"Attitude (Is Almost) Everything"

The lines of demarcation in the mental game of golf are clear.

You don't need to be a sports psychologist to recognize that some attitudes are productive and promote good play, while other attitudes are counterproductive and prohibit good play.

Performance-enhancing attitudes are as such:

• Having self-trust;
• Loving the challenge;
• Having fun;
• Playing in the present;
• Being relaxed, ready and focused;
• Being performance-oriented;
• Having high intrinsic motivation.

Performance-killing attitudes include:

• Fear;
• Experiencing anxiety or tension;
• Being self-conscious;
• Trying too hard or not being committed;
• Playing in the past or future;
• Being results-oriented;
• Having low intrinsic motivation.

Understand the difference and work to develop the proper frame of mind, and you'll see dramatic improvement in your own play.

"Feel or Feelings?"

Let's understand about the word "feel" and how you apply it to golf the "Without Practice" way so you can shave some strokes of your game effortlessly. You know deep down if not at the top of your head that when you feel good, you will perform or act your best in anything right?

Most of us struggle with our feelings because we just let them occur based on whatever is happening in our lives at the time. For instance, if you just get news that you got a raise at work, you are going to have a great feeling for some time after, correct?

Feel is our STATE. What is a state? Our STATE is physiology plus internal representation. It's short for "state of being." WE need to pay far more attention to when we play well than when we don't!

Many golfers completely dissect their rounds afterward replaying their bad shots over and over in their minds trying to figure out what went wrong. This only serves to implant suggestions in our subconscious mind that that is how we play. Not good for future rounds.

It all stems from the concept of the duality of our mind; the subconscious and the conscious functions. Once we get this, we can do a lot toward the mental side of our game to reach our potential. Putting the focus on the negatives only gives them power and the repetition of thinking about them starts to solidify in your subconscious.

Remember that your subconscious doesn't know the difference between a positive or negative thought, it just accepts that which it is most convinced of by repetitive thought or action.

What you need to start doing right now, next round, is really zero in on the things that go well. Make little celebrations in your mind (be humble with your partners) when you hit a great shot. Turn on the positive emotions and show a big smile when you sink that long putt!

Take mental, if not paper and pen, notes on anything worth remembering when you do anything that puts you into that "feel good" state. Create an anchor that you do every time you hit a shot. When you have bad shots, immediately analyze it afterward, see what you can learn from it and then FORGET IT! It will do you no good whatsoever to hold onto it.

- Sanam Merchant

                          In Order to Gain Control… You have to let your control go …

This involves switching into the automatic habit function of your brain. It is now time to switch off your analytical, logical, thinking part of your brain, and trust that your unconscious has received the map and directions and is ready to drive you to your destination.

Relaxation and the release of tension are the keys to switch off your thinking brain. Now is the time to take a good deep breath to relax and loosen your muscles. As you get comfortable over the ball by waggling your body or club, you focus in on your target and put the target picture in your "mind’s eye".

Just before you swing you can activate your swing key which will "fire" the swing you desire. Your swing key is a word or feeling that you have associated with a particular swing when you practiced. For instance, you might use the word "bounce" for a sand bunker shot. Every time you practice in the bunker and hit a good shot you say bounce to yourself after you feel the flange of the club bouncing off the sand. In your pre-shot routine then, you say the word "bounce" and the image of the bunker swing is activated from your unconscious mind.

As you come to the end of the routine, you are then totally engrossed in the process of the routine, which has built you up to a feeling of really wanting to swing the golf club.

Once you make up your mind about club selection, move forward from conscious thinking to unconscious programming. Then, you are on automatic pilot.

Each step leads to the next step. Your mind, body and spirit move in harmony toward the culmination of a smooth, easy, effortless golf swing.

The routine has its own rhythm, each part being completed with your full attention before moving on to the next step.

Under USGA rules, 45 seconds are allowed a golfer get the ball into the air when it is his/her turn.

                                                                                             The Pre-Shot Routine

What is a Pre-Shot Routine ??

Many golfers profess to have a pre-shot routine but many don't in fact get as much benefit as they could potentially get from it, and most of them use it at the start of the game and not for every shot as it ideally should be used.

A correct pre-shot routine is the bedrock of on course mental control of your game. The term refers to the period of time prior to address when you mentally and physically prepare for the stroke. It is the period where you are allowing yourself to make conscious decisions about the stroke. Once these conscious choices have been made, you then need to mentally prepare yourself and allow yourself to become relaxed and focused just before making the stroke. This needs to be done before every shot for it to be of any use.

If you do not go through this process before each shot then you could be allowing self-doubt, negative emotions, muscle tension or the conscious mind to influence the shot and cause a negative outcome. 

It is therefore very important that you actually achieve what you think you are achieving with your pre-shot routine and not just going through the motions of a habitual process merely because you think you should.

·  A pre-shot routine on average takes 10 seconds from when it is your turn to play 

·  In a round of 95 that takes 4 hours (240 minutes) to play, your pre-shot routine in total takes 16 minutes/6.6% of your time out on the course 

·  Apart from the time spent swinging the club and hitting the ball these 16 minutes could influence your score more than anything else you do in those 4 hours 

Now one would ask why we even bother with a pre-shot routine ?

The benefits of a pre shot routine are that it allows you to achieve conscious concentration, to relax, to visualise the shot and eliminate any self doubt or negative thoughts.

1. Evaluate the lie of the ball, weather conditions, how you have been playing, distance to the target. 
2. Pick the correct flight and club for the shot in hand. 
3. Stand behind the ball on the ball to target line, pick a SPECIFIC target to aim to hit the ball towards. 
4. Take a deep and relaxing breath.
5. Visualise the shot. 
6. Walk smoothly and effortlessly to the ball thinking about the flight of the ball and the specific target that you have chosen. 
7. Be aware of clubface alignment, body alignment and ball position. 
8. Take another deep and relaxing breath. 
9. Be aware of the specific target and ball flight. 

Be aware of what your routine consists of, it will obviously vary from player to player. It may help if you note down what YOU DO, like the example above, so when you are playing below your best you can check you are sticking to your routine.

                                      Choose your COLORS for a better game

One might find it hard to believe that choosing the right coloured shirt to wear , would influence the way you play your round of golf ! But have you ever wondered why Tiger Woods seems to prefer wearing a red shirt most of the time ?  Is it simply a ritual or does it serve some greater purpose? Actually, it does serve a greater purpose for Tiger's game. Tiger feels more aggressive when he wears his red colored shirt.

The key question is "How does wearing a red shirt make Tiger feel more aggressive on the golf course?" More importantly, how can Tiger's red shirt help your golf game? What is the theory behind the red shirt ??

To answer this, we must first examine the color red. Typically, red stands for aggression and assertiveness. To give you an example, the matador uses a red cape to make the bull more aggressive and charge at him. Red also stands for fire and when you are fired up you are going to act more assertively.

The second reason why wearing a red colored shirt makes Tiger act more aggressive relates to the foundation of self-perception theory. Put simply, this theory states that we infer our emotions from our actions. Our brain gets the message from our body how to feel. Take smiling as an example. When we smile, we just feel happier. Even faking a smile will make you feel happier even if you are battling with inner turmoil. We infer that we are happy because we our smiling. In the case of Tiger Woods, the action of putting on a red shirt makes him feel more aggressive and fired up to go.

The principle of Tiger's red shirt can have a huge impact on your golf game and golf attitude. Let's apply this principle to building confidence about your golf game. There are many ways to become more confident, but one main one is by simply acting confident. How we act on the golf course after a missed shot or putt can greatly impact how confident we may feel for the next couple of holes. For instance, walking off the green with the shoulders slumped and the head down after missing an easy putt will make the golfer feel less confident in subsequent holes. This golfer infers from his body language (slumping shoulders) that there must be something wrong. On the other hand, if a golfer just had a disastrous hole, yet can still hold the head and shoulders high, a loss of confidence is less likely to occur, and it brings the stress levels down because after all, one is playing the game to relax and de-stress.

If you want to feel more aggressive on the golf course, wear a red shirt like Tiger. If you want to feel more confident, you must strut your stuff no matter what happens on the hole. If you want to have more fun, just keep smiling. Try it out ... wear a red shirt when you go to play your next round of golf, keep those shoulders upright and SMILE even if you've hit a bad shot, and your game will be instinctively better and more relaxing !!

                                             SEE the ball ... Mental Focus

                                                        The ZONE

                                                                         - Indrajit Bhalotia - 

How many times have we heard people saying this guy is in a zone. The zone we believe is a state where one cant go wrong, but have we ever thought if it can be induced or does it just happens. The zone is nothing but a state where the player does his routine systematically and goes through the motions of playing consistently. Basically he is doing his pre shot routine consistently and not taking too much or too little time to play his shot. The player is involved more with going through the motions of playing and being in the present tense rather than thinking about past mistakes or future consequences.

Let us take for instance Tiger Woods, when he leads a tournament more often than not he wins with a huge margin. This is only possible when a golfer focuses more on his routine rather than worry what the competition is doing or what the situation he is in. Nobody is born with the quality of being in the 'zone' but yes it is a quality which needs to be practiced and perfected. One needs to practice getting into a consistent routine whether he is playing a practice round with his friend or playing the final round of a US Open. As the golfer focuses on doing his routine and going through his rituals it seems to the world that he is in a zone. To get the routine correct and also be disciplined and follow it under immense pressure requires a lot of hard work and that is what makes a champion so special. In our next article we will discuss what is routine and how it can help us play better under pressure.