This new “Anger Management for Better Golf” programme is available in MP3 format for download, with the three golf hypnosis sessions, each running for around 25-30 minutes, and a 15 minute NLP session. I developed the individual sessions on similar lines to the “Your Own Virtual Caddy” programme, so you’re getting more than three times the hypnosis from each programme. I have outlined the purpose of each track later in this email.

I will also be publishing a further 5 more new Golf Hypnosis MP3 audio programmes over the next couple of months. As with the other new programmes, I will be including 3, and in some cases, 4 new hypnosis sessions in each programme.

Although the programme names may change a little before release, here is the full list, for now:

• 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 “Anger Management for Better Golf” Hypnosis Programme all about? 

Anger management is often the initial reason for clients approaching me for help with golf hypnosis. I’m pleased to report that it’s often one of the most straightforward and quickest problems for you to overcome. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given that NLP and hypnosis are primarily about giving people choices and what the angry golfer lacks is choice. It’s acceptable to be annoyed and frustrated when you hit a bad shot, but it’s disastrous if you’re still annoyed, frustrated or worse when you hit your next shot.

Now people bring anger with them to the golf course for a wide variety of reasons that go beyond the frustrations and difficulties of this sometimes challenging game. Apart from any anger you may bring with you to the course, the main causes of anger in golf are from players’ reactions to the bad and unlucky golf shots they hit, the anticipation of those shots and other fears, the things their opponent does, any outside distractions or interference, real or imagined, the condition of the course, other individuals, crowds, outside agencies, etc. The list is endless.

So what does all this mean for your golf? Well, ask yourself how many shots you would have saved if you never lost your temper, never gave yourself a hard time, always developed a strategy before you hit the ball, and always played within your own capabilities.

And what’s included in “Anger Management for Better Golf” I hear you ask? 

Well, I’ve included three powerful freestanding golf hypnosis sessions and an NLP session to help you to:

• Systematically release, eliminate the things that make you angry
• Control your anger habit by defusing all your past anger experiences
• Plan for a wonderful anger free future for your golf
• Automatically soften your reaction to all the things that make you angry out on the golf course.

Release and Eliminate your Anger – This is a very long and powerful hypnosis session that you should use exclusively for your first few weeks or at least until you are starting to notice some results. The session starts by building a strong resource of confidence and calm before systematically taking you through all the things that used to make you angry and releasing and eliminating all the bad feelings you used to associate with them. all about.

Control your Anger Habit – Once you’re getting some positive results from “Release and Eliminate Anger”, it’s time to start using the second golf hypnosis session, “Control your Anger Habit” to upgrade your unconscious programming to change your old automatic reaction to all the things that used to make you angry. It’s ok to feel angry for a few moments after a bad shot, that’s natural, but it isn’t ok to carry it forward to the next shot.

Enjoy Anger Free Golf – You can use this third golf hypnosis at any time throughout your use of this programme, as it’s all about choosing the right path away from anger and experience a more enjoyable and increasingly rewarding golfing future.

Anger Management on the Golf Course – In addition to the three hypnosis sessions, this special NLP session uses an equally powerful NLP technique for collapsing the old anchors that used to trigger your anger. It captures that trigger and automatically uses it to fire off good feelings of comfort and confidence that overwhelm and replace the old explosive feelings of anger.

Go to the “Anger Management for Better Golf ” page at the Golf Hypnotist Store for more information about this exciting new golf hypnosis programme, including some of the stories behind the individual sessions. You can buy “Anger Management for Better Golf” here for instant download and start to Release and Eliminate Your Anger and Play Better Golf .

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?

One of the fundamentals of modern psychology is the idea that whatever we consciously think about our unconscious mind does its best to deliver. This manifests itself in many ways and if we’re consciously looking at something, then pretty soon we find ourselves physically heading towards it.

Have you ever noticed, when you’re driving along in your car on a wide road, maybe a motorway or freeway, and you notice something interesting off in the distance to the right or left, that you suddenly find yourself unconsciously steering towards it? That happens on the golf course if you focus on something that you want to avoid, like a bunker or a water hazard? Have you noticed how you tend to unconsciously hit the ball directly at the thing you’re trying consciously to avoid?

Well, something similar happens if you’re not in the right state of mind when you do something that matters to you. If you’re in a good mood or state of mind when you’re playing golf, then you unconsciously tend to play positively, enjoy the game and probably score well. If, like Sergio on Sunday, you’re in a negative state of mind, then you unconsciously play negatively, get frustrated with your game and score badly. If you have natural talent, like Sergio, and if you really focus on a positive result, like he did with his amazing shot from the bunker on the last hole, you can still hit some good shots in the middle of a bad round.

So what can I do if I’m feeling in a negative state of mind, I hear you ask? Now that depends on why you’re in a negative state and addressing that question would be a good start. But what if I’m in a really bad state and I just can’t get out of it – I’m so depressed you know, Andrew?

Well, if you’re familiar with a quick technique for taking yourself into self-hypnosis, then use it now. If not, it really doesn’t matter, just quietly take a few slow deep breaths while noticing how the air you’re breathing in is cooling your body and calming your mind and the air you’re breathing out is releasing all the tension from your body.

Now just remember a time in the past when you’re playing golf really well, enjoying yourself and scoring as well as you know you can now. If you can’t remember a time, just imagine a time when you might have played and felt that good.

Now see what you saw when you’re playing well, imagine the scene like you’re seeing it through your own eyes. Make the picture bright, bold and active. See all the colour and movement in the picture and amplify it.

Hear the sounds that you’re hearing there, perhaps the sound of the wind or the other golfers on the course or the sounds of birds. Notice any particular aromas, perhaps the scent of the freshly cut grass or the smell of your favourite food wafting across the course from the clubhouse.

Remember or imagine the physical feelings of warmth or coolness in your body, the weight of your shoes on the ground and, most importantly those good feelings associated with this experience.

Feels good, doesn’t it? You’re playing golf really well when you feel this good, aren’t you.

I’ve been out of the office a lot this week and without the means of posting on this blog. The good news is that I’ve had some time to think about golf and the general trend of my posts here.

One theme that comes up a lot in my thoughts and in my writing is the idea that one of the main reasons for most people playing golf is the pursuit of enjoyment, both for ourselves and the people we play with. As a golf psychologist, this is also my primary motivation in my working life and it’s reflected in my mission, as a hypnotherapist and NLP Master Practitioner, of helping people to do things better and get more enjoyment out of the things they do in life and in golf.

What about the professional golfer pursuing fame and money from golf success? Well, I suspect that the pursuit of enjoyment played an important part for them when they started out and it probably still features high on their list of priorities as a professional. The top 50 players in the world are probably sufficiently well off that money is not their only motivator. Just remember the look on Phil Mickelson’s face after that duel with Tiger Woods at the 2009 Masters. The fact that he didn’t win didn’t seem to outweigh his euphoric enjoyment responding to the challenge. It’s a shame that we don’t so often see that clear enjoyment coming from certain other golfers when they aren’t playing their best. In recent posts here, I’ve talked about these failings from Colin Montgomerie, Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia.

All this talk about enjoying golf got me thinking about what specifically we all enjoy about golf. That led me to recall what Timothy Gallwey wrote in The Inner Game of Golf about the triangular link between enjoyment, performance and learning – the three main parts of everyone’s experience of golf. Although I agree with Gallwey’s idea, very few of the clients I work with seem to think about anything but their golfing performance.

In my first meeting with new clients, I tended to ask questions about what they want to achieve from working with me, what their definition of success in golf is and how will they know when they have achieved it. When I first started out as a golf psychologist, I had expected the answers to be about things like enjoyment, confidence, concentration and consistency. Instead, I tend to hear about things like how to stop their slice, get out of bunkers, avoid hitting the ball in the water on a particular hole or avoid three-putting.

More recently, I’ve expanded my initial questions to include asking new clients about why they play golf and what I can do to help them achieve that. This usually provides me with a much more constructive starting point to improving and much more importantly enjoying their golf.

If I look at my own reasons for playing golf when I started at the age of 18, they were relatively sensible. I was looking for a sport that

• I could play, given reasonable health, for the next 50 years or more
• would give me a complete mental break from work
• offered a modest amount of regular exercise
• was challenging and competitive
• allowed me to develop some good friendships
• breaks down social and business barriers
• and would give me something I could enjoy doing.

Given those reasons, why did I spend the next 30 years, until I got into golf psychology, beating my head against the wall of lowering my handicap? Why did I spend all the hours I could spare and more beating balls on the driving range? Why did I spend all that money on golf lessons, books, magazines and practice aids? Why did I have all those days of frustration and anger when I didn’t quite play to the level I wanted? The answer to all those questions is "that’s why I first got properly interested in golf psychology."

So if you’d like to get more enjoyment from your golf and play better, why not write down your list of the real reasons why you play golf. Then you can make sure that whatever you strive for in golf will help you to address those reasons you listed.

So, what exactly did Jos do for his clients? Well, they gave him lots of credit for their success – Retief Goosen handing him much of the credit for his US Open Win at Southern Hills in 2001. But what was he actually doing with his clients to help them? I’m scouring the web for answers to that question and finding absolutely nothing, apart from his having no apparent training or qualification as a golf psychologist. Neither are there any clues in his background and despite his 50+ years, his career history only seems to mention his leaving school at 14, becoming a Belgian pop singer and working as an advertising salesman.

I have found references to his being inspired by Edward de Bono, best known for his ideas on Lateral Thinking, and Timothy Gallwey, the man behind the Inner Game books. Jos seems to have had a very direct approach to life and apparently spent a lot of money getting to spend time with Gallwey. He continued this approach by following the European Tour for 3 years touting for business before becoming an overnight sensation.

Although I’m finding very few examples demonstrating his methods, he does appear to have based his approach on the Inner Game idea of changing your thinking to change your golf performance. The only quote I’ve found from hours of searching suggests that he may be a fan of visualisation and unconscious golf.

“Even if you don’t believe that you can change a particular feeling, pretend that you believe it. If you pretend, then you can fool your subconscious. The good thing is that your subconscious doesn’t know the difference between truth and pretending …”

Although he appeared to have a strong following among the top professionals for a few years, he dropped off the radar almost instantly and I’m finding nothing to say what happened to him.

So where am I going with all this? Well, for a short time each of these professionals seemed eager to attribute some of their success to Jos Vanstiphout and clearly believed in him. However, I’m finding nothing to say what he actually did for them or the golf psychology techniques he was teaching them. Maybe that’s why the effect wore off so quickly.

The lesson for me is that before you commit to working with a golf psychologist, you should know as much as possible about what techniques they are likely to use to help you and how qualified they are to use those techniques.

By the way, if anyone out there knows what happened to Jos, please let us all know. You can add a comment to this post using the form below

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.