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.

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.

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.

Now I know the valiant and expectant Ross Fisher’s challenge effectively died in the thick rough at the 5th hole on Sunday. But he went on to succeed magnificently in a way that world number one, Tiger Woods, miserably failed to do two day’s earlier, despite a signature charge that so nearly got him into the weekend. Ross kept his cool and Tiger lost his rag!

I think that Ross Fisher is such a wonderful young golfer, so polite, considerate and British, so I was in seventh heaven when he left the 4th green on Sunday leading the Open by two shots. It was even better that one of my all time favourites Tom Watson was only 2 behind and Lee Westwood, another favourite of mine was in the mix and playing at the top of his game as well. This was going to be a real treat. I was also aware that one of my old clubmates, Luke Donald, was posting a clubhouse leading score with a final round 67.

After both Ross and Lee hit their irons of the 5th tee into the rough, I was concerned that they might drop a shot, but I never dreamt that Ross would drop four shots! He didn’t really do anything wrong on that hole, it was just the "rub of the green that you get on a traditional links course. He had a terrible lie in thick grass, had nowhere to drop and when he played it, the ball ended up in an even worse spot. He eventually got out onto the fairway playing six, hit a good shot and almost holed a good putt.

It all reminded me of rounds that I’ve had playing in top amateur competitions from the championship tees at Open Championship venues like Royal Birkdale and Royal St Georges where the rough could be almost unfairly penalising. What was different about Ross was that he just kept smiling, stuck to his routine and got on with it. He even smiled and doffed his hat in response to the applause from the crowds when he finally holed out on the 5th green. What’s more, he parred the next hole and his last 10 holes. In other words, he accepted that these things happen on the golf course and just got back on with his job as a professional golfer, hitting good shots and pleasing the crowd. And just in case you forgot, he had the impending birth of his first child to think about as well.

Given his composure, I was surprised to recall Ross saying, in an interview at the Masters this year, that he didn’t use a golf psychologist. He did say that he did have one provided by the English Golf Union back in his amateur days. I’d like to know who that was, because he’s certainly done some good and long lasting unconscious mind work with young Ross!

At the risk of repeating myself, the next time you’re out on the course and the golfing gods or your golf mind seem to be against you, remember how Ross Fisher handled it at the Open. Accept what happened, consign it to the past where it can no longer hurt you and get on with playing the next shot to the best of your ability.

I’ll be concluding this article tomorrow with more golf mind lessons from the Open.

We also saw what makes golf in general and links golf in particular so special. I’m talking here about the basic unfairness of the game – the “rub of the green.” As an example, think about Tom Watson’s perfectly hit 8-iron into the 72nd hole that somehow managed to trickle off the back of the green and nestle against the edge of the rough. Contrast that with Stewart Cink’s frankly ropey shot into the same hole that against all odds managed to stop in the ideal spot and gave him the opportunity to hole a fantastic putt to set the winning target.

This is what links golf is all about and one of the reasons that Tom Watson has always been such a good links player is that he accepts both bad luck and good fortune with the same “happy go lucky” attitude. Just listen to what he said afterwards about that shot into the 72nd hole.

“You look back in perspective of the rounds and how they went, that 8-iron that I hit at 18 will always live with me,” Watson said. “I hit the shot that I wanted to hit, I really did. And I asked my friend, Andy North, exactly where that ball landed on the green. He said it landed one foot on to the surface, over the knob, one foot on the surface. So it had the whole length of the green to stop. That’s where I was trying to hit it. I was trying to hit it 164 yards, right there. It just didn’t stop.”

More tellingly, he summed it up by finishing

“I look at that shot, I hit it perfectly, and didn’t get the break.”

So that’s it for Tom, no complaints, no recriminations, just acceptance of the hand that the golfing gods dealt him. That’s why he’s such a good links player and why, despite his bad record at closing out wins, he’s such a great player.

Contrast his career record of 2 wins out of 11 play-offs against his 5 Open Championship wins, 3 other major championships, 31 other PGA Tour wins, 12 Champions Tour wins, 5 years as world number one from 1978 to 1982 and his almost winning the Open Championships just a few months before his 60th birthday and less than a year after a hip-replacement operation. That tells me that he can rise above adversity and simply get over any bad results.

So the next time you’re out on the course and the “rub of the green” goes against you or you simply hit a bad shot, think of Tom Watson and just accept it, consign it to the past where it can’t hurt you and get on with playing the next shot to the best of your ability.

I’ll be continuing this article tomorrow with more golf mind lessons from the Open.

If I look back to my early years in golf, before I had any thoughts about golf hypnosis or golf psychology in general, I was lucky to have a fair amount of natural ability. At the same time, I was rather too inconsistent for my liking. It seemed that if I started out a round playing really well, but not scoring that brilliantly, then my golf would gradually go from good to bad to worse and I’d have a frustratingly high score. On the other hand, if I started off playing relatively badly, but scoring ok, then my golf would often improve as the round went on and I’d have a bewilderingly good score. What was really odd was that my score after 6 to 9 holes in these two types of round was often similar.

Back in those days, I was a member at Brookmans Park Golf Club and there was a fairly long and secluded walk around a small lake between the fifth green and the sixth tee. It was also quite common for there to be a bit of a delay on that tee, so all in all there was plenty of time to think. Over a couple of years I began to notice that I could predict my final score when I got to that sixth tee. If I was two over par or better and playing badly, I’d break 80 easily. If I was over par, even by just one shot, and playing really well, then I’d really struggle to break 80.

Now I’m an expert in golf psychology, what do I think I was doing back then and what could you do to avoid the same trap? Well, if I started out the round playing well and scoring badly, I used to interpret that as bad luck or blame the condition of the course for my dropping shots. I also tended to feel that my normally excellent short game had deserted me and try to find out what I was doing wrong. These thoughts rapidly become self-fulfilling prophecies as I found more and more external reasons for my poor scores. I was probably not a nice person to be with!

On the days when I started playing poorly but was scoring reasonably well, I used to marvel at how well I was scrambling. I just seemed to know that if I hit a bad shot, I could scramble a par and move on. As a result, the pressure to hit the ball well went away and I started swinging much more freely and naturally – today I’d call that trusting my unconscious golf mind.

There are many golf psychology, NLP and self hypnosis techniques that can help you if you have a similar problem. One of the best would be to regularly listen to my "Your Own Virtual Caddy" golf hypnosis audio programme that’s available free when you sign up to my Golf Hypnotist Ezine. Other golf mind techniques you can use for this include

• perceiving your bad luck as being good luck, as described in my blog post entitled Positive Reframing for Better Golf Performance like Justin Rose
• using an NLP resource anchor to help you manage your state. There’s a self-hypnosis script for this in my blog post entitled Anchoring Resources for Better Golf – an experience with Self Hypnosis for Golf. If you’re not familiar with self hypnosis, then contact me and I’ll send you a simpler NLP version of this.

I don’t know if you saw much of Sergio Garcia during the weekend and saw just how unhappy he seemed to be with himself and the course. It was no surprise to hear his negative comments about the course after his final round. One quote really stuck in my mind, "I don’t think it’s fair," he said. "It’s too tricky. Even when it’s dry you still get mud balls in the middle of the fairway. It’s too much of a guessing game. They can do whatever they want. It’s not my problem. I just come here and play and then go home."

Now, he clearly wasn’t the only one exhibiting similar feelings through their body language and in one particular player through his obvious anger. I saw many players having apparently mishit shots resulting from “mud balls” and I saw many different reactions. I didn’t notice any anger from Kenny Perry when his “mud ball” on the second playoff hole veered off to the left – he was disappointed, but just got on with the job of playing the ball as it lies, without complaint. I suspect he would have said that it was the same for everyone. Maybe that attitude got him into the playoff, even if his mental game seemed to desert him over the last few holes.

I wonder what Justin Rose would have done if he had been in Sergio Garcia’s shoes. If you read my post Positive Reframing for Better Golf Performance like Justin Rose on 3^rd April you’d know the answer.

Golfers who complain bitterly about the “Rub of the Green” rarely enjoy their golf that much or perform to their best and I know that before I got into golf psychology I used to suffer in that way. One possible exception is Tiger Woods with his clear annoyance and sometimes outright anger over things like “unfair” gusts of wind affecting his shots. He still scores amazingly well despite the anger. Perhaps he would score even better if he could manage it as well as he handles the rest of his mental game.

On a final happy note, I was delighted to read of Sergio’s later apologies in the press, as I think he has the potential to be the real successor to his mentor, the great Seve Ballesteros.

I was talking to an old golfing friend of mine about his round of golf. I’d like to stress that he’s not a client and just isn’t interested in talking to me about golf psychology – he’s still a good friend, though. Anyway, he was moaning about the condition of the course that day and how on every shot he just seemed to have a worse lie than he expected. If he was on the edge of the fairway, the ball was nestling against the edge of the rough. If he was in the bunker, it hadn’t been raked properly. If he was on the green, there was always a pitch mark just in front of his ball. He just went on and on about his bad luck and how bad he felt about it. And he wished he hadn’t played at all that day. I wasn’t surprised to hear that he’d had a bad round and hadn’t enjoyed himself and the company of his golfing friends

Earlier that day, I’d heard a story about Justin Rose that put my friend’s experience into sharp contrast. Now I don’t know if you are aware that one of the US golf networks is experimenting with equipping caddies in PGA tournaments with microphones. The idea is that we can better hear the exchanges between caddie and player. This certainly sounds interesting and could well provide some support for the ideas I’ve included in my “Your Own Virtual Caddy” golf hypnosis audio programme. This programme is free when you sign up for my Golf Hypnotist Ezine – there’s a subscription form to the right of this article.

So coming back to the Justin Rose story, apparently Justin had been having an “unlucky” day, just missing fairways and greens and bouncing into bunkers – the sort of experience that would have driven many of us, including my friend above, to distraction. Anyway here’s what Justin was heard to say to his caddie, “you know, this lie’s not at all bad, look at that rough over there that I could have been in, it’s much worse.” The whole way round, he turned his perception of bad luck into good luck and got on with the job. Now I don’t know if he enjoyed himself, but I do know he scored well that day and I wouldn’t mind betting he enjoyed overcoming the “rub of the green” that day. I’m sure that he felt better after his round than my friend did.

Next time you get a bad lie on the golf course, remember to reframe it positively. Think how much worse it could have been and the shot you have to play won’t seem so difficult. You may find you enjoy your golf more as well.