• Concentration – ability to maintain focus
• Confidence – believe in one’s abilities
• Control – ability to maintain emotional control regardless of distraction
• Commitment – ability to continue working to agreed goals

The techniques relaxation, clearing the mind and visualization will assist a golfer to achieve the 4C’s.

Concentration

This is the mental quality to focus on the task in hand. If the golfer lacks concentration then their athletic abilities will not be effectively or efficiently applied to the shot. Research has identified the following types of attention focus:

• Broad Narrow continuum – the golfer focuses on a large or small number of stimuli
• Internal External continuum – the golfer focuses on internal stimuli (feelings) or external stimuli (ball)

The demand for concentration varies in Golf:

• Golf requires short bursts of deep concentration followed by sustained focus between shots.
• Strategies to improve concentration are very personal. One way to maintain focus is to set process goals for each round. The golfer will have an overall goal for which the golfer will identify a number of process goals that help focus on specific aspects of the course. For each of these goals the Golfer can use a trigger word (a word which instantly refocuses the golfer’s concentration to the goal) e.g. Thought Free Golf uses the trigger words “Ready, Relax, Release”

Confidence

Confidence results from the comparison a golfer makes between the goal and their ability. The golfer will have self confidence if they believe they can achieve their goal. Remember the quote: “You only achieve what you believe”.

When a golfer has self confidence they will tend to: persevere even when things are not going to plan, show enthusiasm, be positive in their approach and take their share of the responsibility in success and failure.

To improve self confidence, a golfer can use visualization and mental imagery to:

• Visualize previous good shots to remind them of the feel of the swing.
• Imagine various scenarios on the course and how to cope with them.

Confidence is a positive state of mind and a belief that you can meet the challenge ahead – a feeling of being in control. It is not the situation that directly affects confidence; thoughts, assumptions and expectations can build or destroy confidence.

High self confidence

• Thoughts – positive thoughts of success
• Feelings – excited, anticipation, calm, elation, prepared
• Focus – on self, on the task
• Behavior – give maximum effort and commitment, willing to take chances, positive reaction to set backs, open to learning, take responsibility for outcomes

Low self confidence

• Thoughts – negative, defeat or failure, doubt
• Feelings – tense, dread, fear. not wanting to take part
• Focus – on others, on less relevant factors (coach, umpire, conditions)
• Behavior – lack of effort, likely to give up, unwilling to take risks (rather play safe), blame others or conditions for outcome

Control

Identifying when an golfer feels a particular emotion and understanding the reason for the feeling is an important part of helping a golfer to gain emotional control. A golfer’s ability to maintain control of their emotions in the face of adversity and remain positive is essential to successful performance. Two emotions that are often associated with poor performance are anxiety and anger.

Anxiety comes in two forms – Physical (butterflies, sweating, nausea, needing the toilet) and Mental (worry, negative thoughts, confusion, lack of concentration) Relaxation is a technique that can be used to reduce anxiety.

When an athlete becomes angry, the cause of the anger often becomes the focus of attention. This then leads to a lack of concentration on the task, performance deteriorates and confidence in ability is lost which fuels the anger – a slippery slope to failure.

Commitment

Golf performance depends on the player being fully committed to the game over many years. In competition with these goals the golfer will have many aspects of daily life to manage. The many competing interests and commitments include work, studies, family/partner, friends, social life and other hobbies/sports.

Commitment comes with positive feedback. A great shot, a low score and even praise from other players can fuel the commitment level to the game.

When playing golf, commitment to the game can be undermined by:

• a perceived lack of progress or improvement
• not being sufficiently involved in skills development through lessons
• an injury
• lack of enjoyment (Focusing on the bad shots)
• too much anxiety about performance – competition
• becoming bored

Successful emotional states

The following are emotional states experienced with successful performance:

• Happy – felt that this was my opportunity to demonstrate an excellent performance. Felt I could beat anybody.
• Calm and nervous – Felt nervous but really at ease with these feelings. I accepted and expected to be nervous but felt ready to start.
• Anxious but excited – Felt so ready to compete but a little nervous. Nerves and excitement come together
• Confident – I remembered all the successful training sessions and previous best performances

Psychology Skills Training

Training for the golfer should aim to improve their mental skills, such as self-confidence, motivation, the ability to relax under pressure, and the ability to concentrate. Mental golf skills training has three phases:

• Education phase, during which the golfer learns about the importance of psychological skills and how they affect performance
• Acquisition phase, during which the golfer learns about the strategies and techniques to improve the specific psychological skills that they require
• Practice phase, during which athletes develop their psychological skills through repeated practice, simulations, and actual competition.

Mental Golf Skills Program

Taking lessons from a pro is essential to developing the mechanical skills required to be a good golfer. Having good mechanical skills paired with good mental skills is the key to greatness. The Thought Free Golf program is the best mental golf skills training program available to rapidly achieve the 4C’s. It is designed to develop a thought routine that is used as effectively as a swing routine. It will both focus and relax the golfer with every shot. Thus driving up consistency and lowering the score. It is key to taking your game to the next level.

Not long ago, I played golf with a peak-performance coach named Frank Prince. Like Romeo, Prince, a very bright guy, knows that the mind means well but betrays you on the course. It gets louder when it needs to pipe down. Prince’s audio program Thought Free Golf is designed to silence the swing-killing chatter by rewiring the mind, helping you bring your range swing to the first tee.

“So many golfers swing great on the range because they’re just hitting, not thinking,” says Prince, co-author of the book Blueprint for Success. ”Then they reach the first tee, and everything changes. They go through a checklist of do’s and don’ts, which is not the way to have a freewheeling swing. My approach is to banish distracting thoughts and let your best swing come out.”

Which leads us to Prince’s three R’s, designed to quiet the mind. Me, I never met a swing thought I didn’t like. So when I stand over the ball my mind sounds like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. This 3-step plan helped me a lot. Address the ball, and ask yourself…

READY?
“Ask if you’re ready to swing, and if you’re not, step away,” Prince says. “If you’re over the ball and you’re thinking it’s teed too low, or you have the wrong club, then you’ve set yourself up for a bad shot. Not ready? Step away, make the needed adjustment, and start your routine again.”

RELAX…
“Take a deep breath and feel your shoulders drop and arms loosen. Breathing deeply sends a bio-mechanical signal to your whole body that it’s OK to relax. Tense, tight shoulders and arms are no way to swing the club.”

RELEASE!
“Not the club–release thought. This cue shuts the brain down, almost like you’re blacking out. Say ‘release,’ and the brain shuts off, and you can make your best, thought-free swing. Does this guarantee a perfect swing? No. But you have a better chance of making your best swing because you’re free of all the other crap” — the lake to the right, your buddy’s opinion of you, multiple swing thoughts — “that get in the way.”

About Connell Barrett

As editor-at-large for GOLF Magazine, Connell Barrett has written profiles on Tiger Woods, Nick Faldo, Arnold Palmer and Steve Williams. In 2006, he conducted the last interview with Byron Nelson. He’s an 8 handicap, but he just knows he can be scratch. He lives in New York City.

Read more: http://blogs.golf.com/flyers/2010/05/how-to-play-thoughtfree-golf.html

The pressure of not having won gets greater with every passing year and that burden is passed down from one generation to the next. For a European to take the steps to win the US Open it is vital they put all dreams aside and relieve themselves of the perceived burden of their country and continent. Players like Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter should  be picturing themselves holding the trophy aloft – rather than sinking the winning putt as you might expect.

Go to Pebble Beach with a negative mindset, or a defeatist attitude, you are pretty much sealing your fate. When a course is tight and designed to test you, it is vital you stay optimistic. You have to understand that everyone will be in the same situation, and that you have every chance of winning.

A powerful way of preparing positively is to use visualization. Your ideal round should be replayed in your mind to the point where you recognise every part of the course, and you see yourself playing like a US Open Champion.

You need to expect things to go down as well as up. Very rarely will a golfer play exceptional golf for the full four rounds. How you interpret the negative is what can determine you as a winner – because your interpretation is what will help you bounce back, and stay in contention.

For the top golfers in the world, usually the championship (especially a major) is won by the most mentally tough golfer.  It’s been the, if not unanimous, at least overwhelming, opinion of most in that world, that no one is more mentally tough than Tiger Woods.  For quite a while, he proved just that.

The most supremely confident of them all, El Tigre, made some god-like shots (which many expect) but struggled off the tee.  Could all the distractions of the past few months have been weighing on him?  Only he knows that.  Scribes, pundits and fans have been wondering how someone, with some much running through his mind, would be able to focus in such a monumental tournament.  First of all, it was The Masters.  Next, it was his very first tournament after an extended layoff.  And finally, it wasn’t like the last time he had a layoff (his surgery) and the questions were of a physical nature.  Whatever the case, we saw Tiger make some Tiger-like shots, but make one of the most un-Tiger-like, a seemingly rushed tap in from about a foot, after missing a birdie attempt, resulting in a bogey on the hole and giving away a stroke, something I’ve seen before – but never from Tiger.

What was missing from the mental toughness conversation was all that Phil Mickelson had on his mind while playing.  His wife, Amy, has been battling breast cancer and yesterday was the first day she even made an appearance at the course.  Their prolonged embrace after he walked off the 18th hole as the Masters’ champion, spoke volumes about what had to have been weighing heavily on his mind.  Yet, somehow, he was able to block it out enough to play magnificent golf (although he fought in and out of trouble throughout the final day, too).

Phil has always been the fans’ favorite.  One reason is that he acknowledges the people in attendance and, most of the time, has a smile on his face.  Greta Garbo said:

“Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.”

Golf54 offers courses that helps golfers make their practice much more effective. Golfers need to know how to practice and what to practice. Lynn Marriott refers to the way Americans practice as an entirely separate culture from the game of golf. When does a player ever hit consecutive 7-irons on the golf course, she asks? Hopefully, never.

“Here’s the rule,” Marriott tells her students. “If you want to play better on the golf course, then you have to practice like you’re playing on the golf course.”

It is recommended that players spend at least half of their time on the practice area simulating “real golf.” This means putting with one ball on the practice green rather than three. This means staging a short-game contest that involves hitting a chip shot and then putting out. The key is to practice golf; don’t practice practice.

“I never hit one ball after another to the same target without my routine,” said LPGA player Giulia Sergas. “I’m less in my swing and more in the game.”

Another tour player, Alena Sharp, cools down from a session on the range by mentally playing nine holes with her caddie.

Much of what goes on at a Golf54 school centers around practice. Drills like the Tai Chi swing, where players swing the club in super-slow motion, sometimes take as long as two minutes without hitting a ball.

“If you can’t do it slow,” Marriott said, “how do you expect to swing fast?”

Sergas learned this technique in March during one of their seminars and now incorporates it into her warm-up routine. Each afternoon at the “Every Purpose” school, Marriott and Nilsson show players a variety of drills they can use to improve their practice sessions.

A one-day seminar named, “The Game Before the Game,” goes even further into detail about how to properly warm up, maintain your swing and take good results from the range to the course.

You have to practice like you’re going to play, so under pressure you can play the way you’ve been practicing. That’s why NBA players, for example, practice free throws with the same pre-shot ritual they use in real games. You’ll find this in all sports—even dart throwers establish a “1-2-3-Go” ritual in practice, then use it in competition.

Pressure is what you put on yourself, based on how badly you want to perform well and accomplish your goals. To create match-like pressure on the range, imagine very specific targets like the 17th at TPC Sawgrass, where you’re trying to hit the island green with the hole surrounded by water and a huge Sunday crowd. Practice your pre-shot ritual (for example – Ready, Set, Release) before every swing — even your short pitches, half-wedges, chips and putts. The next time you’re under pressure — like when you need to chip it close to save par or hit the fairway on a tight driving hole — remember to use the exact same pre- shot ritual you’ve been practicing to lead you into and through the shot. Try it — it works.

What you need to do is focus and turn things around. Say something to yourself like the following:

“Yes I am a little nervous, but that’s okay it’s just normal. Any golfer facing the same shot on the golf course would feel the same way. It’s perfectly fine and I have a very good reason to feel this way.

This simple tip helps you understand the position you are in and helps you deal with the feelings of anxiety and nervousness so that you can prepare for the next golf shot. Just by knowing you have to play a certain golf shot and you must do it with nervous energy, is very important to helping your mind relax and boosts your golf mental game.

After you examine the situation on the golf course, and hopefully start to embrace it, you can better deal with the anxiety and have total control over it. This is where the tools from Thought Free Golf can be used to eliminate all distractions. Treat each situation on the golf course as you would when you recognize any familiar sound of a common occurrence such as that long patch of grass that catches your eye, or the wind gusting. Simply recognize and remove the distractions the same as you would any other insignificant event.

Golf also involves balance and stabilization. To improve this takes a concentrated effort on core work and exercises involving balance (such as one-legged exercises). 
The more popular golf-exercises are done on a stability ball; using exercise tubing; hand weights; and even weighted medicine balls. This allows you to do many dynamic movements similar to your golf swing, directly relating to more power, distance and accuracy. These pieces of equipment are very inexpensive and portable. You can have a complete golf weight training gym in your home for under $100 easily. This is as golf-specific as you can get. Doing your actual movement with resistance will dramatically increase your power output. 

There are dozens of simple, golf weight training exercises you can do with the above equipment (and in your home). When you do these types of golf weight training exercises you will be encouraged that it will be focused on the muscles that will improve your game.

Identify Strict Expectations That Impede Success. Expectations, especially strict ones such as to hit perfect shots, do more harm than good. Expectations, good or bad, high or low are harmful to performance because they keep you stuck. Placing high expectations on yourself puts you in a win-lose or success-failure situation. If you don’t reach your high expectations, it’s easy to judge your effort as a failure. Setting simple goals is a better option. Set simple manageable goals like hitting a certain number of fairways per round or to play one shot at a time.

Focus on Having Fun in the Present. The anxiety you experience partially results from an overemphasis on results or shooting a certain number. Everybody is trying to shoot a good score and you can’t control the outcome of a round. Your competitive goal should be to play for fun and the enjoyment of the game. This is easier said than done for golfers who constantly tie themselves up in knots because they try too hard to play well. Start by recalling why you first started playing golf. Did you enjoy the feeling of a well-hit shot? Did you like being outdoors? Try to approach goal like a kid again.

Don’t Beat Yourself up for Mistakes. If you are a perfectionist, you spend too much time dwelling on your mistakes, bad shots, and weaknesses. This is unhealthy for your self-confidence and doesn’t let you enjoy golf. Dwelling on your weaknesses and errors sends a message to yourself that you are never good enough. You are not a failure, you just choose to think more about your faults. You have to make the choice to think about the small successes and remember the good shots instead of repeatedly replaying the bad shots. When you finish a round of golf, ask yourself first what two things you did well today instead of beating yourself up for the missed shots.

Give Yourself Permission to Make Mistakes. Perfectionists think that anything less than a flawless performance is a failure – the first bad shot or bad score on a hole ruins the entire round. You have to accept that you are human and you will make mistakes just like everyone else—it’s part of golf.

The results:

·      The group that didn’t practice showed no improvement.

·      The group that practiced the shots daily saw an improvement of  24% .

·      The group that practiced mentally improved equally 24%!

They were given one Simple instruction, “Practice mentally making  baskets”.

They had all made baskets before so they all had a “common frame of reference for success”.

Visualization is controlled by our subconscious inner thoughts. The simple key: Feed your subconscious with the right thoughts.