Effortless Golf

How many times have you heard a particular tune and found yourself humming it the next day? Do you remember how at school you learnt lots of things by hearing or seeing them and then repeating them? How did you learn to walk? Did you see someone else walking and then copy them? If you set out to learn a second language now, today, would you see the words and try to say them, hear the phrases and try to imitate them? How did you learn to play golf? Why do you speak in the accent that you do?

We learn through our senses. We take in information via our senses and then our minds compute that information and make sense of it all. We are, all of us, inherently “suggestible”. We learn through mimicking, copying and suggestion. Things seem to “rub off” onto us.

The ability we human beings have to learn in this way is amazing; it is fantastic…so long as we are mimicking, copying and responding to the right suggestions. If we hear something a few times, whether we like it or not, we will tend to find ourselves repeating it; hence sometimes hearing an “annoying” tune in your head. If we do something several times we tend to keep doing that thing, whether we really consciously want to or not; it becomes a habit, smoking, for example, or buying a snickers bar every time you fill up with gas.

Our minds work by generalizing patterns of thought and behavior over context. For example, as a child you learned to recognize a glass as a glass. And then every time you see any type of glass it is recognizable to you as a glass – it has been generalized in your mind over context. Where the generalization is accurate, this ability we have is supremely beneficial; when it is flawed, it can have an extremely debilitating effect…

How many times have you heard yourself say “I can’t putt”, “I can’t get off the tee”, or some variation of this theme? Is this generalization accurate? The reality of the situation is that on this particular putt, or this particular tee shot, you used your club to hit the ball and the ball went wherever it went. Full stop! That is what happened; nothing more, nothing less. Why should that mean that you CANT putt (ever) or get off the tee (ever)?

The problem here is that you aren’t looking at the reality of the situation, you aren’t focusing on the present, you have switched your awareness into a “generalization” mode, and you are creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. You end up not being able to putt or get off the tee because this is what you have suggested to yourself. In the words of Henry Ford “If you think you can you can; and if you think you can’t you’re right”.

If someone else was as critical about your golf as you are, how would you react? If your “mates” stood there saying “you can’t putt” would you just stand by and take it? Or would you get a bit defensive and feel that the comment was “unfair” or “unnecessary” to say the very least? It pays to remember that we humans respond to suggestions, be it consciously or subconsciously, and that we can choose to accept or to reject those suggestions. Would you be as critical about your playing partner’s swing as you are about your own? Why be so hard on yourself? Why be so very negative and destructive? Why do you actually consciously choose to do something which will destroy your golf game? You know that you are telling yourself you can’t do it, so why not change the language you use?

Why not change the suggestions which you are giving to yourself? You can learn how to change your habitual internal language with the help of hypnosis downloads. Why do you think the professionals use golf hypnosis? They use golf hypnosis because it works; hypnosis downloads can be used to get you to focus, to stay in the now, to see what you really want to see. You can use golf hypnosis downloads to stop generalizing and to enjoy your golf a whole lot more than before.

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

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With a degree in psychology and qualifications in hypnotherapy, NLP and sports psychology, Roseanna Leaton is one of the leading golf psychologists. You can get a free hypnosis download from www.RoseannaLeaton.com and view the golf hypnosis cds and hypnosis downloads.

There are good golf tips and bad golf tips. The question is, “how do you decide which golf tips to listen to?”

This question has been brought home to me recently because a good friend took up golf about two years ago. He has really caught the bug and plays several times a week. He also has lessons and practices frequently. Whenever we play together he is constantly asking for tips and advice about his swing.

It is my belief that you should only give a player a golf tip if you are sure that it will fit in with the rest of his swing. I have seen far too many players lose their swings when trying to adopt a golf tip which simply does not fit in with everything else that goes on when they swing the club.

OK, I know, there are certain golf tips which are universally sound, like, “keep your head still.” But equally there are plenty of other golf tips that can be ruinous even when given with the best of intentions.

In particular I recall a good player with whom I’d played many rounds who always drew the ball right to left, usually with good control. One day when his draw was a bit exaggerated, his partner suggested this perfectly sound golf tip: “You know, if you were to keep your right elbow well tucked in on the downswing you would lose that nasty hook.”

The suggestion was well meant. However, for a player who had a well grooved habit of swinging slightly over the top of the ball, as Arnold Palmer was wont to do, it proved to be one golf tip too much. He became so conscious of his right elbow that it threw the whole of the rest of his swing out of shape and it took him months to get it back again.

The point is that the golf tip didn’t fit in with the rest of his swing.

This is a mistake that many golfers make. They listen to all the golf tips out there and try to adopt them all in their desperate search for a good swing. It is my belief that your aim should be to groove a golf swing that will give you streams of straight and long golf shots by modelling your swing on one set of advice. Then you should develop a mind movie of that swing so that you can reproduce it whenever you play a shot.

Think how long some of the most famous partnerships between players and their swing coaches have lasted. Think of Jack Nicklaus and Jack Grout, Tiger Woods and Butch Harmon, Nick Faldo and David Leadbetter to name but a few. All these great players relied on one coach’s vision of their swing to keep their mind movie in shape. They did not go asking for golf tips from other players.

To read about golf terms and putting pictures, visit the Putting Tips site.

Buying golf equipment can be like dumping money into a
money pit, but armed with some knowledge you can save
time and money in selecting the right clubs for
yourself. As with most things in life, you can spend a
lot or you can spend a little several times before you
get what you really need.

If you are first starting out and not completely sure
you want to commit to this addictive game, you should
either rent clubs at the golf course, or buy a starter
set of clubs.

Buying a set of started clubs enables you to become
accustomed to them; enabling you to concentrate on
your swing instead of wondering how this set of
miss-matched clubs you just rented are going to work
out.

As you become better at the game, you should invest in
a better set of clubs, fitted to you.

Generally, a set includes a driver, one or two fairway
woods, 4-9 irons, a wedge or two and perhaps a putter.

As you become more experienced and start thinking
about new clubs, you may want to consider buying your
driver separately. Some players want a driver to give
them more accuracy; some need the distance.

There are numerous balls available and the box will
usually have a chart on the back and direct you to the
right ball for your needs. As you learn the game and
get better at it, you should experiment with different
balls which could improve your accuracy or distance.

Having the right equipment is an important aspect of
the game; buy wisely!

Read more: rules for golf

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.

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Andrew Fogg, the Golf Hypnotist, is an enthusiastic golfer, hypnotherapist and NLP Master Practitioner. He is a golf psychologist and author of a soon to be published book “The Secrets of Hypnotic Golf” and a series of golf hypnosis MP3 programmes. Visit his website www.golf-hypnotist.com for information on getting the most success, pleasure and enjoyment from your golf. Sign up there for the free Golf Hypnotist ezine for your free 25-minute “Your Own Virtual Caddy” golf hypnosis MP3.