In the Dirt, by
Tim "The Golf-Meister" Flaherty

Jan 04 2010

Is Concentration “the secret to playing better golf”???

Studies show in what could be a useful tip, that golfers who focused too much on their technique lost consistency in their rounds and tended to have slower putting routines.

They recommend that golfers should try to "distract" themselves from their physical actions to improve their results. Under pressure, golfers often concentrate on their technique in the belief that this will help their game.

However, the intense focus appeared to create exactly the opposite result, according to John Toner, from University College, Dublin, who carried out the study. He said: "When people feel under pressure they start to focus more on their technique, but this study shows that is exactly What they should not do.”

"They should certainly not try to adjust their technique at all and should stick to what they know."

He added that golfers could try to trick their body into reverting to its natural stroke by focusing on something else on the Golf course rather than their physical action.

He said: "One trick that people can certainly try is to try to distract their external focus. Make sure that your focus is on The hole or on a spot on the green and do not think about your technique or how your limbs are moving."

PlayOnGolf.com asked Certified Sports Clinical Hypnotherapist, Cindy Locher, CH, CSH, about the changes mental conditioning For "sport performance" can make for your game.

Locher has worked with people who wanted to gain the mental edge for mental conditioning. She found 5 success factors that that can improve your performance to help you release your "reactions to certain triggers":

* Eliminate the mental clutter and "chatter" that spoil your game
* Be calm and focused in competition or any game, and learn to control your focus
* Increase your consistency by increasing that focus (and how focus is different from concentration)
* "How you think" is more important that anything else. You'll get what you focus on.
* Learn a lightning-fast technique to get into a light state of hypnosis before every game and every shot. This technique alone will improve your consistency and therefore lower your score.

This is what our own "Golf-Meister", Tim Flaherty, said after having a session of sports hypnosis delivered by Cindy Locher:

"Yesterday I felt like I really/really got into Ben Hogan's mind and understand better now after 30 years of searching how to master myself for golf...the anchor you taught me does work...I'm on auto-pilot now-no more thinking my way thru my golf swing....I'm hitting 9 greens within 12 feet now...yes, I think your approach does help!"

The Golf-Meister, a lifetime 8 handicap and self described "B" club champion has broken personal scoring barriers in 2009 with rounds of 68,68,73 after mastering how to "fire his anchor" that Cindy worked to implement in Tim's game.

Studies appear to confirm conventional wisdom that "over-thinking" during performance can have negative results and could explain some of the most famous misses in golf.These include Doug Sanders' 1970 failure to make a two foot putt to win the British Open at St Andrews, which is still remembered by many golf fans.

Ben Hogan was said to be screaming at his T.V. in Fort Worth, Texas to "step back" as Sanders' flippantly missed his putt. The Dublin study asked 18 experienced golfers, who played off an average handicap of two, to concentrate on how they were playing as they did putting practice.

The results were compared to the control group who were asked just to putt normally, the findings were then presented at the British Psychological Society annual conference in Brighton.

Confirming studies conducted earlier this year at St Andrews University and the University of Michigan showed that golfers took twice as long to make a putt if they had previously spent five minutes discussing their technique.

In conclusion, get a mental routine by working with a hypnotherapist or mental coach as well as an automatic physical routine before all shots. This has been called the "40 second sanctuary" by the Golf-Meister.

Go on, go to the next level.

Do you have to ask anyone's permission to play better?

Tim "the Golfmeister" Flaherty