By Roy Palmer

Have you ever had the experience that you putted before you were ready? You were in the middle of thinking about playing it and then all of a sudden, oops, there it goes. What you thought was going to be a carefully thought out putt just turned into a bit of a howler. You get the feeling it wasn’t you who just played the shot but some mischievous outside force that had taken over your actions.

Let’s take this away from the course for a moment and look at the same phenomena in a different situation; getting out of bed. In his book, Principles of Psychology (1890), William James wrote

“We know what it is to get out of bed on a freezing morning in a room without a fire, and how the very vital principle within us protests against the idea… We think how late we shall be, how the duties of the day will suffer; we say, “I must get up, this is ignominious,” and so on. But still the warm couch feels too delicious, and the cold outside too cruel, and resolution faints away and postpones itself again and again just as it seemed on the verge of the decisive act.

Now how do we ever get up under such circumstances? If I may generalize from my own experience, we more often than not get up without any struggle or decision at all. We suddenly find that we have got up. A fortunate lapse of consciousness occurs, we forget both the warmth and the cold; we fall into some reverie connected with the day’s life, in the course of which the idea flashes across us, “Hello! I must lie here no longer” – an idea which at that lucky instant awakes no contradictory or paralyzing suggestions, and consequently produces immediately its appropriate motor effects. It was our acute consciousness of both the warmth and the cold during the period of struggle which paralyzed our activity. This case seems to me to contain in miniature form the data for an entire psychology of volition.”

This experience is put down to what scientists call ideomotor movement, an unconscious or involuntary bodily movement made in response to a thought or an idea rather than to a sensory stimulus.
It’s also often referred to as “mischief-making” and has a role in dowsing, playing with an Ouija board and, I believe, in those crucial moments before a putt.

The feeling that the process has just run away from us and taken control out of our hands is because we’re thinking too far ahead. By focusing on how we’re going to do the activity before we actually need to perform that activity sets everything in place long before the muscles are needed – a bit like revving your engine at the lights.

The actions that will carry out the movement are ready, waiting and gaining momentum as you think of taking your putt. A threshold is reached and suddenly the activity happens. Unfortunately, you weren’t able to consciously decide when you were going to do it for yourself. So how can you prevent this mischief-making activity at the very moment you really don’t need it? You have to be in the moment and focused on the here and now. In this state of mind you’re not racing ahead of yourself and queuing up those movements that will kick in unexpectedly.

When you’re over the ball, be aware of your breathing, the movement of your ribs and the toes in your socks. If you’ve measured up your shot you no longer need to think about it; it’s taken care of. This way you can stay in the moment and focus only on the task in immediate hand and consciously decide when you’re ready to putt.

You can practice this before you even get out of bed in the morning! When you wake up tomorrow see if you can consciously choose the moment you get out of bed. Note how you can achieve this and apply the same technique on the green. See if it doesn’t help.

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By Bob E. Jones

The most aggravating mistake in golf is for your 8-foot birdie putt to be tracking right at the hole — and stop six inches short. Now doing that once, well, that’s golf. But if you do that all the time, if you leave strokes on the course like that every time you play, here’s how to get those seven inches that you need.

Fear. You’re afraid you’ll hit the ball too far past the hole so you hold back. If you hit the ball past the hole, in your mind there’s nothing to stop the ball from going ten feet before it stops rolling. It won’t, you’re a better putter than that, but you see no obstacle beyond the hole that would prevent the ball from just rolling and rolling, and that makes you nervous.

So you settle for leaving it short. This becomes your psychological comfort zone. Let’s change your mind. Hit practice putts that will deliberately miss the hole and end up about two feet beyond. Practice like this in the 6 to 15-foot range.

Use just one ball. Watch the ball go past the hole. Get accustomed to seeing the ball go by and not being bothered by it. Next, walk up and hit the ball in the hole. Convince yourself that you can make the comebacker.

Do this over and over to convince you that you have the skill to hit the ball past the hole and leave yourself with a slam dunk coming back.

The second reason you leave putts short is that you’re concentrating too much on line, trying so hard hit the ball on the line you’ve chosen that you hit the putt too delicately and it doesn’t get to the hole.

To combat this mistake, do two things. First, practice hitting putts that go by the hole, as you just read. Then, find a spot on the green about six inches from your ball, along the chosen line, and putt the ball across that spot. If you do, I guarantee the ball will go where you intended, and get to the hole.

One more thought. You might try playing a round of golf with only one objective in mind — to hit every putt hard enough to either go in the hole or past it if it misses. Don’t be concerned about how far past the hole it goes, don’t worry about your score. Just get the ball past if it misses.

You might hit a few home runs early in the round, but if you keep at it, you will adjust quickly and start making a few. That will get you playing offense on the green, and that is how to make putts and lower your score.

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by Dave Pipitone

Are you satisfied with your golf score? If you want to impress your golf buddies, but keep shooting the same score in the 100′s after months into the golf season, you have to make a change. How? Practice!

Let’s face it, the golf season in most areas of Canada and the U.S. runs from mid-April to late October. To make the best of the golf season, hone your game in your backyard by practicing with used golf balls. You can lower your golf score. If the golf season is seven months long, it can seem even longer when your scores don’t improve and when you don’t practice.

Who wants to trudge down the fairway feeling bad because hitting topped balls, shanks, or slices that only look good on watermelons? Isn’t it embarrassing to admit to friends and family that you had the same lousy round yesterday as you did three or four months ago. Guess what – you get better by practicing golf shots. And you don’ t have to spend tons of money by going to the golf driving range every day. You can set up your own mini golf range right in your own yard.

Here are tips to improve your golf score, impress your friends and smile when you look at the scorecard after your round of golf.

1. Put an easy-to-use golf practice area in your backyard
For less than $100, you can buy quality used golf balls, a golf practice mat, a golf practice net, or even a golf practice cage. Just set them up in your back yard. Then, practice your golf swing with every golf club you have, from a driver to a sand wedge. When you set up your own practice area, you don’t have to worry about waiting in long lines at the golf range; you can practice when you want.

2. Target your short game with practice games
Get a basket, used tire, or a hula hoop. Practice your chipping by hitting used golf balls into the chosen the target. You will develop a feel for how hard to hit a golf ball. When you improve your aim, you will improve your game.

3. Practice often
If you think you only need to take a couple of swings, hit ten golf balls and feel you are ready to take on Tiger Woods, think again. In fact, just what are you thinking? Golf pros hit hundreds of practice shots a day to hone their aim, distance and muscle memory. If you can’t commit to a two hour practice session, break it up. Hit used golf balls into a net for 30 minutes in the early morning, chip into a tire for 15 minutes at noon and hone your short game in the evening.

4. Master one club at a time
Do you want to shave off strokes quicker than a triple blade razor on a soft beard? Try this. Think about your last ten rounds of golf. What money shots did you miss that would have lowered your score? If you are like most golfers, you probably realize that you could have saved dozens of strokes from shots that were under 100 yards from the green. Here’s what to do. Tell yourself “I’m getting down in two” to get a can-do mindset. Practice those shots. Expect to hit good shots, take only two strokes to put your golf ball in the hole and guess what? That is exactly what you will do.

5. Visualize your perfect golf shots
Many golf pros have a “mental” coach, a sports psychologist, to visualize a positive outcome. Here is what to do. Invest 10 minutes a day in sitting in a comfortable chair, closing your eyes and watching a mental movie of yourself driving straight and long down the middle of the fairway, or hitting a nine iron within twelve inches of the cup. Imagine leaping into the air or making a “YES!!!” fist pump with a lot of emotion. You will amaze yourself at the results.

When you use quality used golf balls and practice these five tips, your golf score can only improve. All you need is reliable golf practice equipment to make your practice sessions effective.

Dave Pipitone is an amateur golfer who invests time in practicing golf. To find bargains on used golf balls, visit Dave’s site at www.used-golf-balls.net.

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By Mark H Wright

You must become an artist with your wedges. These are your scoring clubs and you must be proficient enough with them so that you can get your golf ball closer to the hole where you can knock them in with your putter. Like Tiger Woods said, “Anyone can shoot low numbers if they can hit the ball close enough to the hole!” If you could hit your ball to 10ft or less on average with any of your wedges and you were a good putter, how much better would you score? For the vast majority of golfers the answer would be “A whole lot better!” Golf is not about the long game.

You do not have to devote a lot of time to get good improvement in your wedge play, in fact a surprisingly small amount of actual physical practice in conjunction with a visualisation program as used by professionals that you can literally do anywhere anytime, even if you only have a couple of minutes, will reap huge rewards. You may be surprised to learn that if you spent just one hour a week hitting actual wedges from your longest wedge to the shortest, Pitching Wedge, Gap Wedge, Sand Wedge, Lob Wedge and use a professional visualisation program just 3 or four times a week, you will be good with your wedge play inside 6 months, great in a year and pretty soon after that Deadly accurate.

You need to be able to hit a full, three quarter and half shot with each wedge so if your technique is poor then consider talking to a professional who is good with their wedges and discuss a long term training program focused purely on your wedge play. You are looking to develop a solid technique but beware that you do not become buried and fixated on technique. Like I said you need a solid reliable technique that YOU can hit and fits YOUR style, you do not need to have a perfect technique.

Once you have a reliable technique then all you need do is practice hitting the different distances for as little as an hour per week. Back this up with your professional Mental Game Program and Visualisation as used by the Professionals on Tour and you will be amazed at how good you get, QUICKLY!

You will find that this new accuracy means your confidence all the way back to the tee improves massively and so all your shots improve. You are going to be hitting more greens and because you are not only on more greens but also closer to the hole, you will drain more putts too! As your putts fall in more often, your scores plummet, your confidence will go through the roof and you can begin to experience playing the golf of your dreams. And all because of an hour a week, and a solid Mental Game Visualisation Program.

If you cannot even devote an hour to actual “physical” practice then consider this. It has been proven time and time again in the professional sports world that doing visualisation practice of a physical move on its own IS SUPERIOR to doing physical practice of the skill on its own. Let me make sure you get this because it is hugely important. If you just sit at home (or anywhere) and visualise yourself hitting great wedge shots you will improve faster than if you just go to the range and actually hit shots but do no visualisation, fact.

This now makes the excuse of “I do not have time to practice completely impotent because there is not a single person who cannot sit quietly and visualise themselves performing a task. You can even do this as part of your going to sleep routine and is in fact a fantastic time to visualise because your mind works on your desired move while you sleep.

The ultimate improvement program is 50% actual physical practice with 50% visualisation. An hour a week hitting wedges and visualise yourself hitting great wedge shots all the time, especially as you go to sleep at night.

Find out more by the mental game of golf now and how to easily apply principals such as visualisation, focus of attention, targeting and many others that will dramatically improve your golf results and enjoyment of the game now go to http://www.golfmindshop.com

Improve By “Every Golfers Guide To The Development And Mastery Of The Inner Game” has extensive guides both written and on MP3 to achieve your best performance by discovering the surprising power of great Sports Thinking – The Mental Game.

Wishing you FIR’s, GIR’s & Blue Skies,

Mark.

GET YOUR Peak Mental Performance FREE EBook to get your mental game started now at http://www.golfmindshop.com or FREE GOLF GRIP EBook.

Mark Wright is a Master Coach and Sport Psychologist, NLP Sports Coach, Hypnosis Expert and Master Club Maker with nearly 25 years of Sports Coaching Experience.

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