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Archive for June, 2009

It’s good to be back in the writing saddle and staring into my computer screen once more after a week’s break. Seriously though, I’m glad to be back talking about analysis paralysis and unconscious golf – two of my favourite golf psychology topics.

Concentrating on how you swing will often prevent you from playing your best and most natural game of golf. You probably recall similar messages from me before and it ties into the concept that there’s a place for thinking consciously on the golf course, about where you want the ball to go and how you want it to get there, and a place for trusting your unconscious to put your best swing on the ball without any interference from the conscious mind.

I’ve heard over the years and read in some of the older golf books in my library about Ralph Guldahl a really great golfer from the 1930s. After a relatively slow start as a professional golfer he ended up winning 16 PGA Tour events in a nine-year period. He peaked with three Major wins towards the end of this period, but never won again after 1940. His Major wins were at the US Open in 1937 at Oakland Hills and again the next year at Cherry Hills and finally the Masters in 1939. What’s always seemed odd to me is that until recently, I’ve never come across anything about his record after that time. I guess I thought that he had died or been injured in the Second World War. Perhaps, in a similar way to many great British golfers of the late 1930s, he never got back into winning again when professional golf competitions started up again after the war years.

So imagine my surprise when I came across an old news article that confirmed that he had continued to play professional golf in the 1940s before becoming a successful club professional. However, he completely lost his game after taking a couple of months off in 1939 to work on his book “Groove Your Golf.” He started to struggle with his golf after completing the book and never won again after 1940. Paul Runyan, twice US PGA Champion, said of him, “It’s the most ridiculous thing, really. He went from being temporarily the absolute best player in the world to one who couldn’t play at all.”

So what happened? Well according to his wife, he went into such detail analyzing his swing in order to write the book, that he could never play his natural game again. Others spoke of him practicing shorts in front of a mirror so that he could describe his exact movement in the book.

It certainly seems to me that up to the time he was commissioned to write the book Ralph Guldahl played with a natural free-flowing swing that he had learned unconsciously. Other articles I’ve read suggest that he was relaxed on the golf course and just took a few moments to pan his shot before hitting the ball. Until he started analyzing his swing for the book, he probably had never even consciously thought about how he swung the club while he was on the course. In fact, it seems that everybody described him as a natural gifted golfer.

So if you want to play your best golf on the course, leave your swing thoughts on the practice ground, use your conscious mind to assess the shot and then trust your unconscious free-flowing swing to hit the ball.

If you have hit good golf shots at some time in your golfing life, you already have the unconscious golfing ability to repeat those shots and score well. So, how well could you score if you played to the best of your existing golfing ability? Well, you can if you get the very most out of that ability before you decide to change your golf swing again.

One way to find out how well you can score with your existing unconscious golf swing is to add up the lowest number of shots you’ve ever scored on each hole – your eclectic score. Ideally assess your scores on a course you play regularly. Now to add some reality to it, forget about any hole-score that included holing a long shot, chip or bunker shot, unless that’s a part of your regular game! I’ve just done that and I’m astounded to find out that my eclectic score around Beaconsfield’s par 71 adds up to 50, even after adding 3 shots to allow for 3 rather improbable eagles on par 4’s that resulted from holing long shots or driving the green. So, even if I on average I play one shot above my best on every hole, I should still go round in 68 on average – 3 under par! I think I can cope with that, although my friends will struggle with the permanent silly grin on my face.

So given that I have the capability of scoring that well, why is it that whenever I used to have a bad round, I’d head for the practice ground to find out what was wrong with my swing or visit yet another golf guru to try and change it? I’m sure that sounds like many of the golfers you know as well. If a similar game exists in your unconscious resources, why not access it through your mind with golf hypnosis rather than just learning to swing the club again. You already have a blueprint for a great golf game, why not follow it rather than tear it up and start again?

If you’ve been following the annual saga of swing changes from current British Open and US PGA champion, Padraig Harrington, you’ll know that the same thing occurs with the very best golfers. That said, Padraig tends to change his swing when he seems to the rest of us to be playing his best golf ever, rather than after a bad round! I read recently that he justifies this by saying that it’s in his nature to seek to improve his swing every year. He backs this up by saying, “The reason I improve is I actually stop and start rebuilding every year and change things. I think guys who stay constant are on a slippery slope to retirement. It’s all about pushing yourself to get better.”

Now unless you have the consistency and are approaching the level of success regularly achieved by Padraig Harrington, I suggest that you focus using your golf mind on getting the best out of the swing you already have. There’s no harm in seeing your regular golf instructor, if you need to, to make sure you haven’t slipped into bad habits. Remember that the destructive shots you hit are more likely to come from your conscious thoughts than from your unconscious golf swing.

I hear that Darren Clarke’s looking for putting improvement through golf psychology and working again with Bob Rotella. I know that Darren has worked in the past with Golf Psychologist Dr Karl Morris – after all, I’ve read Golf – The Mind Factor, the book they published together back in 2005. However, for some reason I didn’t know that he’d worked with Bob Rotella.

I can’t say how delighted I am to see Darren’s back competing in the 2009 US Open at Bethpage Black after qualifying as one of the top 15 in the European Money List last year. He’s only played in the US Open once, in 2006 at Winged Foot, since he pulled out at Pinehurst in 2005 to be with his wife who was seriously ill.

Moving back to Darren’s putting psychology problems, I was interested to hear that he has considered putting to be his Achilles heel for most of his career. I was also interested to read how hard he’s been pushing himself over the years to improve his putting. It’s interesting to note that Bob Rotella has tried to get him to go much easier on himself. In fact, Darren’s been quoted recently as saying “He says just go and play and let the results happen themselves.” That sounds like good advice to me!

It’s intriguing how similar that is to what Bob’s been telling Padraig Harrington about his over practising and excessive focus on his swing changes. As I suggested in my earlier article, entitled Play your Best with Golf Psychology Before Changing your Unconscious Golf Swing, the destructive shots you hit are more likely to come from your conscious thoughts than from your unconscious golf swing.

If I was advising Darren Clarke “blind”, so to speak, then apart from helping him to use golf hypnosis of course, I’d encourage him to build on a couple of mental golf approaches from the great Jack Nicklaus. Firstly, I’d suggest that before he strikes a putt he imagines “seeing” the line the ball will run on and “watching” the ball rolling along that imaginary line and dropping in the hole before popping back out and running back along the line back to his putter head.

Secondly, I’d help him find a way to remember every good putt he’s ever holed and to develop amnesia for every bad one. There’s a story I’ve heard about Jack Nicklaus that illustrates this perfectly.

Jack was giving a presentation to a group of eager and attentive golfers at his son’s university. During the speech, Jack makes the comment that he has never three putted on the back nine of a major championship or missed from inside of six feet on the last hole.

As Jack opens the floor to take questions, a man puts up his hand and says “Jack you say you have never missed from inside of six feet on the last hole in a major, but I was watching you last year in the US Seniors Open and that’s exactly what you did.” Jack looked at the man with those piercing blue eyes and repeated what he had said. “But Mr Nicklaus,” the man insisted, “I saw it, I have it on film, I can send it to you if you like.” “No need”, Jack replied, “I have never missed from inside six feet on the last hole of a major. Any more questions?”

Now, has Jack ever missed from inside of six feet on the last hole of a major? Of course he has! Does he remember it? Not a chance. And do you think he cares that he can’t remember? Some people would probably say that Jack is deluded in his thinking, that it is not based on reality. Well, we all create our own realities and Jack’s seem pretty good to me!

In my last article post I finished with suggesting a mantra for life – what the mind can perceive, the mind can believe, and the mind can achieve. Have you noticed how true this is? What is in your mind, your thoughts, your memories, and the things you know to be “right” are simply your own perceptions of reality.

You and I could be standing at a junction and you see the traffic light is red and I see it to be green. It all depends upon the angle from which you are observing the lights. It depends on your perspective. You could, of course, choose to walk to the other side and view it from a different angle.

I would like you to take one minute now to carry out a simple task. Wherever you are at this moment in time, take one minute to look around you and notice, really notice, what around you is the colour blue. Notice as many things that you can that contain the color blue. Spend a full minute really noticing everything that is blue…and then read on.

Now, without looking around again, can you list what is the color red? This simple exercise should demonstrate what happens in everybody’s mind ALL of the time. Our observations and the judgments which we make of “reality” are shaped and colored by what we are focusing on, by what we expect to see or happen. Thus our perceptions are not only shaped by the angle of observation but also by our expectation, our underlying beliefs – we see what we expect to see. This is true of everything in life, not just golf. But in golf the effect is so very noticeable!

As Kendal McWade, the genius behind Instinctive Golf, states “Golf balls always do what they are told”. Now, if you are telling yourself that you are a bad putter, what are you telling the ball to do? Putting can so ably demonstrate the doubt and fear that holds us back in everyday life – emotions which can literally stop us in our tracks.

A child is not born with fear. We learn fear. Sometimes fear is a useful emotion and protects us from danger, but let’s face it, a putt shouldn’t be fearful. Even Tiger says that when he was a teenager he would hit the first putt so solidly that if it missed it might go five feet past the hole, and would simply rap it back into the hole without worry or fear…but that as he has got older he isn’t quite as fearless. Fears can creep into even the strongest of minds…if you allow them to do so.

So how do we remove fear when it’s not needed? How can we change state easily and quickly? Awareness is all important. Most of us are not really aware of the thoughts that are running through our minds. And yet your thoughts create your emotions and direct your actions (and the club and the ball). Let us try another exercise. Stop reading and spend the next minute just observing your thoughts. Notice just how many thoughts pass through your mind in one minute.

How many did you have? I bet there were quite a few. How many thoughts do you have in the very short time in which you swing a golf club? Or, more precicely, how many thoughts do you try to have whilst swinging the club? And how many thoughts run through your mind as you are setting up to the ball, be it for a tee shot or for a putt? Five, ten, fifteen?

Once you become aware of these myriad thoughts, it is easy to understand why the outcome of the shot can be unpredictable to say the least. All of those thoughts can be likened to ants running through your mind, each competing for your attention and focus, thereby taking your awareness away from what really matters – the ball and the target. These two things never change; or, at least, they shouldn’t change, assuming you have taken the time to select an exact target.

So the question is “how do we stop these ant-like thoughts from crawling all over our minds?” Cast your mind back to when you were a child and the answer should come to you quite easily. Children’s emotions change quick as a flash, crying one moment and laughing the next. They change state easily, quickly, INSTANTANEOUSLY; you and I were born with this ability; it’s an instinctive part of us. When a child falls over and scrapes their knees, they cry, and what does the parent do? The adult offers a sweet, they DISTRACT their attention away from the knees that are hurting.

The easiest way in which to displace a negative thought (or a selection of negative thoughts which are competing for your attention) is to give your mind something clear and precise to do. Give your mind something meaningful, interesting and relevant to do, something that is fascinating.

Fear is a function of either the past or the future. Fear does not exist if you are focusing on the now. Think about that for a moment. What are you afraid of on the golf course? The putt not rolling in? That’s in the future. The memory of the last shot sailing into the trees? That’s in the past. Making a fool of yourself? That’s in the future.

So when you are approaching a shot on the golf course, allow the “child” in you to surface – the part of you that’s fascinated, curious, the part of you that’s “in the now”. I was playing with a friend the other day and when we reached the green and saw where my ball was I said something to the effect of “oh, wow! This is an interesting one!” My playing partner’s response was “is that a new reframe for “Oh Hell?”!

Try it…and notice the effect. Because if you are “in the now” you will be aware of what you need to be aware of – the ball and the target. And if you are sizing up the situation with child-like wonder and fascination, you will be thinking “how can I get this in” or something to that effect, rather than being a puppet manipulated by A-N-Ts (Automatic Negative Thoughts).

Being “in the now” is a wonderful place to be. It allows you to be aware of what is really happening around you, to appreciate each moment for what it is. It allows you to notice when a rhododendron leaf glistens in the sunshine, or water sparkling as if thousands of stars are twinkling on its surface, and so on. It allows you to notice the feel of the fairway beneath your feet, the feel of the club in your hands, to notice the feel of your swing. (And wouldn’t greater feel come in handy?) Being in the now allows you to enjoy the time between shots, remaining relaxed and peaceful; it allows you to fully enjoy the game of golf, AND the game of life. If you aren’t in the now, you aren’t really living.

Another wonderful thing about being in the now is that you reap the rewards immediately – literally in the now. So many people say that it is impossible to change without hard work and effort. What can be hard about noticing what’s happening now? What can be hard when you are interested and curious and fascinated? When you are in the now, past beliefs cannot hold you back.

Are you ready to control your golfing destiny? Are you ready to make a commitment to yourself to play golf “in the now”? Are you willing to allow the natural instinct for wonder and fascination to come to the forefront of your mind? Are you ready to enjoy your golf and play better golf than ever before? Because you are the only person who can choose your thoughts. All you have to do is to choose to do so.

Roseanna Leaton, specialist in golf hypnosis cds and hypnosis mp3 downloads.

One thing I’ve learned from golf psychology is how my unconscious mind automatically follows where my conscious mind leads. Have you ever noticed that if one of your playing partners warns you about a particularly difficult bunker or some hidden golf hazard on a hole, your ball seems to be mysteriously drawn to that hazard? And it doesn’t matter whether they were trying to help you or to put you off. So if you’re standing over the ball thinking or saying to yourself, “Don’t hit it in that bunker,” then you are unconsciously focussed on the bunker and that’s where you’ll probably hit the ball.

This can also work in reverse. Many years ago, I was selected to play with a good friend of mine as my partner in the Hertfordshire County Foursomes team event at the old East Herts. Golf Club, on a course I had never played before. Despite my best endeavours, I didn’t have the time to play the course before the event, so I had to play the course blind. When I got there, there were no yardage charts available and no distance yardage markers on the course, so my foursomes partner, who had played there several times and knew the course well, suggested that he would have to tell me where to hit the ball when it was my turn to hit our ball, as there were many doglegs and blind shots on the course. On every shot I had to play, my partner would tell me the length and style of shot I needed to play and gave me a specific target to aim at – a particular tree, bunker or part of a building – and that was all I had to think about. He never told me about any of the hazards to avoid. As a result, I was the perfect partner, hit the ball where and how he told me and we scored far better than we could have possibly expected.

Now, the action of unconsciously following your conscious thoughts doesn’t just happen when you play golf. Have you ever been driving happily along a long straight road, perhaps a motorway, and someone points out a landmark way off to the right or left? Even if you do no more than glance at it a few times, you’ll probably notice that you will unconsciously start deviating towards it. Thankfully, your unconscious programme for safe driving is likely to be more grooved in your mind than your interest in the landmark and your unconscious mind will soon bring you back to the straight and narrow of the road. As it’s an unconscious and instinctive reaction you may not even be aware as the driver, but your passengers may well let you know what happened!

So what can I do to avoid hitting the ball in the hazard when I’m already thinking about it and isn’t it better no know about it than not? Wouldn’t I rather know it’s there, so I can avoid it? Well, if you’re going to focus on the hazard when you hit the ball, it may almost seem to be better not to know it’s there. However, if you take the hazard into account when planning your shot, you can consciously choose a style of shot and an appropriate target that will reduce the likelihood of your ball going into the hazard. If you then focus on that alternative target when you hit the ball, then as I described above, your unconscious mind will always do it’s best to follow your conscious thoughts. So when you’re standing over the ball about to hit, focus your thoughts on the shot you want to play and the place you want the ball to land safely rather than on the hazard where you don’t want it to land.