Lucky Fish Golf

How do you feel on the first tee of an important golf round?

As we know, golf is a mental game. If you are like most golfers, you have difficulty in controlling slightly negative thoughts.  We can feel anxious.

“I must avoid OB right” This thought is a killer example.   With this in mind, its usually ends up resulting in gearing up my brain to send the ball OB with supreme precision.  Oh yes, it’s great to get out of the office and unwind …

“Slow it down” it can be a great thought, but occasionally it causes us to be too cautious on the backswing and not turn the shoulders.  Again balls goes right with a big banana slice..

“Bring the downswing down as slowly as possible” It works for some.

What about advice from golfing legends?

Arnold Palmer used to tell people “think of your feet and head as 3 apexes of and immovable triangle; your feet should be like bricks”

Jack Nicklaus put great store in a little rightward cock of his head at the takeaway, so his left eyeball and golf ball were inexorably aligned.  Gary Player preferred to think of a core of metal passing up through the middle of his body; he twisted around it like a barbarcued chicken on a split.

Its no surprise that with all this going on in our heads, its very easy to get anxious on the 1^st tee.  We become afraid of letting go of the earth.   We hit from the top, too fast with too much right hand (in the case of the right handed golfer).  We keep the weight on the right leg and knees prudently locked.    Whats happens?   We look up, lifting our head a micro second too early and hitting the ball like a we’re chopping wood with an axe.

Many golf mental game experts, quite rightly, believe the set up routine helps us ‘get focussed on the job at hand’ – taking our brain away from ‘evils that may happen’

1. From behind the ball select a spot of the ground between the ball and your target.  This quickly gets your brain thinking very precisely about the job at hand.

2. Align your club square to the ball and facing your spot.

3. Set your body and feet position parallel to the target line. Never keep your right foot perpendicular to the line because it is to hard to turn the body during the back swing.

4. Thinking soft grip, lay the club first in your left hand and then lay your right hand on top.

5. Important: Slightly bend your knees and lean forward, your arms should feel like they are dangling straight down.

6. Your weight should be balanced and on the inside of your thighs. Your weight should also be more on your toes and the balls of your feet then on your heels.

7. The grip end of the club shaft should be about 8-10″ from your belt buckle.

8. Keep your chin off your chest but stay focused on the ball. Your left shoulder will need to come under your chin at the top of your swing.

9. Double check that your club head is still facing in the correct position and apply the proper grip pressure.

10. Execute

You can practice the above routine away from the course at home so it becomes natural.    It will go a long way to helping you overcome the first tee demons.

GET INTO PROCESS – NOT RESULTS

Happy golfing

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www.luckyfishgolf.com

Have you ever said something like this after a bad shot? I didn’t take the wind into account, I forgot to consider that shot was uphill or I didn’t adjust for the lie with the ball below my feet. Why? You know about those variables and how to adjust for them all. Right? Then how can we find ourselves repeating those explanations round after round? When this happens out mental game has let us down.

We weren’t prepared as we should have been. Those elements were left out of our entire thought process as we considered the shot. We lack the mental discipline that more consistent golfers enjoy. They seem to have a way to include all the elements of the shot in their planning. Are they smarter than you or I? No, probably not.

It is not about smart anyway. It’s about mental discipline. Let’s face it, if we know after the shot what went wrong then we can notice it before the shot and plan for it. We don’t because we have trained our minds to think in that fashion. The mental game is more important to your scores and handicap than most of us would expect. If we can avoid the mental errors then we are left with only the possibility of a swing error to mess up our shot. You can see how that would easily lower your score, huh? Double D is working hard to hone is mental game. It is harder at first than you might think. After a while it becomes more of a habit. He suggest you do the following to help master your mental game. Build a Pre-Shot Routine Prior to selecting a club, Double D suggest that you create a mental checklist to help you decide how to proceed. The checklist should include: 1. Know your lie. 2. Determine your target and distance. 3. Examine any obstacles between the ball and the target. (trees, hazards or wind) 4. Decide on a shot shape (straight, draw, fade) 5. Choose the club best suited for you plan. Add this mental checklist to your regular pre-shot routine to eliminate the wasted shots that come from a failure to think your way through all the variables that will effect your shot. This is about you taking charge of your golf mental game Dooley says, “Train you mind just as you train your body to develop a better golf game.” Wayne Hudler is an avid golfer of over 30 years and golf writer.

Dooley Duffer Golf is devoted to helping ordinary golfers (duffers) improve. Are you a duffer? Visit Dooley Duffer Golf where you will find an ever growing collection of improvement resources. Dooley’s Dialog is an interesting free weekly golf newsletter offering news, tips, drills and more.

Learn more at: Dooley Duffer Golf Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wayne_Hudler

Golf In The Zone State Attaining Your Peak Performance Joan A. King, C.Ht., P.NLP

Being in the Zone State is where you attain your peak performance. It can happen to 40 handicappers as well as scratch golfers. When a golfer is in the Zone State, he has let go of all of the restrictions imposed by conscious irrelevant thoughts. The golfer has created the reality that he wants to happen. His mind and body are harmonized before the swing so the swing happens without any thought or effort.

In the zone

Golf is different from other sports. In many other sports there is no time to think and the body reacts to the situation. It has been proven that Professional basketball players make more shots around the basket when the opposing player has a hand in their face and they have to shoot quickly, than when they take the time to aim the ball and shoot… and think (about missing). In golf, the ball waits for us and we spend too much time in extraneous confusing thoughts.

When a golfer is in the right state of mind he can access his peak performance throughout the round. In this Zone State, golfers feel as if they are in a trance, in a heightened sense of awareness where they have total control of all aspects of their game. Some golfers say they experience a sense of euphoria which includes total calm, ease and effortlessness in swinging and an enhanced sense of intuition. There is also an increase in power. Crisper, longer and more accurate shots result from the magnified sense of feel and awareness. Golfers have intensified concentration and mental clarity such as seeing a line on the green. In this trance, the golfer sometimes experiences being on automatic pilot as if someone else is swinging the golf club for him.

Ted Williams commented that when he was in the Zone, he felt as if the baseball was stopped at the plate, waiting for him to swing at it.`When Michael Jordan was in the zone, making one of his spectacular leaps, he felt as if he would never come down. John Brody, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback perceived the opposing line stopped when he was in the zone. He felt as if he had all day to throw the football downfield. What do all these experiences have in common? Time stands still for athletes when they are totally focused on being in the process of performing. When we are playing golf well we also have a distortion of time and are lost in the enjoyment of the game.

When we aren’t playing well we are focusing on the things that make-up the process. We bombard our mind with instructions on how to swing the golf club. We judge our performance unmercifully. We get wrapped up in negative feelings of incompetence, failure, doubt, and embarrassment.

In our society we have been educated to “try harder”. We are taught that the more physical effort we put into something, the more likely we are to succeed. This is very evident in the statement we have been hypnotized to believe, “No pain, no gain”.

For golfers, a more appropriate axiom is, “To gain control, You have to let go of control”. Once you have learned how to swing the golf club, you must LET GO and TRUST that the proper message will be sent from your unconscious mind to your physical body when you are on the golf course.

You have then bypassed your conscious analyzing, thinking, controlling mind and just reacted to all the learning and habits which are stored in your unconscious mind. If you are thinking about parts of your swing while you are swinging, you are controlling or steering the club with your conscious mind. This results in jerky, inconsistent, off-balance, out-of-tempo, off-line shots.

When you are driving your car on I-95 going south and you slip into a dreamy state of getting to Florida and playing golf, the car is steered smoothly by your unconscious mind. When you break out of your reverie and realize you haven’t been paying attention, the conscious mind (analyzing, judging, and criticizing) takes over and your driving motion becomes jerky.

To enter into the Zone State a golfer must trust his swing and be prepared to allow it to happen. A rhythmic movement such as walking, humming or whistling your favorite tune can move you into a relaxed state on the golf course. Movement into the zone includes all the physical and mental preparation for a round of golf.

Prepare yourself in the way you are most comfortable for your personality to become relaxed and confident. If you are a sociable person, converse with your fellow golfers. If you like to prepare alone, go to a place at the end of the range or green where you have quiet and solitude.

When you are aware that you are in “the zone” during your round, don’t think about what you are experiencing because that will bring you out of the process. Know that you are experiencing your peak potential performance and enjoy every minute of it!

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The adage that “over-analysis leads to paralysis” is very true in golf. One of the inherent difficulties of golf for some players is the amount of time they have to prepare for shots. In reality, this is both an advantage and an obstacle to overcome. The advantage is that you don’t have to hit a shot until you are fully ready. The problem with this extra time can be misused. When you use that time to over-analyze every shot and putt, the brain gets clogged and sends poor signals to the body. The mind can only process a certain amount of information at one time.

A good example of this is over-reading greens. You look at your putt from behind the ball and see the putt as right edge. Then you go to the other side of the hole and see it as a straight putt. After an internal debate, you circle around the putt another time to decide how much the grain will affect the putt. So far, you are doing what any golfer would do, but when you start to introduce several other factors that may effect your read such as grain, wind, outcome of last putt, etc. – the mind becomes bogged down in details. Great putters, such as Ben Crenshaw, relax and let their imagination account for all the variables. Whatever line to the hole Crenshaw pick initially, he uses. He doesn’t second-guess himself as more and more information is introduced.

Another example in golf occurs when I see players who stand over the ball forever, thinking about a checklist of six things they want to accomplish with the swing. This is too much information for the body to assimilate and can also lead to paralysis by overanalysis. Try not to do everything your instructor told you to do in one shot when you play golf. Simplify your approach and focus on one thing at a time over the ball after you are set up and ready to fire.

A quiet, non-analytical mind is necessary to get into the flow and become immersed in execution. How do you quiet the mind? First, don’t ruminate about past shots or holes and let them obstruct your thinking. Be totally focused on the shot you have now, not the one you had ten minutes ago. And don’t analyze the details of every missed shot and try and fix your swing on the course.

Meditation instructors teach their students to silently repeat a mantra (a word with no meaning) repeatedly to quiet the mind. If other thoughts come to mind, you’re instructed to let them pass and focus back on the mantra. I don’t expect you to meditate on the course, but you can focus attention on your breathing just before you prepare for a shot. If other thoughts come to mind let them pass and refocus on the rhythm of your breathing. You can use a simple golf-specific “mantra” to quiet the mind and focus on the basics of your preshot routine, such as “see it, feel it, and do it” or “plan, rehearse, and execute.”

Try to keep your swing thoughts (thoughts about how to hit the shot) to only one mental cue such as tempo. Visual players might want to just try to see the target and let their body hit the shot. Save the swing mechanics for practice after the round.

About the Author
Dr. Patrick J. Cohn is a master mental game coach who works with golfers of all levels including PGA and LPGA Tour players. His website, Peaksports.com, offers members more than 400 exclusive mental game articles, audio programs, and interviews with athletes and coaches to enhance your golf potential.

How many times have you heard various well-known touring pros say: “golf is 90% mental”

Many great touring pros over the years have declared that the golf mental game rules.

But, many really great teaching pros have countered, “what good is the mental game if you do not have the physical skills to play the game?”. And rightly so. Then we hear the mental coaches argue back, “What good are the physical skills if the player is not mentally strong enough to keep them from breaking down under the pressure of competition?” Just like the old “nature vs. nuture” argument, it can go ’round, and ’round, and ’round.

In reality, if you want to play great golf you cannot really separate the physical skills from the mental skills. It’s a lot like a peanut butter sandwich. If you want a really good peanut butter sandwich, you cannot have just the peanut butter, or just the bread, because in either case it then would not be a really good peanut butter sandwich!

O.K., maybe that is not the best analogy, and maybe you do not even like peanut butter, but you get the point.

How can you have a great golf game if you do not have strong physical skills, and the strong mental skills to use those great physical skills in competition when the going gets tough?

Enough of that argument, and on to another one.

Golf is Mentally the Toughest Sport

The golf mental game, in our estimation, is one of the most challenging in all of sport. Because you are a competitive golfer, chances are you will take our side, especially since you are still reading this page.

Fortunate for you–and unfortunate for them–most competitive golfers spend the vast majority of their time on the same thing that the major golf magazines do, perfecting the technical aspects of the game, spending little or no time on mental skills training.

In one of our early 2000 studies of golfers, we were surprised to find that when asked if they felt the golf mental game was important to their success, more than 90% of the golfers surveyed said “yes”.

But when we asked the same golfers if in the past year they had actively done anything specific to develop their mental skills for golf, only 15% said “yes”!  Fortunately we have seen these percentages rise significantly since then–maybe not coincidentally, along with the rise of Tiger–and we have seen many, many golfer’s take their games to higher levels by doing it.

As a competitive golfer, you might take some pride in knowing that you are competing in one of the toughest mental games on the planet. Even some of the world’s greatest athletes have in many ways found their “second” sport of golf to be much more mentally challenging than their “first” sport of tennis, baseball, football, or basketball.

Why Is Golf Mentally Tougher?

Early into our 1980’s research and work with tour players we noted two primary reasons the golf mental game is so demanding. Both are simply related to aspects of how the game is played.

The golf ball is stationary when in play.

Very simply, you are hitting a ball that is not moving. That may sound quite easy to do but in reality it is much easier to react to something that is moving than it is to something that is stationary, especially in the heat of intense competition. Why? When it is moving you have less time to “analyze” the complexities of the athletic skill that you will need to use, or to ponder it’s importance, or to determine all the ways you could fail before you actually do!

In sports like tennis, football or basketball, the ball and competitors are moving when in play. This makes it quite natural and easy to “react” and perform “athletically” rather than “judge” and perform “intellectually”. If you are not sure what I mean by this, let me explain with this example that we sometimes use with our clients.

Say you are sitting on the sofa in my office, across the room and about 6 feet in front of me. I surprise you by pulling out my dog’s favorite tennis ball and throwing it at you with little warning except to say “here, catch!”.

Being an athlete you will probably quite naturally and athletically react and catch the ball by physically doing something like this. You will raise your dominant hand with your palm forward, and your thumb at about a 45 degree angle, with your other 4 fingers pointing upward. As the ball gets but a few precise inches from your hand you start to simultaneously close your fingers, snapping them tightly around the ball as it touches your palm. And you will successfully catch the ball without consciously thinking of even a single one of these things.

Now we do it again.

This time I give you all the above instructions in detail. I tell you that you cannot deviate from any one of them. I warn you that you will not get lunch today if you miss. Then I tell you I am going to post word of your fumble on the internet for all the world to see if you miss. Then I throw the ball.

Think you will you catch the ball quite as easily the second time? Unsually not. Will your catch be as smooth and graceful as the first time? Not likely…unless you are an enlightened golfer and you have been working on your golf mental game. Then you would be able to easily over-ride all those instructions; warnings to again simply react to the ball!

Yes, this ball was moving, but the point here is that you cannot perform as well in golf when you are analyzing vs. reacting.

Which brings us to the second reason the golf mental game is so tough.

There are large amounts of empty time between shots to “over-think”.

Using the above example with the tennis ball, can you see why this could be a problem? Especially considering that you must turn off the analysis and turn on the reaction at least 60 times each and every time you play. And you must do this over a period of 4–plus or minus–hours each and every time you compete?

Golf requires that you be disciplined enough to put yourself into a mental state to react, even when circumstances are not natural for doing so. You will find this challenge only a bit in the other sports: in basketball with the free throw, in tennis with the serve, and in football with the field goal.

This article is credited to www.competitive-golfer.com

“Life is like riding a bicycle.
To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
Albert Einstein

“Balance in your life between work and your personal life is very important.
Without balance, you eventually burnout negatively
affecting your performance at work.”
Byron & Catherine Pulsifer, from What Are the Benefits to Me?

“We need to maintain a proper balance in our life by
allocating the time we have. There are occasions where
saying no is the best time management practice there is.”
Catherine Pulsifer, from We Never Seem to Have Enough Time

“Most of us are trying to balance work, home, and a family life.
We tend not to accept the early symptoms of burnout and
carry on our daily lives.”
Yasmeen Abdur-Rahman, from Recognize the Early Signs of Burnout

“A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds
balance to your step as you walk the tightrope of life.”
a balance quote from William Arthur Ward

“I’m not suggesting you deny or suppress your emotions,
but just discover for yourself what it takes for you to
handle your emotions and stay balanced.”
Wendy Hearn, from 7 Lessons For Your Life and Business From Wimbledon

“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go
faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment,
you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals,
and values are in balance.”
Brian Tracy Life