going ‘I have to make a birdie because I bogeyed the last’, you have to stick to the process”. He went on to say, “You’re not thinking about bogeys or birdies, all you’re thinking about is the shot at hand and just going through your processes, if you do all these things right, your score at the end of it will take care of itself”.

Focus on the shot in hand

So, in striving for perfection, you need to focus on the shot in hand, and make use of your routines or processes, especially your post shot routine, regardless of what went before. Remember that each shot you play just counts for one shot on the scorecard. And it’s equally important, regardless of whether it’s for a birdie or a bogey. That’s the secret of Winning Golf.

One of the best exponents of this approach is Luke Donald. Yes, I know I’m biased, because he’s a member of my club and I can remember giving him shots in matchplay!

Well what better way to finish my last blog of 2011 than with a reference to Luke Donald. His approach to perfect golf has driven him to be number one in the world and to top the money lists on the European and PGA Tours. What more can I say?

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."

Let’s start with the defending champion, Trevor Immelman. Now, no one really expected him to win last year, especially when he went head to head with Tiger Woods on the last day. Despite being the reigning champion, the press reported him as coming in under the radar. Their radar was focussed on the return of Tiger Woods.

Something similar happened this year with Padraig Harrington. He came into the Masters on the back of victories in the last two Majors – The US PGA at Oakland Hills and The Open at Royal Birkdale. Despite some talk of a “Paddy Slam” in the Irish press, Padraig downplayed his chances of a third reportedly saying. "I do fear my opponents, but I fear myself more."

Interestingly it was Paul Casey, after his maiden US PGA Tour win at Houston, who said that he would still back Harrington to win the Masters. “He’ll sneak under the radar,” said Casey. “I’d still put money on Padraig. I don’t think you should read anything into a couple of missed cuts from him early in the season“; he went on to say, “It’s very early. I’m sure he’s not particularly worried. I’m sure he’s working harder than ever. I think we should be worried.”

Elsewhere, Graeme McDowell was reported as the most laid-back man at Augusta. Talking about the amount of attention being paid to his compatriots, Padraig Harrington and Rory McIlroy, he was quoted as saying,” That suits me fine.”

Canadian Mike Weir was reported as not minding being out of the glare focussed on Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson and saying, “it’s kind of nice in a way to again be going under the radar.”

So did they benefit from “flying under the radar” or did it hinder them? Well there’s no obvious way of telling, but none of them came close to winning, despite their undoubted talents. I recognise that flying under the radar of the press leaves a player free to get on with their own game – at least until they get into contention over the last 18 holes.

My real concern would be I they wanted to be under the radar in order to lower expectations of their winning. Even if this is done for positive constructive reasons, the unconscious mind is likely to take it as a sign of lowered expectation rather than confidence. I can’t see Tiger Woods wanting to come in under the radar.

Now one of the beneficial side effects of almost every hypnotherapy session is that the client reports sleeping better afterwards. What’s more, my clients also tell me that they wake up on time, feeling refreshed and eager for the day ahead. This seems to happen whatever we’re working on. And that includes golf hypnosis.

So why is that? Well, according to a recent article in New Scientist, medical experts have long associated bad sleep patterns with psychological problems ranging from depression to full blown mental illness. It’s only recently that these same experts are beginning to realise that the psychological problems are often caused or aggravated by the bad sleeping patterns and not the other way around. To quote the article,

“Take anyone with a psychiatric disorder and the chances are they don’t sleep well. The result of their illness, you might think. Now this long-standing assumption is being turned on its head, with the radical suggestion that poor sleep might actually cause some psychiatric illnesses or lead people to behave in ways that doctors mistake for mental problems.”

What does this mean for golf improvement from better sleep?

I can well remember times in my past, before I discovered the world of NLP and Hypnosis, when I was really worked up the night before the Club Championships or some other important game. I’d wake up many times throughout the night and struggle to sleep at all after about 4am. These days, I just use self-hypnosis to relax myself and I wake up in the morning feeling relaxed and positive. More importantly, I played better golf and enjoy my golf more.

Did you notice how relaxed Retief Goosen looked at the start of his round last Sunday before winning the Transitions Championship on the PGA Tour? Despite the pressure of almost 4 years without a win, he didn’t look like he’d missed a wink of sleep the night before.

How different from Rory McIlroy before his first win at the Dubai Desert Classic a month or so ago. He looked completely out of sorts all day, despite starting the final day 6 shots ahead, and really gritted his teeth on that last hole to win – it was magnificent. He certainly didn’t look like he’d had a restful night’s sleep.