The Mental Golf Blog

We bring together well respected golf psychologists passing on mental golf hints and tips

Dr Gregg Steinberg, world renowned sports psychologist, discusses how you can improve performance by developing emotional toughness. (0:51)

Dr. Robert Winters shows you how to get a pre-shot routine “green light” mentality before hitting a difficult golf shot. (4:59)

Dr Karl Morris explains why Tiger Woods has the greatest golf mind ever and how this can benefit your game, lower your scores and cut your handicap. (2:40)

The man himself! Tiger Woods works to get better and discusses his mental golf. (1:31)

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Technorati Tags: Golf Psychology, Gregg Steinberg, Karl Morris, Mental Golf, Robert Winters, Tiger Woods

My friend continues the quest to improve his putting.

I have a confession to make. Since my last blog I’ve barely practiced any mental techniques. Why? Well, it became glaringly obvious that my putting stroke had major flaws of a technical manner. I tried putting with that flawed stroke, but with the most confident and positive attitude I could muster, but it made very little difference.

Granted, this is only carpet putting for now (weather and other commitments have kept me off the course), but I’ve always found if I can’t consistently roll the ball at home I have no chance when venturing onto the course. This situation left me in a bit of a quandary: Do I sort out my stroke or do I stick to the program and tough it out with mental techniques? Rather than agonise over it I remember something I’d read years ago that always stuck in my mind. If you can’t make a decision then decide not to decide. This simple thought always releases me.

So I forgot about my putting and worked on my pitching instead as this also been troublesome of late. A quick word with my pro, Dan Whittaker of Altrincham Golf Range, and the problem was identified as getting too steep and not hitting with my pivot/body action. I worked diligently on a simple drill he taught me until I could hit the ball with passive arms again. Happy with the progress I was making I reached for my putter for ten minutes before ending my session. Something marvellous had happened. I was rolling the ball beautifully, time after time. How? Why? The body release drill I’d been working on with my wedge translated perfectly to my putting stroke. I had, unbeknownst to me, been disconnected and handsy with my putting stroke, but now could easily feel like I was putting with a pure pendulum action of the shoulders.

The moral to this little anecdote is that it doesn’t matter how mentally strong you are, you must have solid fundamentals to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be positive with a dodgy stroke than negative with a dodgy stroke, but combining great technique and mental strength is what separates the good from the great.

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Technorati Tags: Mental Golf, putting practice

Isn’t this what Bob Rotella has been telling us all along?

A study from St Andrews University including the University of Michigan has concluded that over thinking and over analysing putts has a detrimental effect n the outcome.

The researchers think the loss of performance was due to an effect called verbal overshadowing, which makes the brain focus more on language centres rather than on brain systems that support the skills in question.

Full reports from The BBC and The Herald.

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Technorati Tags: bob rotela, putting, verbal overshadowing

A very good friend of mine has agreed to bare his soul in a search for an improvement to his putting by guest blogging for me about his trials and tribulations on the greens.

Since returning to golf after several years’ absence due to poor health, putting has been my Achilles heel. Actually, it’s been my Achilles heel, ankle, leg and, well, you get the idea.
I’m not sure where the problem began, but I seem to recall I used to be a pretty good putter. Streaky, maybe, but my bad days were never that bad. I mean, I played with the same left-handed blade for a good five years without ever considering inviting a new young thing into my golf bag. Surely this is a sign that I was happy on the greens?
So where did it all go wrong?
My attitude was vastly different on my return to the game. I used to be very intense on the course, breaking clubs over my knee on more than one occasion, but this time around I was simply overjoyed to be actually playing again.  My old handicap of eight was meaningless, I told myself, although I secretly believed I’d soon be shooting in the 70’s again before too long. How wrong I was. I was still in the long-term recovery period of PVCFS, had lost two stone of muscle and my balance and coordination were affected. Breaking 90 was difficult enough! This affected my game in several unexpected ways, and my putting most severely. I lost sight of the importance of a decent pre-shot routine and generally became very sloppy with my preparation and mental approach to the game. I failed to realise how crucial this aspect of the game was to my previous standard of play.
This lacksidasical approach obviously had a detrimental effect on my putting, leading me to start tweaking and customizing the old blade by chopping her down, adding lead tape and trying different grips before finally consigning her to the shed. I started looking for any external excuse I could when the real problem was the 6 inches between my ears. Yes, I’d talked myself into being a poor putter.    
“Whether You Think You Can or Can’t, You’re Right”–Henry Ford
So where does that leave me now? Now my long game is up to a standard I’m comfortable with, but still can’t break 80 due to averaging around 36 putts.  On a mission, that’s where!
It’s my intention to use this blog to share the highs and lows of my mission to average 30 putts by the end of the season by focusing on mental techniques such as imagery, meditation and mindfulness.
Is that possible? Can a hopeless case like me develop the steely gaze of a Dead Eye Dan? I guess we’ll both find out soon enough!

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As I began to research mental golf visualization I realised that despite an general agreement of a definition of a mental rehearsal of a desired future outcome the term also meant slightly different things to different people and as a result I’ve put them together as immediate, short, medium & long term visualization.

Immediate Term Visualization

Most golfers who have played for a while will have experienced the phenomenon of “seeing” the ball doing something in their minds eye. I have most often experienced this on the green where I have actually seen the curve on the line that a putt will need to take in order to enter the hole. Of course it doesn’t always go in! But it is significant that the “clearer” the picture or visualization the more successful I have been in holing the putt. I have experienced this on other shots too but it is less frequent.
Obviously visualisation can apply to “bad” images too golf psychologists all flag up the dangers of negative imagery for instance concentrating too much on avoiding the OOB  or water hazard on a hole. They say this can give a negative mental image of your ball entering the hazard and actually increase the likelihood of that happening. The gurus, therefore, advocate positive imagery, to be aware of the danger points on holes but to conjure up positive images in your minds eye of your ball soaring down the fairway or hitting the green close to the flagstick and rolling out close. Again they emphasis that the clearer you can visualise a particular outcome the greater the chance of it happening.
The way to do this is to have a very specific target in mind before visualizing the shot not a general “middle of the fairway” target but a much tighter “dark patch of grass 280yds from the tee 6 yards to left of centre” target.
Top golfers certainly buy into this theory Jack Nicklaus is widely credited with having incredible visualisation skills and is quoted as saying “I never hit a shot not even in practice without having a very sharp in-focus picture of it in my head.” and that he thought golf was 10% technique, 40% position and 50% Creative Visualization.
This immediate term visualization on the golf course is specifically target orientated in that the only images to be conjured up are of the ball heading towards the target.

Short Term Visualization

This can involve a course management strategy for playing a particular round of golf, a plan of how to tackle individual holes and shots. For the pros it will involve practice rounds, rehearsing shots from different parts of the fairways and greens. They also pay particular attention around the greens eg where it is best to miss the green and leave an easier recovery. For instance Ben Hogan believed that every pin placement required a specific approach, that back pins should be attacked with a low shot and front pins with a high shot. A right-side flag back needed a fade and left pin a draw. Obviously the drawing up of the course management strategy involves physically playing the course but the visualization part comes in imagining how the holes should be played and the constant “replaying” of the visualization prior to the tournament.
Amateurs and club golfers do not usually have the luxury of playing numerous balls in a dedicated preparatory practice round but they have an advantage in that they often play particular courses time and again and are therefore able to put together a course management strategy to suit the strengths and weaknesses of their own game.
The best way to plan such a strategy is to “play” the course backwards in your mind working out the ideal spot to have played your previous shot from and formulating a plan to work your golf ball into those positions from the tee and fairway.               

Medium & Long Term Visualization

Now we’re in realms of goal setting, one of the classic questions asked at job interviews is “Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?” asking the applicant to project forward and express their ambitions. Self Help books and gurus advocate visualization as a way of keeping ambitions in the forefront of the mind, to imagine that you have already achieved it, to see it feel it etc, to act as if it has already happened and then it will become a self professed reality.
In terms of golf, longer term goals can be to reach a certain handicap, turn pro, win tournaments etc etc.
Gary Player was a great positive thinking golfer always reinforcing his ability in his mind saying “We create success or failure on the course primarily by our thoughts.” It must have worked for him, he won nine Majors!

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Technorati Tags: Golf Mind, golf strategy, Mental Golf, visualization

As I’ve developed my mental golf game I’ve tried to incorporate different mental images that are personal to me that I can draw upon on the golf course.

For instance you often hear the phrase “Pull the Trigger” in relation to the actual start of the swing, however, I prefer to conjure up the image of squeezing a trigger as if I’m firing a gun or crossbow at a target. This I feel creates a better image for the transition from the stillness of the address and pre-shot routine into the fluidity of the backswing.
(Just writing this and choosing descriptive words creates positive images in my mind eg “squeeze” and “fluidity”.)

Whilst at the range last night I realised that I was trying to hit the ball too hard particularly with the driver and as I thought about it I got an image of free wheeling down a hill on a bicycle. If you try to pedal you might go a bit faster but at the risk of a wobble and falling off. The feeling I wanted was of slowly and smoothly climbing the hill (backswing), going over the brow (transition) and smoothly accelerating down the other side (downswing).

This really seemed to work and found I was hitting much more powerful and accurate drives. This is an area of my game that I’m conciously going to work on this year and by creating descriptive relevant images in my mind I firmly believe my golf game will improve.

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Technorati Tags: golf, golf imagery, golf visualization, Mental Golf

Last week I played my first round of golf for some time, a combination of poor weather, business commitments and Christmas conspired to keep me off the course.

I have mentioned the round briefly before but with it being my last round of 2008 I found it a great opportunity to assess my mental golf progress. Inevitably there were some plus and some minus points.

The Good:

I had played the course before so was able to work out a strategy for getting round including a scary Par 5 that I have consistently cocked up in previous rounds. The hole is very tight with OOB left and right and invariably it plays into the wind. I calculated that even by teeing off with a punched 7 Iron I could get on in three. When I came to play the hole I was swinging well and there was little wind so the temptation was to ditch the plan, get the big dog out and try to get home in two. BUT I RESISTED!!!!! and stuck to the plan.

On another hole I had a very tricky eminently missable 5 foot putt over a horribly bumpy winter green. I was pleased with my mental golf on this one, I resolved to simply make the best stroke I could, read the putt normally but dismiss thoughts of the bumpiness. It was pleasing that the putt rolled truly, over all the bumps and straight into the can.

After a mid round wobble my score was looking disinctly iffy. On the 13th tee resolving just to take each shot as it came (I know I should have done this on the 1st tee but that’s why I’m a handicap golfer) I crushed a great drive and got into a groove that brought 6 pars on the last 7 holes.

The best of which was on a tricky dog leg right hole. After a good drive I had an slight uphill shot into the green that really favoured my draw. I could really “see” the shot in my minds eye setting off slighly right of the target and drawing gently in to the flag. When the shot came off I was absolutely delighted, it soared into the sky, followed the slight curve left and I saw it itch and settle on the green. I really thought it was close but scampering up the fairway revealed that I’d seriously underclubbed, the stick was at the back and my ball sat only just on the front about 35 feet away. What a serious let down! As it turned out 2 putting from there was another triumph for my improved mental golf attitude.

The Bad:

So after bragging about the good stuff what about the not so good? There was plenty of it.
Another shot coming up short cost me a double bogey when all I had to do was walk 40 yards or so to get a better look at the shot confronting me but the most serious and damaging piece of poor mental golf was a rushed tee shot on the 10th. I had become aware that a group behind was waiting for us to clear the previous green and felt we were laying unduly slowly. As a result I rushed onto the tee, played without going through a pre-shot routine, hooked it left, chipped out, dumped it into a bunker and thinned it out. NOT HAPPY!!!!

This was the mid round wobble mentioned previously and I did get back into the groove but a moment of complete madness, cockiness really, cost me another bad hole. After a run of good holes we came to a Par 3 with, what I thought, the pin cut on the right side of the green. I tried to cut a little 6 Iron in to the flag only to succeed in pulling it left into serious rough. NOT HAPPY AGAIN!!!!

Just by committing this to “paper” it’s obvious that the golf is more than hitting good shots, it’s about playing sensibly, keeping patient, playing within yourself and maintaining equilibrium.

Will I remember that during 2009?

FOYT6

Technorati Tags: Mental Golf

You know I must be very slow on the uptake, stop nodding there at the back :-), but following my post Golf Is Not A Game Of Indecision I made a startling (to me) discovery.

I had some great feedback from the post at Stracka.com and got thinking about why certain things have distracted me on the golf course over the years and came to the conclusion that I was often reluctant to back away from a shot because I was concerned about holding other players up. Consequently, I was unprepared for the shot, rushed it and invariably got a poor result.   Continued……………

FOYT4

Technorati Tags: Mental Golf, pre-shot routine

Apologies to Bob Rotella and for the double negative. No, I’m not sure if it makes sense either but never mind.
Following on from my previous post about knowing when you’re about to hit a good shot, this is the opposite.
It’s amazing, isn’t it how easily it is to be distracted from hitting your shot? And then by not giving it full attention you hit a poor one.

In the last couple of games I’ve;  continued………

FOYT3

Technorati Tags: bob rotella

Ok! ok! I know a blog is a kind of diary or journal but the kind I’m talking about is a diary of your golf game.
Some time ago I started to keep one (with the idea that it could become a blog but that would have been more self obsessed than this one :-)) and amongst the entries was a record of good shots played during the round, Drives, Approach Shots, Chip/Pitches & Putts.

More……………………………….

FOYT2

Technorati Tags: Mental Golf, pre-shot routine