When most of us practice, it usually involves beating a bucket of balls on the driving range or trying to hole chips and putts. If we hit a bad shot or miss, we quickly reach for another ball. But on the golf course it is nothing like this.

On the course EVERY shot counts. There are consequences for missing the target. There is no bottom-less bucket of balls from which we can simply re-load and forget about errant shots. On the golf course, we feel more pressure for this very reason. The best way to practice is with consequences, just like we have on the golf course. We need to simulate that pressure so we can get better and more comfortable with handling it. If we can make practice harder than playing, we will significantly increase our chances of scoring better on the golf course.

There are several ways to increase pressure on ourselves while we practice and here is one of them…

Colin Montgomerie’s coach at college used to make the team perform the following exercise before they could tee it up on the course. Only when they had successfully completed it could they play. On the putting green, put 7-10 balls down forming a circle, with each ball about 2ft from the cup. Give yourself a target for consecutive putts holed that will be a challenge to reach. If you miss, you have to start over. Give yourself a reward for succeeding. For Colin Montgomerie’s college team the target was holing 100 consecutive 2 footers. You can imagine the pressure of those final few putts!

The aim of this drill is to try and better simulate playing on the golf course when we practice. It is so easy to get complacent and just reach for another ball when you miss a putt or your target on the range and think nothing of it. You are not practicing the feeling that EVERY shot count or the the increased pressure you will feel on the course.

One of the biggest mysteries in golf – why you can’t take your range game to the course is for exactly this reason. Playing without pressure is easy and it creates a false sense of security and expectations. Expectations mean that errant shots have a more damaging affect mentally and it’s harder to restore calm. If we can make practice harder and have bigger consequences for off-line shots, we will start to gain confidence, increased focus and score better on the golf course.

If you would like to learn more practice drills to improve your Mental Game, you will find plenty in the Golf State of Mind Audio Session.

Technorati Tags: Mental Game, playing with pressure

I’m came across this interview of Dr. Howard Rankin who discusses how we should work towards finding our own pace and not let slow play affect our focus and performance.

Technorati Tags: mental game tips, slow play

“Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great your natural talent, there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: work.” ~ Jack Nicklaus.

As Jack Says, confidence is probably the most important factor in playing golf to your potential.

Better players simply have more belief in their ability to execute the shot required, which helps them achieve it with more regularity. They see only a positive outcome for every shot, which allows the body to swing freely and aggressively at the target. More importantly, when they play a poor shot, it does not affect the way they play the next one. The opposite of this is negative thinking and fear of failure, causing the body to tense up and be defensive, resulting in a timid swing without fluidity. When you consider the golf swing lasts a couple of seconds, even the slightest amount of hesitation or lack of confidence will result in a poor shot. Then a compounding affect occurs, where more and more confidence is lost with each poor shot.

Something that all PGA Tour players have in common is confidence. They all have the same swagger and confident demeanor. They don’t get affected when they hit bad shots because they know how counter-productive this is. They’ve trained their minds to prevent this happening. Some of this confidence comes from hitting A LOT of golf balls and winning a lot of tournaments, but some comes from knowing how to control the mind and how to shut out negativity. If we follow some basic rules, we too can work on a process to build unwavering confidence. While golfers know the end result of increased confidence, few know how to acquire and build it. Here a few things you can do EASILY to improve your confidence and lower your scores.

1. Don’t be Self Critical. If you start to beat yourself up over your mistakes, you will reduce your positivity and it will be hard to regain it before your next and “most important” shot. Learn from your mistakes at the end of the round. Remember the quote: “Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” With each round you become a more experienced golfer however you play. You can’t get rid of negative thoughts, only replace them with positive ones. The more positive your thinking, the fewer detrimental negative thoughts you will have.

2. Don’t Give Yourself Technical Feedback on the Golf Course. Giving yourself technical feedback diminishes your confidence because you are admitting to yourself that you doubt your golf swing. As Bob Rotella says, “If you are trying to tell your body how to swing, you are telling yourself you don’t know how to swing.” Thinking about technique takes your focus away from what is ultimately important: hitting the ball to a specific target with a clearly visualized path. As I mentioned earlier, the golf swing takes place during a couple of seconds, so even the slightest thought about your body movement will cause you to lose focus on the shot itself.

3. Visualize and Feel. The more vividly you can see a shot and the less you see what you fear, the more your body will respond to the positive visual stimulus. Every shot should have a purpose. Synchronizing the body and mind with a clearly defined objective will increase confidence. Hogan used to say he only hit 3-4 shots each round exactly as he intended, but it was having commitment to the shot he visualized that made the others not too far off line.

4. Develop a Strong Shot Routine. When you have a good routine, even when you are in a high pressure situation you can feel confident you have approached the shot correctly. Your fundamentals are right and you have mentally and physically rehearsed the shot. This is the time to compose yourself and feel prepared and confident ahead of pulling the trigger. An additional part of the routine should be the next tip of how you react to the shot.

5. React Indifferently to Bad Shots. Holding on to poor shots is extremely counter-productive. The longer we hold onto them, the more frustrated we become and the longer it will take to regain that lost confidence. One of the keys to becoming a better player is quickly letting go of the past and staying in the present. After all, the present is where we need to be to give every shot our best intention. If you hit a bad shot, look up to the sky or focus on the beauty of your surroundings. Quickly realizing the relative insignificance of what happened will put it in perspective and allow you to move on immediately.

6. Take Yourself Out of Your Comfort Zone. Overcoming nerves, doubt and fear and succeeding will make you stronger and more confident. When you put yourself in situations where you are out of your comfort zone and pulling through will increase your confidence in the longer term. Rely on your routine under pressure and try is as often as you can.

7. Change Your Goals. Make the “process” of hitting good golf shots your goal for the round instead of shooting your best score. Focus on executing your routine of Analysis, Visualization, Feel and Trust will help your game in the longer-term instead of judging your performance by your score.

8. Focus On What You Did Well. When you finish your round, be honest with yourself about what you need to work on but think mostly about what you did well. The more you can re-live those great shots you played the more confident you will become. Breed confidence by thinking of the positives.

9. Make Your Practice More About Developing Visualization and Feel. Synchronizing your body and mind when you are practicing will make you less likely to think about technique on the golf course and more about the shot required. Hit as many different shots as you can instead of hitting to the same target and change clubs often.

10. Believe in Yourself! There is simply no reason not to.

Like what you read and want to take this type of coaching to the course and practice area? If so, you can listen to the Golf State of Mind CD and mp3, which is full of tips such as those above. It’s a comprehensive guide to learning the optimal mental approach to golf.

Technorati Tags: confident golf, mental game of golf, mental game tips

Even at age 70, Jack shows us again he still has it by making a 100ft putt look easy. Watch how he just steps up and hits it. Supreme confidence that will never leave him!

Bob Winters demonstrates how the Pre-shot routine is our “action plan” for success. But not only to we have to have the optimal positive mind-set when we start our routine, we have to ensure we are still there before we start the back-swing.

The Shot Routine is what we need to continually repeat and practice to become better players. It enables us to go into a concentration zone on demand, during our rounds and practice. Watch any of the top players in the world and they have the same approach to EVERY shot, which optimizes their chances of playing it as they intend. The shot routine enables us to switch from being relaxed and enjoying where we are and what we doing, into a highly focused state which connects us with the shot required. With practice, entering "the zone" can become an automated process. There are many drills and processes we can go through to improve the way we play the inner game, but the shot routine provides us with the structure, the triggers and increases commitment .

Most negative interferences in the execution of a shot happen before we start the back swing. If executed correctly, the shot routine takes us away from negative thoughts and reminds us to be in a positive state of mind.

Need some help with your Mental Game? Then please sign up for my free Mental Game eBook and 7 week course of Game Improvement eLessons:

Technorati Tags: bob winters, golf psychology, golf tips, Mental Game

When I saw this I just had to post it!

European Tour Players David Howell, Rhys Davies, Ryder Cup vice-captain Paul McGinley, and Marcel Siem show off their skills by hitting a 200 yard skim shot across a lake to hit a 9 inch gong. These guys are good…

Technorati Tags: european tour, golf trick shot

After Louis Oosthuizen’s victory in The Open, and the discovery of the “Red Dot” concentration trigger that helped him win, it’s got golfers wanting to understand exactly how it works. Here’s how.

The concept comes from a behavioral technology called Neuro Linguistic Programming (or NLP), a fairly new branch of psychology that attempts to improve a person’s mental and emotional behavior. The teaching assumes that specific goals or actions (neuro) can be better achieved by “anchoring” (programming) past experiences with reinforcement stimuli such as touch, word or sight (linguistic).

Louis Ooosthuizen marked the now famous Red Dot above his thumb on his left glove after working with Sports Psychologist Dr. Karl Morris. During practice, when he was 100% focused and ready to execute a shot, he would look at the Red Dot and “anchor” this mental state with that sight. Then, during competition, looking at the Red Dot as part of his pre-shot routine would automatically recall that feeling and make his mind enter that exact same state.

The goal of NLP is to bring together the conscious and unconscious minds. In this case, Oosthuizen would first make conscious analytical decisions on how to best play the shot. Then by looking at the Red Dot, a reaction would be triggered by his unconscious mind to adopt the emotional state associated with that visual anchor. The unconscious mind does not reason, is not logical and makes no judgements. Its primary job is physiological, in regulating body temperature and breathing. But it is also a repository of feelings (hence your dreams) which (if triggered correctly) can be recalled by the conscious mind. In a game where performance can be massively impaired by conscious thinking, bringing the non-judgmental unconscious mind into the shot process can only help our scores.

Confidence plays such a huge role in performing well in golf, so it is important to be able to recall (on demand) those times you felt success. The pre-shot (and post-shot) routine is one of the most important factors in achieving this. Getting yourself into a confident, positive mind-set will massively improve your chances of success. And this is exactly what the “trigger” does.

Golf is an unusual game in that it lasts 4-5 hours. For this reason it is imperative to be able to switch on and off – relaxing as much as possible when you can and conserving energy to give EVERY shot your best concentration. During the intense pressure of The Open, Oosthuizen was able to relax in between shots, safe in the knowledge that his Red Dot would take him into the necessary state of mind to give every shot his absolute concentration and focus. It reinforced his practice and gave him the self-confidence to execute.

The next time you are on the range, practice going through your routine and get as focused as you can be on the shot you are about to play. Give it everything you have. Then look, say or feel your “trigger” – this can be visual, verbal or touch (Ernie Els uses the Velcro on his glove and Fred Couples uses a tug on his shirt). That anchor will automatically start to produce the desired action, which is to recall that same focused state of mind. When you hit a good shot, anchor that too in the same way. Then try it on the course and make your new “trigger” part of your routine. This will tell your unconscious mind to adopt that optimal state of mind and you will be ready to play the shot as best you can.

Like what you read and want to sign up for a FREE Mental Game eBook and course of eLessons?

Technorati Tags: golf psychology, Louis Oosthuizen, mental focus, Mental Game, NLP, pre-shot routine, Red Dot

In what was one of the most memorable and entertaining majors of all time, the 2010 PGA Championship has left most spectators feeling a little sick. Without taking anything away from Martin Kaymer’s unflappable performance, whether Dustin Johnson’s penalty on the last hole was fair, and what might have been, are the questions we are left with. A local rule cost a young player an opportunity to win his first major.

The rule states that: All areas of the course that were designed and built as sand bunkers will be played as bunkers whether or not they have been raked. This will mean that many bunkers positioned outside of the ropes and some inside the ropes, close to the rope line, will likely include numerous footprints, have tire tracks during the play of the Championship. Such irregularities of surface are a part of the game.

Can this rule be any more vague? Was the area where Johnson played his shot from an area “built as a sand bunker”? Clearly not. With the traffic that area of the 18th would have seen during the final day, how was the player expected to identify whether or not that area was a “bunker” or whether it was sand moved by the thousands of feet during the day? Agreed, the rules are the rules, and Dustin Johnson (or his caddie) should have questioned it and asked for a ruling there and then. But in the chaos of that situation it would have been far from his mind without it being glaringly obvious that he was in danger of a rule infringement.

The 10 minute debate that ensued after Johnson putted out, made it clear that it was far from apparent whether he was or was not in a designated bunker. Under such special circumstances, why could a rules official have not warned him about this as he approached the ball? And even when he had finished, surely the rules commitee has the discretion to rule in favor of the player? Ultimately the rule was just far too confusing, especially for a player having to make par to win his first major. The PGA are sticklers for the rules, but how about injecting a little humanity when a less than obvious breach occurs on the 72nd hole of a major?

A similar fate awaited Stuart Appleby, who was hit with a 4 shot penalty for the same thing when the 04 PGA Championship was hosted at Whistling. Appleby said last night:

“I’m very pissed and angered that this is way the 2010 PGA came to an end.
It was listed in many parts of the caddy and player areas of this unique rule for the week.
Dustin and caddy are ultimately responsible for their actions….but WTH
I think that they need to make significant changes to the course that has hundreds of pointless bunkers that patrons have to walk through to view players.
The PGA says that their a part of the game and to be treated as hazards.
Never seen patrons walking through bunkers in any other professional event (world wide) try that at Augusta.”

Clearly it’s time for a rule change. It’s just a tragic shame that it took the last group on the 72nd hole to bring it to the PGA’s attention. The silver lining to this dark cloud is that Dustin Johnson missed that putt on 18. When asked afterwards, “Do you feel like something was stolen here?” Johnson replied, “Maybe a little bit. But, you know, that’s how it goes.” Had he holed out to win his first major, it would have felt a lot worse than that.

Technorati Tags: Dustin Johnson, Martin Kaymer, PGA Chamionship, Stuart Appleby, Whistling Straights

Here are my Top Ten Picks for this week’s PGA Championship at Whistling Straits Golf Course:

1. Rory Mcilroy
“Rors” fearless Northern Irish youngster loves to play in the wind as we saw at St. Andrews with a 3rd place finish. A 9th last week (and one of only 2 players to shoot under par for all 4 rounds) at Firestone, his form is excellent. Will always compete till the final putt drops and can win from behind. Having a win under his belt this season, he knows he is capable of playing with the best.

2. Jim Furyk
2 wins and 10 top 10s this season means he is on great form coming into this major. Although not long off the tee, he’s very accurate and has all the experience to be in contention on Sunday afternoon.

3. Retief Goosen
12th in total driving, and 8 top 10s from 14 starts on the PGA Tour (3rd in scoring average) make him a very strong contender.

4. Hunter Mahan
2 victories this year and first in Total Driving (which for me is the key stat this week). His form and confidence must be very high.

5. Dustin Johnson
He’s long and straight from the tee and on a course with 4 par 5’s, his 2nd on number of eagles stat will do him no harm. He birdies the par 3’s too (currently 5th on birdies on par 3’s). Four top 10s this season and a win gives him a great chance to claim his first major.

6. Justin Rose
2 wins and 9 top 10s on the PGA Tour this season along with plenty of experience for a young player give him a great chance this week.

7. Luke Donald
Four finishes in the top 6 this season puts Donald as one of my favourite picks. He leads scrambling on the PGA Tour and his low ball flight means the wind won’t be a worry for the Englishman. If he putts well he’ll go close.

8. Tim Clark
He’s accurate off the tee (5th in driving accuracy) and tied for 3rd on number of top 10 finishes this season. Clark also leads proximity to the hole stats. He won the Players Championship earlier in the year so he knows he can compete in the big events.

9. Miguel Angel Jimenez
2 wins in big European Tour events this season and a 65 in round 2 when it was played at Whistling in 2004, means he has the confidence in his ability to score there.

10. The Long-shot: Brian Gay
This season he’s is 3rd in Driving accuracy, 2nd in scrambling & 5th in putts per round. Whistling Straits is a course where all these components could make him a contender. Although not the longest of hitters, when the PGA Championship was hosted at Whistling Straits in 04 there were a number of short hitters in the top 25.

Whistling Straits (Straits Course) Scorecard

Technorati Tags: betting, golf, golf picks, PGA Championship

After shooting his worst 4 round total as a professional at the WGC Bridgestone Invitational last weekend, (finishing 78th out of 80) Tiger’s game is at its lowest point since his amateur days. He has never found himself without a win at this stage of a season, and heading into this week’s PGA Championship at the punishing Whistling Straits, it would appear that simply making the cut would be a realistic target.

As sad as it is, it seems as though we are witnessing a sporting collapse unlike any we have seen before. His personal life has been destroyed, and now has his golf game.

Tiger’s problems clearly have nothing to do with his swing. The psychological unravellings that have occurred during the past 10 months are more than even the world’s most mentally tough athlete can overcome. A divorce and family break-up, and carrying the shame that his “transgressions” have caused, have shattered the supreme confidence and the single-minded focus of the world best player.

On the golf course he looks as if he doesn’t want to be there. Last weekend he appeared to be growing more accepting of shots that land nowhere near their intended target. It looked like he had finally thrown in the towel. The now familiar angry club tossing and “oh Tiger you can do better than that”, were replaced by a despondent, defeated Tiger that accepted his waywardness. Unfortunately for Tiger there was no cut at last week’s World Golf Championship, and if he hadn’t mysteriously withdrawn after 3 rounds a few months earlier, I’m sure it would have crossed his mind. He knows he has hit rock bottom. The question is whether, and how quickly, he can recover.

Tiger has to finish at least 16th in the PGA Championship this week to automatically qualify for the Ryder Cup team and then that depends on where Lucas Glover finishes. Captain Corey Pavin has not yet confirmed whether he would pick him as one of his 4 wild cards, despite the great Jack Nicklaus saying he would have to have a “brain scan” if he didn’t pick him. The Ryder Cup will not be on Tiger’s mind this week. Putting together 4 decent rounds and feeling like his game is moving forward will be his main concern. Whether he would welcome the break from the spotlight when the world’s golfing eyes turn to Wales next month, only Tiger knows.

Tiger has never had to deal with such failure in his career. But he needs to get his head right before he can start working on his swing again. Mentally he’s in unchartered territory. He was sport’s most mentally strong athlete, but now he can’t seem to relax and let go of his emotions on the golf course. The Tiger we knew a year ago was an emotionless golfing machine. But ultimately, we are all human and he is clearly no exception. Rebuilding his shattered confidence and regaining the strong mental game that made him the most dominant athlete in sport is going to be more challenging than beating his life long goal of Jack’s 18 majors.

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Technorati Tags: Corey Pavin, Ryder Cup, Tiger Woods