A very popular Fred Couples wins the Senior British Open

Thanks to a great performance in the final holes, including a birdie-birdie finish, Freddie Couples won the British Senior Open at Turnberry, Scotland, by two strokes.

Everybody admires this great golfer for his great swing, so relaxed and loose, for being such a nice guy, and yes, also for his Hollywood  type good looks !!!!!!

When living in Florida in the eighties I was lucky enough to see Couples play, several times and up close. What a super swing. Elegant, relaxed and loose, that gave him great distance and the nickname "Boom-Boom".

But also, a great and intense competitor.

From the Mental Golf angle, I have learnt a couple of very good lessons from Fred Couples.

The first is that it is never necessary to force in order to hit a longer ball. On the contrary. Couples shows us that  a relaxed, easy and loose swing allows us to hit it longer.........and, obviously,with much better control and less risk.

The second lesson is one I picked up from a Golf Digest interview. Couples was asked what he was thinking about when hitting an important shot. Freddie´s answer.......just perfect from the Mental Golf point of view:

" I don´t think of anything. I just remember a great shot I hit in similar circumstances and shoot".

What Couples does is utilize a very recommended mental technique.

Visualization.

There are two ways to make use of this technique just before hitting the ball. Visualize a perfect shot in detail, or, like Freddie, recall a similar great shot we have hit in similar circumstances.

With this great win Fred Couples now has three Majors to his credit: One Masters, one Senior Player´s Championship (earlier this year) and this British Senior Open, that gives him a spot in the British Open field in Muirfield 2013.

Can we dream of Freddie winning  another Major ????. Something that Tom Watson missed out on by, just, millimeters in 2010 ?.

To win a British Open as a Senior would indeed be a crowning moment to Fred Couples´outstanding golfing career.

The eye doctor who helped Ernie Els win the British Open

One of the highlights of Ernie Els´ victory speech last Sunday at Royal Lythams, was his special thank you to fellow Southafrican doctor Sherylle Calder, who has been key in his short game and putting turnaround this year.

According to Sherylle Calder´s web page, she teaches a "visualization" program called  Eye Gym, and she is very well known in South Africa and in Great Britain for helping a host of elite sportsmen and women, and teams, from Rugby, Hockey and Soccer, to cannoeing, shooting and, of course, golf, among others.

What doctor Calder does, some call it visualization, in principle, does not have too much to do with the mind. Basically she teaches a program that trains the player to effectively use his/her vision and to appropriately use the eyes.

EyeGym is basically a computer based software program that teaches visual training. The technology involved is last generation high tech, and the training drills are the result of years of experience in coaching visual performance skills on a worldwide basis. It is a one in a kind training program, second to none, according to doctor Calder and her many loyal and satisfied clients.


Sherylle Calder

 Some of the benefits are the effective use of both eyes with maximum coordination, better timing when striking a ball, better spacial awareness, a more efficient and longer decision making process and a higher capacity for focus during extensive periods.

Very interesting to me as a Mental Coach is Calder´s claim that through better eye and vision training, more accurate messages are sent to the brain.

Some feel that Els´ British Open win is almost miraculous. After all he tried everything for ten years without results.And he now is back at the top, thanks to this great win and his close relationship to the extraordinary doctor Sherylle Calder.

Adam Scott: Open collapse is the result of a weak (or non existant) Mental Method

How can it be possible that a great golfer like Adam Scott, who was playing superbly at the British Open, bogeys the last four holes and gives away the Championship by one ??????

But, is it really such a surprise ?.

Not really, we have seen it happen dozens of times at the top level in world golf.

Van de Velde at the Open in 1999, Norman at the 1996 Masters, Dustin Johnson at Pebble Beach at the 2010 US Open, Kyle Stanley earlier this year, and so many others.

Let me try and go through Scott´s collapse from the mental angle. What occurred on those last four holes was a mind/ body desinchronization that is quite easily explained from the psychological point of view.

Until well into the second nine nobody made a run at Scott, and he continued  his great play. He was relaxed, under control and hitting great irons and woods. He was playing in "automatic mode" like he had done all week. He wasn´t holing much, but was rolling his long putts very well.

But on the 15´th tee he realized that Ernie Els was making a run at him. And instead of just playing the golf course, he started playing to beat Ernie Els.

In order to do this, Scott, for the first time in the week, pulled out his mental calculator. He might of even told Steve Williams: "with two bogeys we cant lose".

Fatal mistake for the following reasons:

1. The only way we can speculate about the result, or an outcome, in golf is by using the conscious mind.

And as a result, in this tremendously high pressure situation, Scott immediately lost his mind/body synchronization.

Let´s not forget that excellent, fluid, and great golf shots that happen in the "automatic" mode are always a result of the body (our swing) being perfectly synchronized with the unconscious mind.

But Adam Scott went conscious in trying to calculate what he had to do to keep in front of Els, and started to hit bad golf shots and bad putts.

2. The second effect is due to the fatal message: "with two bogeys we cant lose".

When this conscious message reaches the unconscious mind it is interpreted in a very different way to the one intended by Scott.

The unconscious mind does not posses the critical ability of our conscious mind to interpret what we really mean to say, and most likely it understood that Scott wanted to shoot bogeys. Period.

It sounds a bit crazy, but in all probability that´s exactly what happened. His powerful unconscious mind, that controls his depth perception, target awareness and his body movement (the golf swing), potentially, now, with even more intensity considering the emotion of the moment, just did it´s utmost to shoot bogeys.

3. Last but not least, Scott´s shot planning on the last four holes was pretty lousy. But, in my view, what killed him was his bogey on the 16´th.

He was in the middle of the fairway and only 100 yards away from the pin. He hit his wedge shot past the hole, and three putted like a beginner.

He needed to be supremely conservative with his approach and careful with his first putt.

In my view, if he had parred or birdied the hole it was over and it was his Championship. He would have regained his confidence and composure, resynchronized and remained at 9 under par, three away from Els at the time, and most probably would have parred both final holes to win by two.

I´m not exactly sure if Adam Scott is into Mental Golf or not. But my bet would be that he´s not, because it´s clear to me that he lacked an effective Mental Method when Els started closing in, and the big time pressure hit.

A solid Mental Method includes some very effective and proven techniques and behaviors that help the golfer face these types of pressure packed situations. There are pupils of good mental coaches that make a point of not looking at leader boards on the course, precisely to avoid thinking about the outcome. Bill Haas won the playoff at the 2010 Tour Championship without knowing that he had the U$ 10 million Fedex Cup bonus on the line. He didn´t want to know.

Pía Nilsson y Lynn Marriott (Vision 54) taught Yani Tseng, who became N° 1 in the world, to sing favorite songs (silently) in order not to think too much and avoid getting ahead of herself.

At any rate, there are many techniques and behaviors that help a golfer under pressure avoid going into the future. Judging by the result it seems that Adam Scott didn´t use any of them when he got "hit" by Ernie Els´ pressure.

Something else about the value of rigorous and conservative shot planning. Especially when we are under big pressure. Even if we are not synchronized as we should be, good planning can help us avoid bogeys and help us regain confidence and body/mind synchronization.

On the other hand, if we plan badly, like Adam Scott did in his last four holes, we tend to become frustrated and angry, and we get "stuck" in the past (conscious mind) and we continue incapable of synchronizing.

I´m sorry for Adam Scott. A great golfer who played superbly for 68 holes.

Unfortunately the lack of a solid Mental Method, or the sound application of one, prevented Adam Scott from winning the most important championship of his career.

A surprising Tiger/Foley practice session this evening at the Open

Tiger Woods shot a solid second 67 today at Royal Lytham & St Annes and puts himself in great position for the weekend.

Personally I have liked what Tiger has done up to now.

His on course management has been impeccable, planning each shot rigorously and conservatively.

It´s exactly what one has to do on a course full of pot bunkers and unplayable rough.

I have also liked his patience, a basic requisite in any Major venue where most pin positions tend to be very difficult. Tiger has also shown us that his short game is back to his best.

His golf swing seems to be well automatized, and all in all his long game looks solid and under control.

That´s why I was so surprised to watch what transpired on TV about an hour after Tiger Woods finished his play.

We were treated to a Tiger Woods/ Sean Foley (his swing coach) practice session on the driving range.

But more than a practice session, it looked  like a full fledged golf lesson. At one point we could see Foley snapping photographs from behind and showing them to Tiger emphasizing something. At another point he got Tiger to put a glove under his right shoulder and to hit balls. In the process Foley looked tremendously active, almost agitated, in making his points.

It doesn´t strike me to be the time or place for this type of detailed instruction when one´s pupil is in the hunt in a Major golf tournament,

I would have expected a very relaxed and easy going practice session. Just a little fine tuning and some practice of a couple of key shots.

 But, full fledged drills and photographs ??????. Very surprising.

I kind of liked what Francisco (Paco) Aleman, the excellent ESPN commentator in Spanish, said when he saw what was happening. He said something like: "No, let´s hope he leaves him alone" (Foley of Tiger).

The reason for avoiding any kind of  instruction that smells of swing change, in the middle of a tournament,  is because any changes necessarily have to be carried out with the conscious mind.

And to take to the course anything new in a Major when the pressure can be enormous is something that can be fatal.

We know that great golf shots are the product of a perfect mind body synchronization in the present moment, when the body, that obviously does not think, is perfectly synchronized with the automatic or unconscious mind, that also operates in the present mode.

If the golfer has to "recall" a technical aspect that was reinforced to him the evening before, he can only do this by utilizing his conscious mind, and that "magical" mind/ body synchronization becomes impossible.

For me it´s going to be a fascinating watching Tiger this weekend.

Hopefully it wont be a repetition of what happened to him on the weekend of the US Open at Olympic last month.

Zach Johnson, an expert in Mental Golf, wins the John Deere Classic

There is no question that Zach Johnson is a great golfer.

He has been on the PGA Tour for eight years, now, and he has won nine tournaments including the 2007 Masters and the John Deere Classic played this week, his second victory of the year, that has him at N° 2 in the Fedex race, only behind Tiger Woods.

Johnson came through the typical USA golf programs, but he was never number one in his teams in high school or college, and his huge success is a result of hard work and perseverance that took him from the mini tours, to the Nationwide Tour, where he was number one in the 2003 season, and to the PGA Tour.

He made it big time because he worked hard, because of his Christian Faith and because he assembled a great team. A great permanent swing coach, a successful personal fitness trainer and an expert mental coach. I enjoyed reading Johnson´s web page with details of his team, his personal story and his charity foundation  (http://www.zachjohnsongolf.com/ContentPages/Home.aspx). Zach Johnson comes across, not only as a great golf professional, but, also, as a great human being.

But what I like best about Johnson is his commitment to his on course Mental Method.

Johnson is a pupil of Doctor Morris (Mo) Pickens a respected sports psychologist from the University of Virginia where he studied under doctor Bob Rotella, then head of the sports psychology program.

In all Zach Johnson´s interviews including his victorious one as winner of yesterday´s John Deere Classic, one can perceive the influence of powerful Mental Golf concepts, including the value of patience, the importance of not getting too caught up in the highs and lows of golf results, techniques for facing high pressure situations and the need to not get "ahead" of oneself.

The key for the Zach Johnson/ Mo Pickens team is to face pressure situations concentrating on the process of hitting great golf shots instead of being concerned about the outcome of the round or the golf tournament.

Johnson y Mo Pickens

Last but not least, I liked what Johnson said, yesterday, regarding his capacity to always remain serene.

Serene and very happy if he plays well under pressure and hits great golf shots to win a tournament. And equally serene if things don´t work out and he loses a tournament when in the hunt, because this serenity allows him to learn from the experience and allows him to be better prepared for the next time around.

No doubt we will have Zach Johnson around for a long time because he is one of the elite world class golfers that knows most about Mental Golf.

The psychology of choking

Many thanks to my dear friend Leslie Brackenridge whom sent me this excellent article published by BBC Sports, a few months ago, about "choking" in sports.

The Psychology of Choking describes with total clarity what happens when a player faces pressure and his brain circuits get "switched" over from the automatic, intuitive, unconscious mind over to the conscious or "beginners" mind.

And a very interesting final conclusion: As the famous NIKE slogan.......you JUST HAVE TO DO IT !!!!!!!!!

Roger Federer´s Mental Secret

We all admire Roger Federer´s magnificent tennis and his effortless flow. And it´s no surprise that he has now won Wimbledon for a seventh time and is back to N° 1 in the world.

However, in the year 2003, at 22 years of age, Roger Federer was very good at tennis but he could not beat the top players of the world.

And what occurred that transformed Federer into the dominant player of the last decade ?

Simple: A mental decision to believe in himself.

According to Federer he learnt to stay calm when he was down in a key match, or when he was under pressure.
He learned to be patient during the key points of a match and to never, never, give in.

In other words, Roger Federer, at that point in his career started to believe in himself, and to visualize himself as a true Champion. Popular belief has it that tournament wins make one believe in oneself. But, in reality, it´s the other way round: one has to see oneself as a Champion, and, only then, we start winning.

In an excellent article on Federer, written a few years ago by Craig Townsend, an expert on hypnosis and on the mind, Townsend states exactly that: first comes the belief that we are Champions and only then, come the wins.

And how do we achieve this belief ?

As with almost everything in life, through hard work. Some of Townsend´s suggestions are the following:

1. Through visualization. What we should do is regularly visualize (imagine) ourselves winning matches and tournaments. These images should be as vivid as possible, very detailed, and in them we should see ourselves playing brilliantly.....in all areas of our respective sport or game.

2. We should never "pull ourselves down". Our self talk must always be  positive and optimistic. We must never allow ourselves to think about negative things that happened to us, nor about fears we might have.

3. We must reinforce our belief in ourselves on a permanent basis, reminding ourselves over and over again about our wins, instead of forgetting them quickly.

4. We must apply the Federer Method and never, ever give up on a game or match. We must fight on till the end because, in all probability, something positive will happen for us.

After all, positive things always happen to Champions.

Positive self talk, a key tool for playing great golf

Over time, and as I have learnt more about certain psychological concepts such as conscious autosuggestion, or the principle of reinforcement, I have become convinced of the power of positive self talk when used before and during a round of golf.

What happens is that, as we have discussed many times, the ability to hit great golf shots depends on our capacity to synchronize our mind and body.

The unconscious mind (controlled by the right side of the brain) manages our body movements with tremendous precision and efficacy, including, of course, the golf swing.

When we hit bad golf shots, it´s normally when the conscious mind (controlled by the left side of the brain) takes control of our body movements. The problem is that the conscious mind is a very limited processor in terms of managing our movements and, yes, does a very bad job of running the golf swing.

Additionally to doing a fantastic job of managing our golf swing, the unconscious mind is also superb at capturing depth perception and at acquiring target consciousness, key elements for performance on the golf course.

Then, there happens to be a spectacular tool that can help, enormously, to achieve the necessary synchronization between our body and our powerful unconscious mind.

None other than positive self talk.

Some of my recommendations for using positive self talk are the following:

The first point is to understand that what we are trying to do, is consciously influence, or "suggest", to our powerful unconscious mind that we want to play great golf, today, and that we want to hit each shot very synchronized in body and mind.

The second point is that our self talk (that can be spoken or silent) must be amiable, relaxed, almost as if we were talking to a very young child. The unconscious mind does not UNDERSTAND or COMPREHEND "dictatorial", rough or "strong" talk.

Also the tone must always be very positive; never with anger, or negativity.

Before getting to the course, I suggest that the player take a few minutes to think a bit about what he expects for his day of golf. I propose he should say, out loud, or think things such as the following:

"It´s a great day for playing great golf. I see myself hitting excellent shots. I am very loose and very into it every time I hit. I feel everything will be easy and that I will plan my shots very well. My short game will work very well".

The objective of this type of suggestion is very clear, and originates from the laws of conscious autosuggestion. The relevant one, in this case, is the law of UNCONSCIOUS FINALITY and it states that when an objective or finality is suggested, the unconscious mind will do everything it can to make it happen.

So before we start play, positive self talk regarding what we want to happen can be very useful.

Now, when we our round two things can happen:

1. We can play our first holes well, or very well. In this case our self talk should be of the following style:

"What a great start to a great day!!!!! I´m playing so well !!!! Let´s keep rolling.....just hitting excellent golf shots"

In this scenario I recommend that we celebrate our good shots with emotion (out loud or in silence). Including those good putts that didn´t drop by millimeters.

What we are doing here is to "reinforce" our good performance and consciously send a message, or image, of what we want to keep on doing, to our unconscious mind. This is very consistent with another law of conscious autosuggestion, the law of CONCENTRATED ATTENTION OR REPETITION that says that each time our attention is concentrated on an idea, time and time again, this idea spontaneously tends to become a reality.

The objective of utilizing emotion to celebrate our good shots is in line with yet another law of conscious autosuggestion. That is the law of DOMINANT EFFECT, and that states that a strong emotion or suggestion tends to replace a weaker one, and that one with stronger emotion has a better chance of  "staying recorded", for a longer period of time, in our unconscious mind.

2. We start paying badly or below standard:

In this scenario our self talk must be "amiable", patient and "hopeful", more or less as follows:

"It´s OK. My game will come back. Things will work out. With patience good shots will come and so will pars and birdies. We will fight back".

This is THE critical moment in a round of golf.

If we do the contrary and become frustrated or angry, we will only be sending a deadly negative message to our unconscious mind. And our self talk tends to go negative like the following:

"Cook, you are a rotten golfer. You just don´t know how to hit a golf shot. I don´t understand why you came out to play today".

Most probably, in this scenario, we will play poor golf all day as the unconscious mind does not distinguish that we really don´t mean what we are saying, and will only do it´s best to comply with our "prophecy" of poor golf, and does it´s utmost to help us do just that.

The other thing we have to do our best to avoid is instructions, or self talk, that is over demanding, or with too much intensity. Before or during play. For example:

"Today I will play the Club Championship qualifier. What I want most in life is to qualify. What I want most in life is to win the Club Championship".


Greg Norman wanted the ´96 Masters too badly

This is the worst thing one can do, as another of the laws of conscious autosuggestion, the law of REVERSE EFFECT, is very clear in stating that when excess effort is placed in trying to reach a goal, less is the probability of achieving the desired objective.

Well, all in all, in my opinion and experience, positive self talk can be a great tool to enable us to reach the desired mind body synchronization, for great shot making and great scores, specially when big time pressure hits.

What is very clear, of course, is that each golfer must find his/her own positive self talk "scripts", the ones that will best work for her/him.

Tiger wins again and returns to N° 1 on the PGA Tour

Tiger Woods won the 2012 AT&T National, his third win of the year, and notified the world that he´s back and that he was correct when stating that it was only a question of time.

With the win, Tiger moves to N° 1 in earnings for the year and N° 1 in FEDEX points.

I was right when I wrote an article in my spanish language Blog, last February, on Tiger, and that all he needed was patience (Paciencia Tiger.....nada más). The truth is that a couple of bad tournaments (The Masters and The Players) are normal when competing at the highest level and on the toughest golf courses in the world.

What is clear is that Tiger put in the work. And nobody works on his game harder than Tiger. He made a decision to change his swing with Sean Foley and when he got healthy he was able to dedicate the hundreds of hours to do the necessary repetitions to automatize the new movements. Once this was accomplished, sometime in the second quarter, he was then able to sharpen his short game back to its original level of excellence. 

On the other hand, on the Mental side, I feel Tiger has been impeccable since his unfortunate club kicking incident on the 16´th tee of the Masters. From then on, he rarely got angry on the course and his talk with the press has always been optimistic, re framing positively his bad rounds, talking a lot about patience and always underlining that he is very close to playing great golf.

In his post victory press conference, Tiger reaffirmed the importance of being patient, and his description of his shots on the final hole ( "I hit a nice hard fade off the tee, and then I hit a nice sweet little draw in there into the green. It was good to be able to shape it both ways like that.") only confirm that he has regained full confidence and that his new swing is fully automatized.

As we have mentioned many times, an automatized swing is essential to be able to play great golf from the unconscious, sub-conscious, intuitive or automatic minds (synonyms).

With this win Tiger reaches 74 career victories on the PGA Tour, one more than Jack Nicklaus´ 73, and second to Sam Snead´s 82.

And what now for Tiger ??????

Short and simple: Win Majors again.

But, from the Mental angle, this will not be so easy for Woods. The fact is that Tiger is totally obsessed with winning more Majors in order to surpass Jack Nicklaus´ 18. (Tiger is at 14).

This obsession works against Tiger, due to what´s known in conscious autosuggestion as the "reverse effect". This law simply states that the harder we try to achieve an objective, the more difficult it becomes.

In golf there are, in my opinion, two clear examples of the "reverse effect": Sam Snead could never win the US Open and Greg Norman never won the Masters. Both great golfers became overly obsessed with winning these tournaments.

What Tiger must do is enjoy his three wins, enjoy his return to the top of golf, and be very cool and low key about this years British Open, and this years PGA Championship.

If he goes into these Majors like he would a normal tour tournament, without any obsession or excessive stress, his chances of winning one, or both of them, will be dramatically increased.