Golf Psychology Online

To many Dr Bob Rotella is the Godfather of Golf Psychology and I am no exception. Dr Bob’s books offer a fascinating insight to the mental side of the game with tips and drills for golfers of all standards to real life scenarios of the world’s greatest tour players who have worked with Dr Bob. Dr Bob has been selected as one of the “Top 10 Golf Teachers of the 20th Century”. He has served as President of the North American Association for Applied Sports Psychology as well as leading the top graduate program in the country for over 20 years.

The list of players who have worked with Dr Bob includes 3 times major winner, Padraig Harrington,2008 Masters champion Trevor Immelman and a host of other household names such as Paul Azinger, Brad Faxon, David Toms, Tom Kite and Davis Love III. He is author of the best selling sports psychology book of all time “Golf is Not a Game of Perfect” which is also one of the top 3 selling golf books of all time.

I cannot recommend this and Dr Bob’s other books and DVD’s highly enough, if they don’t make you realise what a huge part of the game this is, nothing will.

Virtually none of us would accept a conversation taking place around us as we prepare to take our shot, so why is it that having received the customary courteous silence from our playing partners we so frequently address the ball and find ourselves talking non-stop inside out own head, keep it square, don’t dip, don’t sway, keep your head still, make a full turn, watch the back of the ball, full follow through, finish high, to quote but a few of our self instructions. How the hell are you expected to comply with all these and many more thoughts whilst making a body movement that takes around 2 seconds, and who is doing the talking anyway? Well of course, it’s ourselves, but which part of ourselves? The best way I’ve found to explain this to others is to call this talkative part our conscious brain and therefore it’s silent but just as important counterpart, the sub-conscious brain.

When allowed free range, as it is for the majority of our every day tasks, our subconscious brain copes quite happily thank you without a flood of non-stop instructions from the conscious side, you don’t tell your body how to work to walk down the stairs in the morning or send your arm a stream of data before it can open the fridge door. Why, because these are tasks which we have successfully completed thousands of times before and have full confidence in our ability to do so, not the case with an 8Oyard pitch from the semi over the lake to a smelly pin position.

Research has stated that humans have the greatest capacity to learn between birth and approximately 3 years of age, but as we are born with, as far as we know, no conscious knowledge what is it that does the learning if it’s not the sub-conscious. Newborns are like aliens from another planet, not only can’t they speak our language they have no means of communication by which we can consciously teach them, but as they learn anyway it does raise the question about whos communication skills are the better. Conversely, for an adult to learn a foreign language a great deal of effort and study will be required and for the language to become as natural as their first is rare indeed. A fluent French speaking English friend of mine told me he knew he’d finally got it when he started dreaming in French and no longer carried out translations between the 2 languages in his head during a conversation or when reading in French. What has happened is that as we learn we also acquire the ability to analyse and question and in doing so inhibit our natural ability to learn and perform.

We cannot, nor would we wish to, remove our analytical skills but there are times when it is to our advantage to quieten them. One of the greatest examples of this I have seen and the one which turned me into a firm believer in the conscious and subconscious, because it was done to my wife and therefore truly remarkable to me, was carried out by top golf coach Scott Cranfield. Scott asked my wife, Di, if she could juggle, this question alone had me sniggering as I wouldn’t back her to catch rain in a thunderstorm, she answered honestly that she could not. Having received the same answer from another friends wife Scott had the 2 ladies stand 12-15 feet apart with one golf ball each, he then instructed them that they were to start tossing the balls to each other simultaneously but the only thing he wanted them to concentrate on was saying the word ‘now’ when they perceived that the ball approaching them had reached the apex of it’s flight, imagine our amazement when within 30 seconds the balls were whizzing between them like a seasoned circus act. It got better, Scott then gave Di a third golf ball and told them to resume their, catch — now — throw, routine and that whenever she felt like it Di was to introduce the third ball into the exercise, not only was the third ball introduced without a hitch, at first Di’s partner did not even realise that it had done so, when she did they had their first dropped ball. What Scott had done was to quieten their conscious minds and remove the thought of juggling and replaced it with the simple instruction of saying the word now when an object was at its peak.

Golf Psychology

What a time we chose to launch golfpsychologyonline.com. As revelations continue to pour in and Tiger’s personal life seems to be going into meltdown how will the worlds Number 1 golfer react. We are not interested here about the gossip surrounding Tiger’s personal life, but what we are interested in is how one of the mentally toughest players ever will deal with the aftermath of recent events when he returns to the tour. Rest assured, we’ll be keeping a very close eye on things.

Tiger’s Quote
“My creative mind is my greatest weapon. It is a kind of inner vision that enables me to see things that others might not, like a certain way to play a shot. The psychology of golf can be complicated as it does entail mental toughness, self confidence, conquering inner demons, instant recall of past successes and being able to purge failures.

It is the game within a game, I developed my mental game early I cannot overemphasise the importance of you developing yours NOW”
Tiger Woods

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