Archive for Your Own Virtual Caddy
The Golf Psychology of New Year Resolutions
Posted by: | CommentsHave you made your New Years resolutions for your golf improvement – using golf psychology, perhaps? Well, even if you haven’t, I’m sure that many of you are excited about starting fresh, turning your life around and in some cases doing something about playing better golf. That’s fantastic! I know that 2010 is going to be an exciting year. I’m excited already, after completing my new book, The Secrets of Hypnotic Golf, over the holiday period. I’ve been talking about it for long enough and now its written, formatted and with the publisher, ready for launch late January or early February – Woo-hoo!
Coming back to those New Year’s resolutions, have you made your ones yet? No, don’t tell me what they are, that’s supposed to be unlucky. It’s enough that you’re clear about what you would like to change in your life and your golf in 2010? You know what you’d like to accomplish and where you want your life to go. That’s enough, isn’t it?
Well, I’ve got some bad news and some good news for you. Which would you like first? Okay, let’s start with the bad news. The bad news is that New Year’s resolutions generally don’t work …
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The golf psychology of thinking less and playing better unconscious golf
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been thinking about the application of golf psychology to the issue of the swing thought. In other words, what do you and should you be thinking about when you actually swing the club. It seems that every time I watch someone play they seem to be taking an inordinate amount of time fidgeting with their grip, their stance or their play. The more time they take to get round to swinging the club, the more likely they are to hit a bad shot. One golfer I met recently admitted to almost running between shots so that he has adequate time available to fidget over the ball.
The average golfer is often preoccupied with his current set of – sometimes conflicting – technical swing thoughts, from coaches, books, websites and golf magazines and TV programmes. And even if he isn’t, someone may have given him a set of the tee pegs I saw recently that had different swing thoughts printed on each one!
Now to be absolutely clear, I do believe that you should take adequate time to consciously plan your shots before stepping up to the ball and taking your stance. And this should include time to fully visualise and rehearse the shot or putt that you are about to make. I’ve written before about Jack Nicklaus describing how he’s never hit a shot without first seeing himself playing it …
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The Golf Hypnotist is on holiday applying golf psychology to his own golf game
Posted by: | CommentsWell hello to anyone visiting my blog over the next two weeks while I’m on holiday taking a rest and maybe actually applying golf psychology to my own game rather than talking and writing about it. Having said that, I’ll still be checking my email regularly, so keep those questions coming.
If you need some golf mind help while I’m away then remember there’s lots of interesting material here on the website and in the golf articles section under the resources tab. You will also benefit from listening to my "Your Own Virtual Caddy" golf hypnosis programme that’s available free when you subscribe to my Golf Hypnotist Ezine.
Finally, if all else fails, just watch and listen to this soothing and relaxing video, full of positive suggestions for your golf, from one of my mental game colleagues in the US. And yes, I know that it flashes up their website address half-way through – I’m not afraid of competition, am I now!
Grind out a winning score using golf psychology and golf hypnosis
Posted by: | CommentsHave you noticed how good some of the leading professionals are at grinding out a good score, even if they are swinging the club below their best or downright badly. It’s interesting to note that the real greats like Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus always seem to be able to do this, however they’re playing, and whatever the "rub of the green throws" at them when they get to the last nine holes of a championship.
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 …
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10 Questions with Andrew Fogg – The Golf Hypnotist
Posted by: | CommentsThere’s a lovely lady hypnotherapist called Ellie Blunt who has a really interesting blog called The Transparent Hypnotist. She posts 7 days a week on a broad range of topics – "All about hypnosis, NLP, positive thinking, suggestion work and the reality of it all."
Every week, Ellie posts a standard questionnaire based interview with a hypnotist somewhere in the world and last week, it was my turn to provide the answers for "…
10 Questions with Andrew Fogg." As her questions are quite direct, my answers go well beyond the information on the About the Golf Hypnotist page on my website and I felt it appropriate to share it with you here Click here to read the full post »
Golf hypnosis leads to success over the Inner Game of Golf
Posted by: | CommentsI’m just re-reading Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Golf again after almost 25 years! It’s fascinating and given my training in Hypnosis and NLP, I now see why it didn’t work for me when I first worked with it. That insight may also help to explain that despite the plethora of tennis coaches teaching Inner Game techniques, there seem to be very few PGA Professionals claiming to teach. I know that’s asking for a big bag of emails from the ones who do – I’d like to know who they are.
Now, when I first started playing golf, like most beginners, I focussed all my attention on developing my golf swing. I was lucky to start out with a good swing teacher in Colin Christison, who hailed from …
Blairgowrie and learned his golf on the picturesque Rosemount Course. He instilled many of the basics and taught me to play well enough to get down to 4 handicap in my first year and to play off 2 handicap for the next decade or so. Colin also took me with him to caddy or just watch from inside the ropes when he went to play tournaments. I remember watching him play in the Agfa Tournament at Stoke Poges with the legendary Dave Thomas, one of the UK’s foremost golfers in the 1950’s and 1960’s winning many European tournaments and later designing the Brabazon, Derby and PGA National courses at The Belfry and many others . Dave tied for the 1958 British Open at Royal Lytham St Anne’s, losing to the legendary Peter Thomson in the playoff. He also finished second to Jack Nicklaus at Muirfield in 1966 and played in four Ryder Cups. The other member of their threeball was Ian Connelly who later taught Nick Faldo when he started out in golf at Welwyn Garden City. Some experience for an 18 year old playing off 4 handicap Click here to read the full post »
Positive Reframing for Better Golf Performance like Justin Rose
Posted by: | CommentsTwo stories have got me thinking about the power of positive framing for better golf performance and the increased enjoyment of this wonderful game. In NLP terms this is called Reframing.
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 …
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Golf Hypnosis wins at Bay Hill with help from Tiger Woods Golf Mind
Posted by: | CommentsI guess that like many of you out there, I was glued to the TV on Sunday watching Tiger Woods and his golf hypnosis prevail over Sean O’Hair in the last round of the Bay Hill Classic. It was great to see Tiger prevailing despite not producing a really outstanding last round. It was also great to see his self-hypnosis induced mental strength prevailing even when his game is not quite up to his best. Now that’s a bit outrageous isn’t it, Andrew, are you saying that Tiger’s not back to his best? Well yes I am to an extent.
I would contend that Sean O’Hair outplayed Tiger in all the physical and technical aspects of the game – he just let himself down on the mental side of the game, especially in the area of self-belief …
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Golf Psychology Homework to Improve Golf Hypnosis
Posted by: | CommentsGiving my clients homework tasks to improve their golf and get the most effective results from golf hypnosis sessions is one of the keys to my success. It’s also something that I use to good effect with my clinical hypnotherapy clients as well. Homework can also be used very effectively with golf hypnosis recordings and with self-assigned tasks for self-hypnosis as well.
So what do I mean by Golf Hypnosis Homework
Well don’t worry; it’s not like going back to school. This homework is often just a task that changes your routine or increases your awareness of something you do …
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Self-Talk your way to Golf Improvement like Geoff Ogilvy
Posted by: | CommentsHow much do you berate yourself when you play a bad shot at golf? If you’re a typical golfer the answer is pretty badly! In fact, you probably use language that you’d never use in public. It’s a good thing that you save the worst things for expression privately in your head. Just imagine how you would feel if your fourball or foursome partner said the same things to you after you hit a bad shot. You’d be horrified and you’d probably make a mental note never to play with them again.
What’s possibly worse is that many players have similar negative internal dialogue whenever they plan and execute a shot. They recall all the bad shots they’ve ever hit in this situation and focus more on what can go wrong than on what they’re trying to do …
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