subconscious golf presented by ed...

SUBCONSCIOUS GOLF Presented by Ed GrantSUBCONSCIOUS GOLF Presented by Ed Grant

Presented by Ed GrantPresented by Ed Grant

Finally...a training program for golf that dealswith the most powerful opponent of all –the mind. Learn how to control the conscious mindand subconscious mind, how they work and howthey can and should be applied to your game of golf.

Examine the game as it is played in the mind of thegolfer against such opponents as lapses inconcentration, nervousness, anger, excitement,playing as good as you practice,learning a new swing move, consistency and more.

Finally...a training program for golf that dealswith the most powerful opponent of all –the mind. Learn how to control the conscious mindand subconscious mind, how they work and howthey can and should be applied to your game of golf.

Examine the game as it is played in the mind of thegolfer against such opponents as lapses inconcentration, nervousness, anger, excitement,playing as good as you practice,learning a new swing move, consistency and more.

Learn to CONQUER THESE MENTALOPPONENTS and you will be wellon your way in your quest for aBETTER GAME OF GOLF.

Learn to CONQUER THESE MENTALOPPONENTS and you will be wellon your way in your quest for aBETTER GAME OF GOLF.

ByED GRANT

Copyright © 2005, Marketing Development Group

Introduction

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Hello. My name is Ed Grant, and I'm the author ofSubconscious Golf as well as the voice that you'll behearing during this seminar. Thanks for making thispurchase. It shows me that you want to be a bettergolfer, and I know that working together we canaccomplish that goal. We can accomplish that goal byfocusing on the area of the game that most golfersignore: the mental part of the game.

When learning how to play the physical game of golf,sooner or later you realize that the most important pointin the swing is impact, the position and the path of theclub face at impact, because that is what determineswhat kind of shot you actually hit. How you get to thatimpact position is not nearly as important as the factthat you can consistently get there, that you canconsistently get your golf club to the desired impactposition. That's because the physical game of golf isplayed against the laws of physics. If we want to hit aspecific shot, then we have to put our club in a specificcorresponding position at impact. And it's when we tryto do this consistently that we realize there's somethingelse going on besides just the laws of physics.

We start to ask ourselves questions like, "Why can I hitone shot so well yet the next one I hit so poorly?" Or saiddifferently, "Why can't I play as good all of the time as Ido some of the time?" Questions like, "Why is it so hardto break a bad swing habit even though I know what I'mdoing wrong and how to correct it?" Or, "Why do I chokesometimes but not others?" Or even, "How do I matchmy expectation to the reality that I'm growing older?"

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IntroductionCD 1 – Track 1

Introduction (CD 1 – Track 1) 3Chapter 1 (CD 1 – Track 2) 7What Is Subconscious Golf?

Chapter 2 (CD 1 – Track 3) 21The Pre-Shot Routine and Set-Up

Chapter 3 (CD 1 – Track 4) 43Introduction to Self-Talk

Chapter 4 (CD 2 – Track 1) 51Self-Image

Chapter 5 (CD 2 – Track 2) 65Self-Talk Rules

Chapter 6 (CD 2 – Track 3) 77The Learning Process

Chapter 7 (CD 3 – Track 1) 99Programmed Visualization

Chapter 8 (CD 3 – Track 2) 105Goals

Chapter 9 (CD 3 – Track 3) 109Motivation

Chapter 10 (CD 3 – Track 4) 113Practice

Chapter 11 (CD 3 – Track 5) 119Course Management

Chapter 12 (CD 3 – Track 6) 123Anger

Chapter 13 (CD 3 – Track 7) 127Choking and Nervousness

Chapter 14 (CD 3 – Track 8) 133Excitement

Chapter 15 (CD 3 – Track 9) 135Concentration

Chapter 16 (CD 3 – Track 10) 138Visualization

Chapter 17 (CD 3 – Track 11) 141Closing

About the Author 143

Introduction

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mental errors in the game, and that is unconsciouslyand unintentionally but nonetheless allowing your mindto work against you to get results that you don't wantinstead of consciously and intentionally making yourmind work for you to get results that you do want.

I will make the information I'm going togive abundantly clear, but points that needspecial emphasis and are crucial tounderstanding will be preceded by thisimage.

You will see this image before the most importantinformation, so please pay special attention. I also wantto encourage you to follow along in the workbook thatcame with your purchase. It contains visual aids that Iuse during the seminar to make it easier to understandthe principles that are being discussed. Also, I willinterrupt the seminar from time to time to emphasizeand explain some of the principles in more detail. Thatwill make it easier for you to apply what you are learningto your golf game.

So let's get started. Let's start learning how to be bettergolfers and have more fun playing this game.

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because we all do grow older, don't we? Everybody whoplays this game very long learns that regardless of theirability level, regardless of their handicap, you can neverreally play this game up to your potential – or for thatmatter, truly enjoy the game – if you cannot dealeffectively with the mental game of golf. This is thegame that's played in the mind of the golfer. Just as thephysical game of golf is played against the laws ofphysics, the mental game of golf is played against suchopponents as inconsistency, lapses in concentration,swing changes – whether it be breaking bad swinghabits or learning new swing moves, choking.

Just a few of the mental opponents that everyone whoplays this game has to face. You can never totallyeliminate these opponents, but you can learn how tocontrol them. And that's why you see tour players thatnow have a support team around them that not onlyincludes workout instructors, full swing, short game,and putting instructors but somebody who can helpthem with their mental game as well. And that's a bigpart of the reason they have become better players, bybetter understanding and controlling their mentalgame. The best golfers, whether they are on the tour orthey are the best players at your club, they understandthat golf is not nearly as much a challenge of knowingwhat to perform as it is a challenge of consistentlyperforming what you know. And that is what I want toteach you.

I'm going to teach you how to make your mind workmore for you and get results that you want more often,results like lower and more consistent golf scores andhaving more fun playing the game. And I want you to beexcited about that. I want you to be excited because it'sgoing to allow many of you to stop committing one ofthe most common and one of the most destructive

What Is Subconsious Golf?

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WHAT IS SUBCONSCIOUS GOLF?

To begin to give you these tools and concepts I want tomake a point that at first you may find puzzling, but Ithink if you listen to my explanation you'll agree withme. If we could somehow arrange to see the swings ofthe top 25 career tournament winners, work up sometype of video screen where we could see one swing rightnext to another, we would have a very difficult timefinding any single given physical swing move that theyall performed the same. If you show me one that has hiselbow pointing down at the top of the backswing, I canshow you one that has his elbow pointing out. If youshow me one that lines up square to the ball, I can showyou one that lines up open, one that lines up a littleclosed. If you show me one that has a straight left arm atthe top of his backswing, I can show you one that's got abent left arm at the top of his backswing. And theunique thing is they all get good results. I mean, after all,they rank in the top 25 to ever even play the game.

But I can show you a mental swing movethat they all perform the same. That is theyall play subconscious golf.

In order for you to understand subconscious golf, I thinkit would be easiest if you first understood whatconscious golf was. And in order to understandconscious golf, I think it would be easier if you firstunderstood what the conscious mind is, what it iscapable of doing, and what it's not capable of doing. Sofor the purposes of our conversation I want to divide themind into three separate processes: the consciousprocess, the subconscious process, and the creative

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Chapter 1CD 1 – Track 2


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observe and perceive, associate and evaluate, andprogram or make a decision.

So now that we know how the conscious mind works,how should the conscious mind apply to our golf game?What's it got to do with our golf game? What areas of ourgolf game can the conscious mind be applied to in aneffective and efficient way? Well, basically the consciousmind can work in two areas of the golf game: the playingprocess and the learning process. Now as far as thelearning process is concerned, we'll be discussing thatin detail tomorrow night.

But as far as the playing process isconcerned, the conscious mind can dealeffectively with shot selection, swingselection, club selection, pre-shot routine,and set-up.

Those five areas of the playing process all have to dowith observing and perceiving, associating andevaluating, and programming or making the decision.As a matter of fact, these are the only areas of theplaying process over which we have 100% consciouscontrol.

Let me give you an example of one of them in a littlemore detail. Let's take the area of club selection. Let'ssay that you and I are playing your home course and wecome to a particular par 3 that's about 150 yards inlength over some water. The first thing that myconscious mind does when I walk up to the shot, anyshot, is observe and perceive. We observe and perceivethe tee markers. Are they up front or in the back?Observe and perceive the pin placement. Is it up front orback or is it in the middle of the green? I observe andperceive the wind conditions. How hard is it blowing

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subconscious process. Three separate levels ofconsciousness or levels of awareness, if you will.

When scientists explain to us how our mind works theydivide the mind into two hemispheres, the left brain andthe right brain. The left brain is the location of ourintelligence, our logical thinking, our short-termmemory, our language, and our reasoning. For thepurposes of our conversation I'm going to group all theleft brain functions into the conscious mind orconscious process, the conscious level of awareness ifyou will. The right side of the brain is the source of ourmotivation, our creative ideas and solutions. I'm goingto group all the right brain functions into what we willcall the subconscious mind or the creative subconsciousmind. So what I've done is simply divide the mind as awhole into these three areas to make it easier for you tounderstand how the mind as a whole can and shouldapply to the various parts of our golf game. Now let's goback to the seminar and I will explain each of theseareas in more detail.

The conscious process has three basic functions as wewill discuss it. Number one function is to observe andperceive. In other words, increase our awarenessthrough our senses, our sense of sight, our sense oftouch, our sense of feel, sense of hearing. The secondfunction of the conscious process is then to associatewhat we have observed and perceived with our pastexperience and then evaluate by saying, "How does thisstack up with my past experience?"

The third and final function of theconscious as we will discuss it is toprogram or make a decision.

So the conscious mind has three basic functions:


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They get conscious. They've made two critical mistakes,two very bad mistakes. Number one, they have not usedthe conscious mind in a way that it can be usedeffectively and efficiently. They haven't used it in shotselection, swing selection, pre-shot routine, or set-up.And then they compound that error by getting over theball and trying to use the conscious mind in a way that itcan't perform. It has no ability to swing the golf club.That is the capacity of the subconscious mind.

The subconscious has the ability to performover-learned skills. Over-learned skills areskills that are consciously learned,subconsciously performed.

Consciously learned by doing them over and over andover and over until eventually they happenautomatically. Let me give you an example. How manyof you have learned at one time or another to drive astick shift automobile? Most of us have, I guess. Let medescribe an experience that happened to one particularyoung man and it may not have happened exactly thisway to you but I'm sure you can relate to what I'm tryingto say.

It was his big day to learn how to drive the car. So hisdad drove him out to a big open field somewhere hewouldn't hurt anything, especially his dad's car. He gothis son behind the wheel and he says, "Okay son, pedalon the left is the clutch, pedal in the middle is the brake,pedal on the right is the gas. This is the gear shift overhere. Now when you press in slowly on the clutch, youlet out slowly on the gas, you move the gear shift, you letout slowly on the clutch, you press in slowly on the gas."And the boy says, "Whoa, Dad, wait a minute. Let's goover that again a little slower this time." All of a suddenit didn't sound near as easy as it had always looked. As a

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and which direction is it blowing? I observe and perceiveeverything that I can that is going to have an eventualeffect on the decision I'm about to make on which clubto use. After I've observed and perceived, I thenassociate that with past experience. Now, as I said, this isyour home course and past experience tells you thatwhen the pin was in the middle and the tees were backand there wasn't much wind that you used a seven iron.Well, let's say that this particular day that you observedand perceived the pin was in the middle, the tees wereback, and there wasn't much wind. Obviously youwould go ahead and make the decision to use a seveniron again. On the other hand, if you would haveobserved and perceived that there was a lot more windtoday, maybe into your face or quartering against yousomehow, then you would have changed that evaluationassociation process to the point that you would haveselected a different club. Now, you're not always awareof this automatic three step conscious process becauseit happens so quickly and, frankly, because it's soobvious. I mean, it just makes common sense. But this isa simplified explanation as to how the conscious mindshould be applied to the playing process.

But you see, right here is where most golfersmake their first crucial mistake. They walkup to their ball totally unconscious aboutshot selection, swing selection, pre-shotroutine and set up.

They do get conscious about club selection simplybecause they have to in order to pick one out of 14 out oftheir bag. But as far as the other four areas that theconscious mind can deal with effectively and efficiently,they're totally unconscious about them. Then when theyget over the ball they say, "Okay, now, keep your headdown." Or they say, "Try to hit the ball one time good."


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you're listening on tape if you have a pen and paper orpencil and paper. What I'd like for you to do first of all isjust write your name for me. Just sign your name likeyou're signing a check for me. Okay. Now what I'd likeyou to do, both Tim and everybody here or if you'redoing it at home listening to these tapes everybody do it,I want you to copy that name. Now, I don't want you justto write your name again or you won't understand whatI'm trying to show you. I want you to consciously makesure every little curlicue is exactly the same. Now don'tjust write your name again.

Man: It's real hard. I can't.Grant: It's what?Man: It's real hard.Grant: It's real hard.Woman: It’s like learning to write for the first time. Grant: That's good. Okay. Thanks. You can sit down.

Now what happened to Tim and what happened toyou are the same thing if you did it the way that I askedyou to.

That is, the first time you signed your nameyou let the subconscious do what it'scapable of doing, that is, perform the over-learned skill of writing your name. But thesecond time you tried to consciouslyperform the over-learned skill yourself andit didn't come out nearly as good, did it?

It wasn't nearly as effective, nearly as efficient. I wishyou could have seen your faces from where I'm at uphere. I mean, I saw some teeth gritted, some lips pursed,some eyes squinted. Faces like this indicate consciouseffort. Ever see any faces like that on a golf course? If youhaven't, just take a look next time you're out and you

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result, the first time he got behind the wheel and tried todrive the car across the parking lot what happened? Henot only stalled the car, he practically gave his dad awhiplash at the same time. He got behind the wheel andhe mentally repeated all the instructions that his dadhad given him and then he tried to force his body toexecute those instructions. But his mind was working alittle faster than his body could perform and he stalledthe car. Not unlike, by the way, the way many golfers geton the golf course and mentally repeat every instructionthat they're trying to get their body to perform, only tostall.

But a funny thing happened to this particular kid. Sixweeks later he could be seen driving down Main Streetwith one arm out the window, one arm around hisgirlfriend, one eye on the rear view mirror looking forcops, and one eye over on the side looking for moregirls! I mean, six weeks before he couldn't even getacross the parking lot without stalling it and now he candrive down Main Street with his mind in three or fourdifferent places, and driving perfectly well. What's hedone?

He's turned it over to his subconscious.He's allowing it to be performed as anover-learned skill because our subconscioushas the ability to perform over-learnedskills. He's no longer trying to force it andmake it happen.

He's now letting it happen. Let me give you anotherdemonstration of the difference between consciouslytrying to do something or consciously letting yoursubconscious do it for you. I need to have a volunteer.Tim, would you help me out just a second? You can alldo this whether you're here in the studio or whether


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we spend 30 or 40 seconds before each shot. Just give itthat extra little look, you know? Now, instead of playingour round in 3-1/2 to 4 hours we play in 5-1/2 to 6hours, if we're lucky. Which round do we play the bestin? I guarantee if you stood by that same 18th greenyou'd hear more than one golfer walk by and say, "Whycouldn't I play as good as I did in my practice round!"THEY GET CONSCIOUS.

This is one reason, and I'll be giving youseveral others as we go, but this is onereason people find it so much easier toplay good in practice rounds as opposed to tournament rounds or real rounds,so to speak.

On the practice tee they just rake a ball over and whackit, rake a ball over and whack it, rake a ball over andwhack it. But on the golf course, they say to themselves,"Now, make sure you keep your head down this time."Or, "Make sure you hit it over the bunker, will you? Don'tgo right into the lake." You see, we have an opponent ingolf that most sports don't have to contend with, andthat opponent or that element, if you will, is time.

When I'm going out for a big tennis match, I'm nervous.I've got butterflies just like I do before a big golf match.But in tennis the blood gets flowing, the sweat getsrunning out of me. I mean, I'm running from one side ofthe court to the other. The butterflies literally leave mystomach, don't they? I mean, in tennis the ball's comingat me a hundred miles an hour. I either better react orget out of the way. I don't have time to put it on theconscious level. But in golf, oh, in golf you got plenty oftime, plenty of time to get over a four-foot putt and say,"Now, don't leave it short!" You got plenty of time in golfto try and get conscious. All it takes is one word on a golf

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will, I can assure you.

How about the golf swing? Obviously, the golf swing hasgot to be performed by the subconscious, right? I mean,if I stepped over the ball and said, "Okay now, Eddie, leftarm straight, tuck your right, tuck your right arm, nowtake it back nice and low. Okay, keep it on plane, keep iton plane, keep your weight inside the right. Okay, nowstart down. Hold the angle. Hold the angle! I couldn'tgenerate enough club head speed to get the ball off theend of the tee let alone play a very decent round of golf.Now, that's an exaggerated example, but I can show youa lot of examples at your course every day that aren'tnear as exaggerated, of trying to play conscious golf.

Take the annual club invitational. When the annual clubinvitational club invitational rolls around, everybody'shappy-go-lucky 'cause it's tournament time. I mean,their friends are in from out of town, everybody's got alot of parties and everybody's relaxed. They're lettin' itflow. Chances are, they go out and play their practiceround in 3-1/2 to 4 hours. Chances are, they play prettygood. As a matter of fact, if you stood by the 18th green Iguarantee that you would hear more than one personwalk by and say, "Jeez, I wish I would have saved thatround for the tournament!"

On the other hand, the next day the gun goes up andnow it counts for real. Now we show up at the course anhour ahead of our tee time instead of 15 or 20 minutes.Now we stand up to the ball on the first tee and we lookdown to see a brand new golf ball. It's not like the onethat's slightly worked in the way that we usually have it.Now we look down and we see shoes have been cleanedfor the first time in a couple weeks. We see a fully color-coordinated outfit all the way down to the glove! Now,instead of spending 15 or 20 seconds before each shot


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tried to copy it. And you did it again and again and againand again. You see, every time you consciously try toperform an over-learned skill – that is, a skill that shouldbe learned by the subconscious mind – it's like learningfor the first time. How can we ever be any good atsomething if every time it's like learning for the firsttime? So that's the second reason we can't consciouslyperform a over-learned skill that's designed to behandled by the subconscious.

The third reason is what I call the push-push theory.Have any of you heard the expression – I think I'vealready referred to it once tonight, but I'm sure you'veheard it other places – You can't force it. You just gottalet it happen. Let me explain to you why that's true. Forthose of you who are listening on the tape, what I'mdoing is I'm putting my hand out in front of me as if I'mgoing to push through some type of a door, and I'masking other people in the audience to do the samething, and then I am pushing their hand. And as I pushtheir hand, what does everybody do? They push rightback, right? I mean, they don't sit there and say, "Hey, Iknow this guy pretty well, but I don't know him wellenough to let him push me around. I'm going to pushhim right back!" They don't go through any kind of adeductive reasoning like that. They just immediatelypush back. You see, it's an in-born reaction. We're allthat way. It's an automatic subconscious reaction. Evenyoung children. Did you ever take a three-month-oldbaby and try to push his head down on your shoulder?Uh-uh. Not if he doesn't want it to go down on yourshoulder. It ain't goin' down. You can just feel the littleneck muscles pushing right back up against your hand.It's an innate reaction. When we are pushed, we pushback. The subconscious pushes back automatically,instinctively.

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course and we all get conscious. "Press." [audiencelaughs] As a matter of fact, some people when they hearthat word get more conscious than others, and thosepeople hear that word quite often.

We have just seen how our conscious processes,attempting to do the job for us as in the signatureexample, interfere with the subconscious ability toperform the job far better than the conscious could everdream of because the subconscious's job is to performover-learned skills. I mean, we've just seen ademonstration of how you cannot consciouslyreproduce a signature that you've been signing sincefirst grade. How in the world can you realistically expectto be able to consciously reproduce something assophisticated as a golf swing? It's not going to happen.And it's not going to happen for three reasons.

The first reason, the reason that we've covered, isbecause the conscious mind does not have the ability toperform an over-learned skill.

The second reason is because every time youconsciously try to perform an over-learnedskill it's like learning all over again.

I heard somebody say it over here and I happen to knowthat she teaches young kids. When I saw everybodytrying to write their name, she said, "Hey, it's like they'relearning for the first time." Well, that's exactly right. Imean, I didn't see your faces in first grade but Iguarantee if I could have, I would have seen similarfaces then that I saw today. Your teacher came aroundand she signed your name and then you put the pencilin your hand and grabbed it with every bit of might thatyou could so your knuckles were white. You stuck yourtongue out, you squinted your eyes together, and you


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range, they go out to the course, he or she, and they say,"I'm going to stop lifting my head if it's the last thing Ido." Most golfers are thinking about three things theywant to happen in their golf swing, five things they don'twant to happen in their golf swing. How can they not beplaying conscious golf? What we want to learn tonight,obviously, is we want to learn how to play subconsciousgolf.

Now you understand why I said that I could show youone mental move that the top 25 tournament winnersall had in common. They were all playing subconsciousgolf. I want to show you how to consciously playsubconscious golf. Play consciously subconscious.

Part of the subconscious mind's job is to performautomatic behaviors and over-learned skills. Automaticbehaviors like digestion and breathing, we don't have tolearn how to perform these behaviors. They happenautomatically. Our challenge as golfers is to allow thegolf swing to be an over-learned skill and let oursubconscious swing the club for us.

You see, in an effort to play better golf we consciouslytry to duplicate each swing position we saw in the mostrecent golf magazine. But the reality is that those aresimply positions they attained while letting theirsubconscious swing the club for them. They are notpositions they consciously swing to; they are positionsthat they subconsciously swing through by letting theirsubconscious swing the club for them. The golf swingonly takes between one and two seconds. Thedownswing happens even faster than that.

Our mind and our body cannot communicate that fast.My brain can't receive feedback from my hands as towhere they are coming into impact, send a message

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In essence, what I'm saying is that thesubconscious responds to stimulation, notcoercion. You see, when we let oursubconscious perform as we did the firsttime we wrote our name, that's usingstimulation.

We just stimulated our subconscious with the thought,"Write my name." We let it happen. But the second timewhen we tried to copy our name, then we were trying toforce it to happen. We were trying to take asubconscious skill and put it on the conscious level. Wewere using coercion. When we use coercion thesubconscious is going to push back throughinconsistent and ineffective performance. And you see,here's the kicker. It doesn't matter whether I push you orwhether you push yourself, your subconscious is stillgoing to push back. For instance, how many times haveyou heard, "Man, I tell you. The harder I try, the worse Iget." That's someone who's consciously trying to force itto happen. He's using coercion and his subconscious ispushing back through inconsistent and ineffectiveperformance.

That's yet another reason that we find it somuch easier to perform to our ability in apractice round in a practice shot in apractice situation as opposed to a pressureshot or a pressure round or a pressuresituation.

One we're trying to make it happen, one we're letting ithappen. And there's a very, very big difference betweenthe two.

Most golfers have been conditioned since they were kidsto grit their teeth and try harder. They go out to the

Pre-Shot Routine and Set-Up

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PRE-SHOT ROUTINE AND SET-UP

When we did some recent polling we found that thenumber one mental opponent golfers wanted help withwas their inconsistency, not only from shot to shot butfrom front nine to back nine, from round to round, andfrom week to week. The word "inconsistency" in and ofitself implies that sometimes their results are better thanothers. Just like the frustrated golfer who said, "I can'tplay this badly all the time." Given the nature of thegame of golf, nobody ever gets their swing exactly wherethey want and then manages to keep it there forever. Itseems like we're always working on something. Butthere are some things that we can do to get significantlymore consistent and better results than we are mostlikely getting now. Before I get into these specifictechniques, let's go back to the seminar and understandwhy do we get inconsistent results?

Let me ask you a question. What do you think is thebiggest reason for your inconsistent results on the golfcourse? Anybody. Inconsistency of the swing? Mostpeople are going to say that. Most people are going tosay, "Well, I get inconsistent results 'cause I've got aninconsistent swing." But I think I can convince you thatthat's not the only major ingredient to inconsistency.

Would you agree with me that you could walkaround the corner of your club house, your golf shop,and see somebody swinging four or five fairways over,over on number ten tee, whatever, and recognizeimmediately who it is just by their golf swing? Now

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back to my hands telling them how I want to change so Ihit the shot I want, all by the time the club head hits theball. Our swing has to be more of a reaction than anaction.

In the next section, Achieving Consistency, we'll learnhow to do that.



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The key to this game is to be able to hit predictable andplayable golf shots consistently. As long as I know whatkind of shot I'm going to hit, I can play the game of golf.It doesn't matter what kind of shot that is. I can play a 30yard slice or a 30 yard hook; if I know the ball is going toslice 30 yards every time, then I can score just fine. It'sonly when I play for that 30 yard slice and don't get it,that's when I get into trouble. If you're set up correctlyfor the shot you want to hit, you can have a golf swingthat is less than perfect and still get predictable andplayable results.

I mean, we all get at least some pretty good shots everytime we play and they're certainly not the result of aperfect golf swing. I've had the opportunity to pollliterally hundreds of teaching professionals in myclasses throughout the years and in their minds thebiggest reason their students get inconsistent results isbecause they have inconsistent set-ups. People do havea consistent swing regardless of whether it's consistentlygood or bad. If they will just get set up exactly the samefor every single shot, with the same ball position, thesame grip position, the same amount of grip pressure,they are going to hit more predictable and acceptableshots obviously than the golfer who has the same swingbut gets lined up differently shot after shot.

This is exactly why when you watch any teacher workingwith a tour caliber player who is in a slump or notplaying up to their ability, the first thing they alwayscheck is the player's set-up – their grip, their grippressure, their posture, their alignment, and their ballposition – because their swing has already been proved.If they just change their set-up, all sorts of things in theswing will change automatically without them eventrying to make those changes. Here's the good news. Wecan learn to get set up correctly for every single shot we

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obviously, you could recognize them by their facialfeatures, how tall they were, how big they were,whatever, but I think most people would agree, Oh,I know who that is. I can tell who it is just by theirswing. Most people really do have a pretty consistentswing. I mean, it's consistent enough for us to recognizethem by it. Now, I didn't say it was a consistently goodswing, did I? Because it may not be. But it is a consistentswing. It may be consistently good or it may beconsistently bad. But chances are, no matter who youare your swing habits are the same time after time aftertime.

Well then, if you accept that fact, doesn't it make sensethat if that particular golfer – whoever he or she may be– is lined up the same every single time that they'regoing to get more consistent results than the personwho is not lined up the same every single time? One ofthe biggest reasons for inconsistency is the fact thatmost people get lined up different every time. One timethey're left of the target, one time they're right of thetarget, one time they're right on the target, next twotimes they're left of the target, so forth and so on.

It just stands to reason that if we agree thatmost people have a consistent swing,whether it's consistently good orconsistently bad, that if they will get set upthe same time after time after time they can

play with their results a lot sooner than the person whohas the same inconsistent swing but gets lined updifferent time after time after time.

At any level of competition, the mostconsistent players are the players with themost consistent set-up. Let me say it like this.


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feet to the club face. As I breathe in deeply again, I checkto make sure that my grip and arm pressure is what Iwant. I waggle one last time, and as I'm exhaling mybreath I let the subconscious trigger the swing and hitthe shot. I just trust it. The job of the conscious mind atthis point is to stay out of the way, to just watch and seewhat happens. We've got to commit to the fact that oursubconscious can hit the shot for us. We've got tobelieve that our subconscious can hit the shot for us.This probably sounds like a lot because I'm verbalizingeverything that I'm doing and everything that is goingon in my head. But if you watch me, you would see thatit happens very naturally and very quickly.

Remember earlier when I said the consistency of ourgolf shots are directly related to the consistency of ourset-up? And we said that at any level of competition themost consistent players are the ones with the mostconsistent set-up. What I want you to understand now isthat the players with the most consistent set-up are theplayers with the most consistent pre-shot routine. Solet's go back to the seminar and talk about the pre-shotroutine in more detail.

To give you an idea of how much importance somepeople place on their pre-shot routine, I want to tell youa little story that happened to me. I was following a well-known golf professional. He had a particular lay-up shoton a par 5 that really was a pretty easy shot. I mean, itwas the type of par 5 that he was not going to be able toreach in two, so he had a 2-iron in his hand and he wasjust going to lay it up on a fairway and have a wedge oninto the green. Just as he was about to hit his shot aspectator about 200 yards down the fairway dashedacross the fairway. Most people, they'd simply take onestep back, let the spectator pass, step right back up tothe ball and hit it. He not only backed away from the

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have. How? By having a consistent pre-shot routine. Letme explain.

For the purposes of our discussion, I want to define pre-shot routine as what you do from the time you get readyto hit a shot until the time you actually trigger yourswing. Let me use my pre-shot routine as an example.The first step of my pre-shot routine is to observe the lieand the distance. I can't decide on what kind of shot Iwant to hit until I first look at the lie and the distance. Isit a flyer lie? A thin lie? A heavy lie? So forth and so on.After I see the lie and calculate the distance, I decidewhere I want to be for my next shot. If the pin is tuckedbehind a bunker on the left, I will have a much betterchance to get the ball close if I'm hitting the next shotfrom the right side of the fairway.

Or if I'm hitting a shot into the green, what side of thegreen gives me the easiest putt? If I miss the green,where can I have the best chance to get up and in? Ithink about how I'm hitting the ball that day. What kindof shot is in my mind? What kind of shot is my bodytelling me to hit? What shot can I feel most confidentwith? Then I make a decision. I visualize and I feel whatshot I want to hit. By the way, later on in the class I'll beteaching you how to visualize any shot you want anytime you want. After I make the decision, I select a clubthat will allow me to hit the shot I've just decided to hitand, very importantly again, I feel or I sense the swingmove that will allow me to hit that shot.

The next step in my pre-shot routine is to stand behindthe ball and take a deep breath as I am selecting myintermediate target. Then while my eyes stay on thatintermediate target I begin to exhale and walk around toset up to the ball. As I address the ball, I first align myclub face to my intermediate target, then my body and


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hole, you're in trouble. So please be aware that youshould adapt your pre-shot routine on the practice teeto the point that it becomes automatic, then go on thegolf course with it.

Since I'm putting so much importance on the pre-shotroutine, I want to give you some rules and guidelines tofollow.

RULE NUMBER 1. You should get comfortable withyour pre-shot routine on the practice tee, then take it tothe golf course to make it a well-grooved habit. Go outlate at night or early in the morning when you're notrushed and just really focus on making your pre-shotroutine a habit under playing conditions. By the way, interms of speed of play? Adapting a pre-shot routine willactually allow you to play faster. You'll get rid ofindecision, you'll feel more confident, and in turn you'llplay quicker. Let's go back to the seminar now to talkabout Rule number 2.

I'd like to tell you a story about a tour player that Iworked with. He was getting inconsistent results. He'dhit three or four good shots and then have a lapse of oneor two bad shots. I happened to know that this guy wasan extrovert type personality. If I sat down to talk to him,I mean, he was the kind you could see his knee going ahundred miles an hour. I mean, he just, he dideverything fast. He walked fast, he talked fast, he dideverything quick. We matched his pre-shot routine tohis personality. That's very important for you to realize.

If you are a slow-moving, intentional, deliberate typeperson, then you better have a pre-shot routine thatmatches it. On the other hand, if you're more of aquicker, go-getter, faster moving, faster walking typeguy? Then you better have a pre-shot routine that

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ball, he put his club back in the bag, leaned against it theway he did before a lot of shots, picked the same clubout of the bag – and I was close enough to see that it wasthe same club – went through his entire pre-shot routineagain before he allowed himself to hit the shot.

That is how important in my opinion thepre-shot routine is to allowing you to playsubconscious golf.

If you were swinging the golf club on the tee and right atthe top of your backspin somebody yelled, "Oh, oh, oh,wait a minute, wait a minute!" You had to stop yourswing at the top. When it came time to hit that shotagain, would you start from the address position andswing or would you start from up here? Obviously, you'dstart from the address position, right? Well, what I wantyou to do is I want you to treat the pre-shot routine aspart of your golf swing. If you get interrupted, you startover from the beginning because it does no more goodto start over half-way through a pre-shot routine in myopinion than it does to start over if you start the swingfrom the top of your backspin.

Another thing I'd like to point out about the pre-shotroutine, you learn this on the practice tee. You don'tlearn your pre-shot routine on the golf course. I gave atalk at a club back East and I made the mistake of notpointing that out to everybody. And the pro and I wentto play golf the next morning and we got to the first holeand there were 16 groups backed up on the first hole.Everybody was learning their pre-shot routine on thefirst hole that day.

If you go out on the golf course moreconcerned with learning your pre-shotroutine than actually getting the ball in the


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Let's go back to the seminar now and talk about howimportant it is to keep our routine consistent, especiallywhen we get under pressure.

But you know what happens to mostpeople's pre-shot routine when they getunder pressure? It changes.

You see fast players get slow and you see slow players getfast. You watch. Next time you're with a guy who's reallyunder the gun, you watch and if he's used to handling ityou won't see any variation in his pre-shot routine. Ifhe's not used to handling it, you'll see a big variation.

I watched a tournament this last weekend and my wifewas sitting right there and I said it as soon as I saw thisand it turned out to be right. The guy who was leadingthe tournament, he was a co-leader, he had a verydifficult shot ahead of him. But he addressed his balland backed off two different times and then the secondtime he backed off instead of starting his whole pre-shotroutine from the beginning he just stepped a way for asecond, stepped right back, picked his pre-shot routineoff where it was, and tried to hit the shot. And he hit aduck hook to the left. Now it was a pressure situation.Chances are he was over the ball saying, "Okay now,here's your chance. You've been working for it. Don'tblow it!" And it just gave him that extra little incentive,so to speak, to get conscious. And when he gotconscious he increased his chance for failure because,as we've learned and we'll continue to learn, theconscious can't perform over-learned skills, particularlyin a situation like that.

RULE NUMBER 3. Keep your pre-shot routineconsistent. Whenever you get a chance to watch atournament, pay close attention as to whether or not a

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matches that. Neither one is right or wrong. It's you! Butyou need to match your pre-shot routine to yourpersonality so that you will increase the chance thatyou'll let yourself play subconscious golf. And if youincrease your chances of playing subconscious golf, youincrease your chances for success.

RULE NUMBER 2. Match your pre-shot routine to yourpersonality. Now, I want you to pay special attention towhat I'm going to say here. The closer your personalityis to a Type A, my experience is that the more importantit is to make sure that the timeframe of your pre-shotroutine is consistent from shot to shot. When I say aconsistent timeframe, I mean within a second or two. Iworked with a player recently who had a bad habit oftaking too many waggles. What was so clear to me wasthat his timing of his pre-shot routine was notconsistent. One time he'd take 15 waggles, another timehe'd take 20 waggles. Now, that was good from thestandpoint of he was not going to pull the trigger, he wasnot going to hit the shot until he was fully ready to do so.But I've heard several quotes attributed to him sayingthat since he has gotten the timing of his pre-shotroutine more consistent he feels his play has improved.On the other hand, the more laid back you are, the moreI think it is important to make sure that you are mentallyready to trigger the shot as opposed to trying to makethe timeframe of your pre-shot routine consistentwithin a second or two. I can't tell you that any one pre-shot routine will work for everyone because you do notall have the same personalities. But if you match yourpre-shot routine to your personality, whatever that is,you will greatly increase your chances of playingsubconscious golf. And if you increase your chances ofplaying subconscious golf, you'll increase your chancesfor success.


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Now let's go back to the seminar.

Another reason why people find it so much easier topractice than play. It's very common to hear people say,"Boy, I tell you. If I could hit the ball on the golf courseas good as I hit it on a practice tee, I'd be dangerous! Imean, I could really flat-out play." When you play you gothrough a pre-shot routine of some sort. You say, "Am Igoing to hit it high? Am I going to hit it low? Am I goingto hit it around? Am I going to hit it under?" You analyzewhat's going to happen when you play, don't you? Butwhen you practice you just get up, rake a ball in andwhack it, rake a ball in and whack it, rake a ball in andwhack it.

RULE NUMBER 5. Practice like you play and play likeyou practice. Why do so many golfers hit better shotswhen they are practicing than the shots they hit whenthey are playing? If you want to hit shots on the golfcourse that are as good as the shots you hit on thedriving range or in practice rounds, then you need tomake sure you're play pre-shot routine is the same asyour practice pre-shot routine. Once you find a routinethat works for you use that pre-shot routine consistentlywhen you practice and when you play. You'll find that bydoing that you're creating an environment which ismuch closer to the actual environment you'll face on thegolf course; hence, you'll be playing more like youpractice and you'll be increasing your chances forsuccess.

Just a few weeks ago I watched the best players in theworld practice for hours and hours and their pre-shotroutine on the practice tee was consistently the same asit was on the golf course. Now let's go back to theseminar and talk about the sixth rule for our pre-shotroutines.

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player is sticking to their routine when they get underpressure. You can use it as an indicator of how they'relikely to perform. Good players have a pre-shot routinefor all their shots, and whatever their pre-shot routine isthey stick to it. It's perfectly fine to have one pre-shotroutine for putting and maybe a little different twist onit for full shots. Just keep it consistent for those specificshots all the time. But I will tell you that most peoplefind more success if they match their pre-shot routinesfor all their shots. When you are under pressure, beaware of your routine and stick to that routine and you'llincrease your chances of playing subconscious golf;hence, you'll increase your chances of success.

RULE NUMBER 4. Check your arms and grip pressure.It's not just grip pressure that throws a swing off. It canalso be arm pressure. When golfers get under pressure,just like their speed often changes, so does their armand grip pressure. And it always gets tighter. It nevergets looser, it always gets tighter. I remember readingthat the night before Greg Norman would win his firstBritish Open, Jack Nicklaus had this advice for him: Beaware of your grip pressure. Keep it light. And that'sexperience talking. I like to see a specific place in yourpre-shot routine where you regularly check and monitoryour grip pressure. If you don't have that place in yourroutine, then too often you can have tight grip pressureand you never catch it until your teacher or untilsomebody else might catch it and point it out to you.Arms and hands with tension cannot release the clubnaturally. The presence of tension forces you to releasethe club with a conscious effort, and we don't want thatbecause we'll get inconsistent results.

By the way, when we talk later in class about how tohandle nervousness and excitement I've got some veryeffective ways for you to deal with arm and grip tension.


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practicing your waggle for 15 to 20 minutes a daybecause that was a preview of your swing because yourpre-shot routine and your swing are directly related.

Let's go back to the seminar now and talk about a veryimportant element of the mental game of golf: what dowe think about during the swing?

You know, one of the most common questions that I'masked is, what thought should I think about during thegolf swing? What thoughts will give me the best chanceto play subconscious golf? Well, I think there are somethoughts that will give you a good chance to playsubconscious golf.

A key thought I define as a thought thatwhen foremost in your mind seems to allowyou to concentrate and perform at a higherlevel. It's not uncommon to see good players

refer to their key thoughts, the thought that gives themthe best chance to perform at a higher level. Any of youwho have ever read Bobby Jones' book know that hetalked about, I'd go out to the practice tee and I'd bangballs thinking about one thought after another until Iseemed to get a thought that let me hit pretty goodshots. And when I got that thought I'd go out on a golfcourse and all I'd think about is that thought over everyshot until I started hitting lousy shots again and then I'dgo to the range and hit balls until I found another keythought that worked.

A key thought can be mechanically orientedor it can be result-oriented. Example of amechanically oriented key thought is, "Keepmy weight inside my right leg at the top,"

"Start down with my arms or my legs," or "Keep theweight inside my left foot at impact."

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Our pre-shot routine and our swing aredirectly related. One of the national golfinstruction schools that I was working at, wehad a student who had a terrible reversesway in his swing. That is, he would swing

the golf club and as he took it back you could see hisweight all go to the left side at the top of his backspin.Most teachers – and I would have done this before Ilearned this principle – would immediately startworking with this student by keeping his weight on theright at the top of the backspin instead of on the left.That's a common solution. But what I noticed with thisparticular person was when he waggled, he waggled likethis. You see what I'm doing? I'm waggling and as Iwaggle my weight goes to the left. As my club goes back,my weight goes to the left. That's the way he waswaggling. So what we did was we changed his waggle.Nothing in the full swing. Just changed his waggle.Changed his waggle so that when the club went backaway from the ball his weight went to the right. Wemade him waggle like that for about 30 minutes beforewe let him hit any shots. But you know what? After about20 shots he was drastically improving his reverse swing.

Next time you're working on taking a flawout of your swing make sure that you're notpre-programming that error to occur bycommitting it in your pre-shot routine.

RULE NUMBER 6. Your pre-shot routine and your swingare directly related. Next time you're working on a flawin your swing or if you are a teacher working with one ofyour students, make sure that they're not pre-programming for that error by committing it in theirpre-shot routine or their waggle. I'm convinced that thisis why Ben Hogan gave so much attention to the wagglein his book Five Fundamentals. He wanted you


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set up correctly before every single shot. And the morewe do that, we will greatly increase the chances ofperforming better. But again, I want to emphasize thatthinking a key thought and trying to make that keythought happen are two very, very different things. It'sokay to think the thought, but you cannot try to makethe thought happen because that's like trying toduplicate your signature.

I have a friend who did a study where she forced golfers'minds to be in the receiver mode while they were hittinga series of putts. She then compared those results withresults of putts they had hit before she forced the mindinto that receiver mode. Virtually every person shetested putted better if their mind was in the receivermode. Their conscious mind was watching instead ofdoing. To me, this just verifies what we just learnedbecause a conscious mind that is observing andperceiving during the execution of an over-learned skillis in the receiver mode. So it's okay to have a key swingthought, but it's not okay to try and make that swingthought happen. We've got to let it happen just like welet ourselves sign our signature the first time. We've gotto control our thoughts to the point that we're not tryingto make something happen in our golf swing, we'reletting it happen. So I'm going to show you how tocontrol your thoughts in just a moment. But first let's goback to the seminar and talk about the importance ofswing triggers.

I'd like to tell you a story about a tour player that Iworked with who was a good player but he was gettinginconsistent results. He'd hit three or four good shotsand then have a lapse of one or two bad shots. On thetour those are killer mistakes because it's socompetitive. And when I watched him on the golf courseI noticed that he addressed the ball and just before he

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Those are all mechanically oriented key thoughts. Onthe other hand, if I got over a putt and said, "Now, hit itin the right center of the cup." Or if I got over to thefairway and said, "Now, play it down the left center."Those are result-oriented key thoughts. Both of themwork, but you can have one kind or the other. If we knowwe play better with a specific thought in our mind, whynot take the time to put that thought in our mind beforeevery single golf shot?

Remember when I told you that time was our opponent?Now I'm telling you that time can be our ally. Because Ihave the element of time in the game of golf, I've gottime to put that thought in my mind every single timebefore I hit a shot and hence I will greatly increase thechance of performing better. Because it is consciouslycontrolled. I can control what my thoughts are, andI'm going to give you a specific technique to do that injust a moment.

The important thing again is once you thinkyour key thought, let it happen.

RULE NUMBER 7. Your pre-shot routine can include asingle key swing thought. If we know we play better witha specific thought in our mind, why not take the time toput that thought in our mind before every single shot?It's just like the set-up. If we know we play better with agood set-up, which we obviously do, why not make surewe're set up correctly every time?

Remember earlier when I talked about time was ouropponent in the game of golf? Well, it can also be ourally. Because we have the element of time in golf, you'vegot time to put a key swing thought in your mind beforeevery single shot. You've got time to make sure you're


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that he never really got effective with his swing until he"turned it loose" was what he said. He triggered hisswing and then he just let it go. The vital point to realizeis this: a swing trigger will make a swing more reactioninstead of an action, and that's what we want. We wantthe swing to be more of a reaction than an action.However you decide is the best way to trigger your shots,I just want you to do it before every shot. I don't care ifit's a bunker shot, a putt, a chip, whatever because you'llincrease your chances of letting the subconscious hitthe shot for you and hence you'll increase the chancesfor success.

RULE NUMBER 9. The timing of your pre-shot routinecan be directly tied to your breathing. As I touched onearlier, it's amazing how many golfers unknowinglychange their breathing when they get under pressure.Their breathing usually gets shallower and shorter andtheir body gets tighter and tighter. If we don't fullyexhale our breath over time we'll literally hyperventilate.On the other hand, if we willfully exhale our breath, ourbody instinctively will take in as much breath or asmuch oxygen as it needs to function effectively. I've hada good deal of success in helping better players get thetiming of their pre-shot routine more consistent by tyingtheir pre-shot routine to their breaths. If for instanceyou can begin your pre-shot routine the same way everytime with a deep inhalation, then breathe the samenumber of breaths up until the time you trigger yourswing and hit your shot, you'll be amazed at how muchthis will help you to play better and more consistently,especially under pressure.

Let's go back to the seminar now to talk about one of theaspects of the pre-shot routine that I think is absolutelyvital.

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began his swing he literally froze. He literally stopped allmotion. He had nothing on his body moving. What I calldown time. He had a second to two seconds of downtime before every single shot. All that was doing wasgiving his conscious that split second to get in there andsay, "Now, take it back low and straight." Or, "Now, makesure you start down with the legs this time." You see,what we did was we changed his pre-shot routine to thepoint that he had no down time. As soon as he finishedhis last waggle he immediately began his golf swing andhe immediately started to play more consistent golf.Most good players trigger their swing one of two ways.They will either come to a conclusion of their waggleand then immediately start their swing or they willcome to a conclusion of their waggles, pause for asecond or two or half a second, whatever, trigger theirswing by doing some other motion such as turning theirhead, kicking in their right knee, and then they'll begintheir swing.

You need a swing trigger because if you havea swing trigger, if it comes at the conclusionof your waggle or if it comes after a pause itwill make the swing more of a reaction

instead of an action. It makes it more subconscious.Whatever you do, I don't want you to have a pause, thenhave a swing trigger, then have another pause becausethat means you're getting conscious.

I want you to do this before every single shot– a bunker shot, a putter, a chip shot, a fullshot, anything. Because you'll increase thechance of getting it subconscious, you'llincrease your chance of success.

RULE NUMBER 8. All good pre-shot routines have aswing trigger. I remember reading a Ben Hogan story


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with less break in them than any other player, the kindof putts that you had a much better chance of hitting,especially in majors where the greens are hard, they'refast, and the pins are tucked into hard-to-reach areas. Aswe all know, in a major many times you would ratherhave a 20 foot uphill putt with minimum break than a 3foot putt from above or to the side of the hole that had alot of speed and break. Jack Nicklaus's coursemanagement skills gave him the most opportunities tocapitalize on being the best player. His pre-shot routinedid two things. Number one, it set him up to the ballconsistently. And as obvious as that sounds, I've satbehind players playing par 3s in tournaments all overthe world and seen name player after name player lineup left of the hole, right of the hole, and hit appropriateshots exactly where they were set up.

The second thing his pre-shot routine did is that it puthim in a consistent frame of mind, put him in aconsistent mental state. It allowed him to think thesame way, to think the same thoughts before everysingle shot. He took the time to calculate and visualizewhat angle was the best to come into the green, whatangle would give him the best putt at the hole. And as aresult, his subconscious had more specific input to workwith. He gave himself so much good information thathis mind was less likely to wander and think of resultsthat he wanted to avoid, which is a habit we all have tofight. And then, of course, he had the skills to back upwhat he had visualized.

One of the major benefits of a pre-shot routine that Isimply cannot emphasize enough is a consistent mentalstate of mind. When golfers adapt a pre-shot routinethat matches their personality, they invariably begin toplay better golf almost immediately. But the more of ahabit that pre-shot routine becomes, the more likely

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One of the biggest reasons that Jack Nicklaus has beenthe dominant player that he is, is because of his pre-shotroutine. You see, his pre-shot routine does two things.Number one, it sets him up consistently every singletime. And I've sat behind par 3s at major tournamentsand I've seen name player after name player set upright, left, and hit appropriate shots. What an obviousfactor that is, but yet it's totally ignored by most golfers.The second thing that his pre-shot routine does is it putshim in a consistent frame of mind. Most golfers arethinking about one thing one time they hit a shot andanother thing the next time they hit a shot.

RULE NUMBER 10. This is without a doubt one of themost important things that I can teach you. Establish amental routine. In my opinion, the reason that JackNicklaus was the most dominant player of his era wasnot only because he had the most consistent pre-shotroutine and as a result he would get set up to the ballmost consistently, but also because he was the bestthinker and the consistency of his pre-shot routine wasa big part of allowing him to think the same way beforeevery shot. He took course management skills to a newlevel. He was the first to walk off a golf course and knowexactly how many yards his shot was, and as a result wenow have sprinklers that usually have the distanceeither to the front, the center, or the back of the greenon most golf courses that we play today. And eventhough they did not keep statistics like this, I'mconvinced that if they did Jack Nicklaus would have ledthis category. And the category I'm talking about is themost makeable putts.

Let me explain it like this. I think that he had more puttsthat he could be aggressive with, more makable putts ifyou will, in more majors than any other player of his era.By "makable putts" I mean he had more uphill putts


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letting go, of letting it happen, not be focused on what-ifs whatever kind of shot you're hitting. I want yourmind to be working in a very similar way to the way itwas working when you signed your name earlier. Youdidn't think about it. You just did it. You didn't thinkabout spelling it right. You didn't think about makingevery little curlicue the way you normally do. You justsigned your name. The most crucial time of the golfswing for most golfers is when they stand over the balland get ready to hit the shot. Remember, we want theswing to be a reaction, not an action. So once you figureout what mental routine works the best for youcombined with what physical routine works the best foryou, stick to it, especially when you're under pressure.

If you evaluate these ideas and concepts that we'vetalked about, decide which ones work the best for you,and apply them to your game I can promise you you'llget more consistent results.

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they are to let their mind wander during the pre-shotroutine. You see, when we first adapt a pre-shot routineour mind has to think about each step, but as itbecomes more and more of a habit we have to thinkabout it less and less to accomplish the same thing.Hence, it's easier and easier for our minds to wander.We usually start thinking more and more about theresults that we want to get instead of the routine, moreand more about the situation we're in or the what-ifs.Even though your body is going through the samemotions each time, you can start thinking about onething one time you hit a shot and another thing the nexttime you hit a shot. The more you can disciplineyourself to focus on the process instead of the results,the more likely you will be to get good results.

For our pre-shot routine to work as effectively as wewant, we want to identify not just a physical pre-shotroutine but a mental pre-shot routine as well, a thoughtroutine if you will. A thought routine is part of every pre-shot routine, whether you're aware of it or not. If yourpre-shot routine has become such a habit that you arejust "going through the motions," it's easy for your mindto wander and to think different thoughts from shot toshot instead of thinking about the process like you werewhen you first adapted your pre-shot routine and yougot such good results. Then you wonder, why am Iplaying bad? My pre-shot hasn't changed.

But chances are your mental routine has changed. If youhave not identified and become aware of what yourthoughts were during your pre-shot routine, whatthoughts work for you the best, you can easily fall intothe trap of thinking negative or unwanted thoughts eventhough your physical motions appear to be, and actuallyare, the same. This is why I want you to consistentlyhave thoughts of confidence and trust in your swing, of

Introduction to Self-Talk

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INTRODUCTION TO SELF-TALK

The consistency of our golf shots has a direct correlationto the consistency of our thoughts. Thoughts we wantusually means results we want. The more consistentlywe can think, the more consistently we can play orscore. To be able to control your thoughts is withoutquestion in my mind one of the most valuable mentalskills you can learn. So that's what I want to teach younow. I want to show you how you can control your mindand think the thoughts you want any time or anywhere.In golf terminology this is going to become your favoriteclub, the best club you have in your bag. Now let's goback to the seminar.

How do we control our thoughts? What good does it doto know that a certain key thought works if I can’tcontrol what my thought is in the first place? If you’relike most golfers, you’re saying “well, sometimes I find itvery easy to concentrate on what I want, other times it’svery difficult.”

Well, I want to show you how you can control yourthoughts, and to do it I want to introduce a new termcalled self-talk. Have you ever noticed how people talkto themselves? All the time? I was driving to work theother day and as I pulled up to the stop sign there was agirl in the car next to me all by herself and she waspounding the steering wheel. I don’t mean just giving ita little tap. She was just pounding that steering wheel.She was obviously talking to herself; somebody had cutin front of her or something. How about the way golfers

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have to have a picture of a golf club going through yourmind, otherwise we could not communicate. So for thatinstant, that’s what has to be going through your mind.We can’t prevent self-talk, we cannot prevent the triggerprocess. They both happen automatically.

To prove this trigger process even further, tell me this.Do you think little kids 6, 8, 10 months old can think?Any of you who are parents know that they can think.One time in my mind stands out particularly when mywife put our youngest child Becky on the floor after shehad her bath. Now, she was about eight months old atthe time, too young to talk, and I was sitting on thecouch adjacent to her drinking a can of pop. As soon asshe looked over and saw me, her eyes got big as silverdollars, as soon as she saw that can of pop. And I knewshe was going to come after it. And sure enough, shecrawled right over after it. Now obviously, she’s tooyoung to say, "Hey, my dad’s got a can of pop, I think I’llgo check it out." She couldn’t say that. But she couldthink the picture.

We don’t think in words; we think in pictures. We’vealways known how to think. We only learn how to talkwhen we associate words with pictures.

We cannot prevent self-talk, and as self-talk occurs thetrigger process occurs. However, we can control self-talk. And by controlling self-talk, we will control thepictures that are automatically in our mind. You seemost people get over a situation where it requires someconcentration and they say, "Man, I just can’tconcentrate today. I just can’t see the shot I want." Whatkind of picture does that statement automatically put inour mind? That’s what I call negative self-talk, nega-talk.On the other hand, if you will have enough discipline torealize that if you simply verbalize what your key

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talk to themselves all the time? How about the way theytalk to their ball? "Bite, ball, bite!" "Hit a house, hit awall." I mean, as if the ball had ears and could hear us,right? We all talk to ourselves, all the time. Self-talk isdefined as that conversation that we continuallyconduct with ourself. Even as I talk to you right now,you’re talking to yourself four times faster, evaluatingwhat I’m saying, saying, “Well, I remember when I didthat, buh buh buh.” When I stop talking to you, yourmind speeds up to six times faster. You cannot preventself-talk. That’s very important that you understand.

You cannot prevent self-talk. But you cancontrol it. If I want to talk about this pencilright here, I can. If I want to talk about thisgolf club, I can. If I want to talk about a pizza

with golf balls on top of it, I can. Now let me explain toyou what happened when I said pizza with golf balls ontop of it. The words "pizza with golf balls on top of it"triggered a picture of a pizza with golf balls on top of it,which triggered the emotion of "pizza with golf balls ontop it?" That’s the way our mind works. Our mind doesnot work in words. It works in pictures. When I say theword "Jack Nicklaus", you don’t have to think, "Well,let's see. I saw him on TV, about 5'11-1/2, 185 pounds,blond hair."

You don’t go through that kind of a deductive process,you immediately know who Jack Nicklaus is because apicture automatically passes in your mind. You see, ifyour mind did not work this way, we wouldn’t be able tocommunicate. You wouldn’t be able to understand whatI was talking about. That’s why foreigners can’tcommunicate. The words trigger no pictures. Hence youcan’t understand each other. Our mind can only think ofone thought at a time. You can only think of one thinginstantaneously. When I say the word "golf club" you


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yourself saying, “Don’t forget to do such and such?”Only to forget to do it. Because when you said, “Don’tforget to take your keys out of the car,” a brief picture inyour mind went through of locking the keys in the car,and sure enough.How many times on the golf coursehave you heard somebody say, “Jesus, just what I wastrying not to do”? If I stand up on the tee and I say, “Nowdon’t go out of bounds to the right,” what kind of picturehas to go through my mind? It can’t be a picture of a ballgoing to the right with a big X on it; it’s got to be apicture of a ball going to the right. The corollary hashappened to a lot of you too. How many times have youseen a guy after hitting a putt or making a good shot say,“I just knew it was going to go in. I knew it was, I just feltit.” And sure enough, it did.

Has this ever happened to you? You’re playing with yourregular foursome, you come to a par three, and you’reup on the tee. So you hit a great shot; best shot you havehit all day long. You put it about two feet from the hole.The next guy gets up and hits, he’s 20 feet away. Next guygets up and hits, he’s 25 feet away. The next guy gets upand hits, he’s 30 feet away. And as you’re walking to thegreen, you think, Wooo, I’m going to get me some skinmoney here. But then all of a sudden the 30-footer putts,draino. Then the 25-footer putts, draino. Then the 20-footer putts, bingo. And as you stand awed and totallyshocked, you’re saying to yourself, "Oh jeez, I’m the oneguy here that should have made a birdie and now I’mgoing to be the one guy to get a par." And sure enough,you get a par.

GRANT:Who’s got a favorite club? What’s yourfavorite club, John?JOHN: Seven iron.GRANT: Seven iron. What is your self-talk whenyou pull that seven iron out of your bag?JOHN: [inaudible]

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thought is, in other words, you see what you want toattain instead of what you want to avoid, that’s usingpositive self-talk, posi-talk.

The reason this is so important is becauseour performance and our self-talk aredirectly related.

For instance, if I’m on the lesson tee or the practice teeand my pro has told me that I’m “losing it at the top.”And I’ll go out and beat some balls and I’ll say to myselfon the practice tee, "Come on, Ed, you’re losing it at thetop." What kind of picture has to go through my mindwhen I say, you’re losing it at the top? Picture losing it atthe top, nega-talk. On the other hand, what wouldhappen if I get on the practice tee and say, "Okay, Ed,keep it tight at the top"? What kind of picture goesthrough my mind then? Automatically can’t prevent it. Amore positive picture. You see, I said the same thing indrastically different ways. Hence, I had drasticallydifferent pictures automatically trigger in my mind. Oneway my mind worked against me; one way my mindworked for me.

If you’re like most people, right about now you’re saying,well, I agree with what you’re saying, but I mean, when Isay you're losing it at the top, my mind knows what Ireally mean.

That’s not true. Our actions are controlledby our currently dominant thoughts. It doesnot matter whether or not these thoughtsare intentional or unintentional.It does not

matter whether they are positive or negative, for us oragainst us. The creative subconscious mind’s job is toattain the pictures that we put into it. And I can prove itto you by example. How many times have you caught


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people come to certain holes they pull out a magic ball,it’s called a water ball. Water ball? And then they havethe audacity to get mad when it goes in the water! Imean, they’ve just programmed their mind to hit thatlittle puppy in the water, it goes in the water and theysay, "Gee, how could I hit it in the water?”

I’ve played a lot of other sports, but I don’t recallbaseball players having an air ball, or basketball playershaving a missed-free-throw ball, or football playershaving a missed-field-goal ball or an intercept ball. Butgolfers have a water ball. And then we wonder why thegame’s so much mental. When there’s a lake up here onthe right, I’m not telling you to ignore that lake. Thereality is that there is a lake there. You’d better plan onthe lake being there, and that means instead of sayingon the tee, "Don’t go right." You say, "Hit a nice highdraw and keep it left." One way your mind works morefor you, one way it works more against you.

You see, our performance and our self-talk are directlyrelated because of the trigger process. As our self-talkoccurs, the pictures automatically go through our mind.The creative subconscious doing its job helps maintainand attain those pictures that are going through ourmind, whether they’re for us or against us, positive,negative, whatever. And that’s why so many times weperform in exactly the way that we’re trying not toperform. Scientists, humanistic psychologists, used tothink that the reason for that was the self-talk process,the trigger process. In other words, when you were hotyou had good self-talk, hence you had good pictures,hence your mind worked more for you than against you.When you were in a slump, you had negative self-talk,hence negative pictures, hence your mind worked moreagainst you than for you.

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GRANT: Probably something along the lines ofget it close, right? Who’s got a least favorite club?Man: The wedge.GRANT: They will admit. Wedge. Okay, what doyou say to yourself when you pull that wedgerout of your bag?Man: Don’t go right.GRANT: Don't go right. And sure enough. We'veall got least-favorite clubs or least-favorite shots,or strong parts of your game or weak parts ofyour game. You know exactly the principle I’mtalking about. Performance and self-talk aredirectly related.

You see, this explains why a golfer can get a new putterbut have the same putting stroke and start puttingbetter. He gets that old putter in his hand, the one thathas betrayed him so many times, and as soon as he setsit down he sees nothing but negative pictures. On theother hand, he gets a new putter in his hand and if hegets lucky enough to hit the first couple putts, now he’sseeing positive pictures. It’s the same putting stroke.Different putter, different pictures, different and betterperformance.

One of the best examples of this principle though, howperformance and self-talk are directly related – andbelieve me, they didn’t consult me when they named alot of the terms in golf. Just think about some of thepictures that the terms in golf automatically put in yourmind. Trap. Trap? Hazard? Sudden death? Suddendeath? I’ve even got some tour friends that calltournaments tourniquets, tourniquets as in choke todeath. The best one of all, and I know I probably don’teven need to bring this up because I know that nobodyin the room here does this, but maybe some people onthe tape might do it, so I’d better mention it. When some

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SELF-IMAGE

Our journey to become more consistent golfers, that is,to more consistently play up to our potential, cannot becomplete until we talk about self-image and its effect onour performance.

If a 10 handicap shoots 37 on the front nine, what is heprobably going to shoot on the back nine? 45. Probablysomewhere in there, right? Why is it that you and I hit acouple good shots and then a couple bad shots? Why isit that we can't perform consistently up to our potential?Simple fact that you did it a couple times proves beyonda doubt that you have the physical ability to hit a goodshot or to play a good round, whatever the case may be.So let me show you some of the mental reasons thisoccurs. In order to do that I want to educate you as towhat the second function of the subconscious mind is:it records and stores. Our subconscious mind has 10 to14 billion – not million, but billion – neuron cells. Eachone of these billions and billions and billions of neuroncells can record and store 1 to 2 million bits and piecesof information. Every experience that you and I haveever had that we paid any attention to is automaticallyrecorded and stored in your subconscious mind,whether you realize or not. All of these recordings formwhat we are going to come to know as our self-image.Now, the thing that is unique about this recording andstoring process is not only is the actual experiencerecorded and stored, but how we felt about it is alsorecorded and stored. You can verify this in your ownmind by thinking of an experience that happened to

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But now there is proof that neurons carrying repetitivethought patterns have the power, through transfer ofidentification tags, to involve more and more neurons intheir habitual activity. If the thought patterns arenegative, they may thus be strengthened to the point ofbecoming a dangerous neurosis. By the same token, if anindividual’s habitual thought patterns are positive, hisbrain contains an automatic neuronal mechanismwhereby the positive thoughts can be augmented untilthey become overwhelmingly powerful.

Not only is our self-talk and performancedirectly related, but also our attitude.Any of you ever have a bad attitude on a golfcourse? Not since the last time you played,

right? We’ve all had bad attitudes. Believe me, if youcome across a golfer who hasn’t had a bad attitude at onepoint in time, he hasn’t played the game very long, or he’snot very good, or he doesn’t give a darn. One of the three.We all have a bad attitude at one time or another.

What you need to realize is, that if you havea bad attitude, chances are it’s the productof bad self-talk. So if you change your self-talk, you change the pictures that are

automatically in your mind, you change your attitude.The problem is that most people that have bad attitudesdon’t realize about the self-talk process, about the triggerprocess, and they’re a victim of their bad habits, theirbad attitudes, as opposed to being able to control it.

I'm going to go into more detail about self-talk later on inthe class. Right now, all I needed you to understand wasthe trigger process. Now that you understand the triggerprocess and how it automatically triggers correspondingpictures in our mind, let's talk about our self-image andhow that controls our performance.


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What would happen if he tried to lift it? He couldn’t liftit. But wait, the glass only weighs six ounces and heobviously can lift much more than six ounces.

Let me explain to you what actually would happen. Hisself-image would then believe, because it was told underhypnosis, that that glass weighed 500 pounds. Hence,when he tried to lift it, when his biceps actually exerted100 pounds of pressure straight up, his creativesubconscious, doing its job, says, “Hey, this guy don’t lift500 pounds. Triceps? You do your work and make surethat that glass stays there.” So the biceps are our liftingmuscles, the triceps are our pushing muscles. Hence, hisbiceps would be exerting 100 pounds of pressurestraight up; his triceps would be exerting 100 pounds ofpressure straight down. And he would literally startshaking and sweating, but that glass would stay rightthere. The creative subconscious was doing its job.

I’ve seen examples of how the creative subconscious canwork for us, instead of just against us, in a similar way.One time my wife and I and a friend of mine fromcollege went to the Playboy Club here in Phoenix andthere was a hypnotist doing a show. And he asked forvolunteers. Now the guy I was with I had known incollege, and I happened to know that he was the worstsinger in the world. The hypnotist asked for volunteersand my friend volunteered. He got up on the stage, washypnotized, and the hypnotist said, “You’re now FrankSinatra, and I want you to sing a few bars of My Way forus.” Naturally, I just started to crack up. I mean, this guywas going to make a complete fool of himself. I meanthis hypnotist picked the wrong guy to have somebodyact like they were Frank Sinatra. But you know whathappened? He sang. I mean, it wasn’t fantastic, butFrank probably would have taken it on an off night. Imean, it was that good. All of a sudden, his

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you a year, two years, maybe even five or ten years ago.And it was so emotionally charged that you canprobably remember every little detail just like ithappened yesterday. That’s your subconscious at work.All of these pictures, all of these recordings, form ourself-image.

And I want to define self-image assubconscious pictures that control ourperformance, the total accumulation of allmy experiences and feelings about thoseexperiences that the subconscious hasrecorded and stored automatically.

Now, in order to show you how your self-image controlsyour performance, I need to bring in another function ofthe creative subconscious: to maintain oursubconscious self-image, to make no value judgments,make no potential judgments, to maintain yoursubconscious self-image. Probably the best example ofhow the creative subconscious works, regardless of whatyour potential is, is the example of hypnosis. You’ve alleither seen or heard of examples of hypnosis wheresomeone was hypnotized into a deep trance. In reality,only two out of ten people can be real deeplyhypnotized. They’re what’s known as somnambulist. Ifyou’re a somnambulist, you can be very deeplyhypnotized. And if you can be deeply hypnotized, thenbasically what is happening is your conscious process isbypassed. For the most part, what the hypnotist tells youis accepted by your subconscious self-image.

So tell me this, if I hypnotize Tim here, who is about 6foot? 190? If he was a somnambulist, I could hypnotizehim deeply, and I took this glass that I have, put it infront of him, hypnotized him and told him while he wasunder hypnosis that this glass weighed 500 pounds.

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seen of a dream working in this respect was in a Peoplemagazine article and it was talking about Jack Nicklauswas trying to overcome a slump in his golf game when abetter way to hold the club was revealed to him in adream. Nicklaus changed his grip and his golf gameimproved. Was that coincidence? No. The creativesubconscious was doing its job. That is, resolving thedifference between the self-image and reality. His self-image obviously was that of a winner. Reality was hewasn’t winning. His creative subconscious searchedthrough all the experiences that he had had, said, “Hey,your grip is different now than it was then, let’s changeyour grip and your game’s going to improve.” Hechanged his grip and, sure enough, his game didimprove.

Another example I just cut recently out of a paper talkedabout a lady professional who all of a sudden had gottenher game together. She says, “I’ve been working with soand so and so and so, and they’ve all helped my game,but it all came together last night in the bathtub. I waslying on my back and noticed that my left hip wassticking out of the water higher than my right hip, andthis made me realize that I must have been over-compensating by opening my stance.” Changed herstance the next day and played one of the best roundsshe’d ever played in her life.

Now what I want you to do is I want you to think of thisconcept of self-image in terms of your game. If yoursubconscious self-image believes that you’re a choker, ifyour subconscious self-image believes that you can’tbreak 80, what is your creative subconscious going to beworking overtime to make sure happens? That you can’tdo it. And then tell me this. If it can prevent you fromlifting a six ounce glass, do you think it can prevent youfrom breaking 80? You think it can cause just a slight bit

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subconscious self-image believed that he could sing. Hiscreative subconscious doing its job says, “Hey, baby,we’re singing.”

Now you don’t have to be hypnotized for this sameprinciple to work. Remember, a number of years ago itwas absolutely physically impossible to run a four-minute mile. You couldn’t do it. Everybody’s self-image,consequently, was “Hey, you just can’t run a four-minutemile.” All of a sudden, one guy named Roger Bannisterdid it. And then about four or five more guys did it. Justrecently after that, seven guys did it in one race. Now,was there some new training technique? Was there somenew magic vitamin or something? No, it was thesubconscious self-images that had been changed. Yousee, our mind has to have a controlling mechanism. Ifwe had one part of our mind saying, “Yes, you’re goingto do something,” and the other part saying, “No, you’renot,” we’d go crazy. It’s just like a computer. Howeveryou program it is how it’s going to perform.

The second function of the creativesubconscious is to become a problem solver.

In other words, if my subconscious self-image believesthat something’s supposed to happen and it has not yethappened, then it is my creative subconscious job tofind out why it hasn’t happened and solve the problemfor me. Examples of the creative subconscious workinglike this? You’re mowing the yard or taking a shower orsomething, and all of a sudden the solution to someproblem that’s been bothering you comes to theconscious level of your awareness. It’s called an “ah-haaaa, that’s how I can do it.” You see, a lot of times itworks when we’re least expecting it; a lot of times itworks in dreams. Probably the best example I’ve ever

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In golf, our comfort zone is our handicap. If I have ahandicap of ten, then my comfort zone is probably rightaround 80 to 84. As long as I shoot 80, 84, that’s where Iusually belong, right? I’m comfortable there. But if I getover here to 85 to 90, whew, that’s too cold. If I get overto 75 or 80, hey, that’s way too hot. Well, when youand I get out of our comfort zone, do you rememberhow I said an electrical stimulus turns the airconditioner/heater on or off until we get back to ourcomfort zone as far as the room temperature isconcerned?

Well, you and I are not electrically oriented, we aretension oriented, tension controlled. When we get out ofour comfort zone a symptom called biofeedback occurs.

The creative subconscious automaticallycauses biofeedback to occur whenever theself-image is not being maintained until weget back to our comfort zone.

Because remember, the creative subconscious’ job wasto maintain the subconscious self-image. Have you everhad the unfortunate circumstance of having to lean overto sink a clutch three-foot putt only to look down at theball and see your left chest moving up and down?Literally be able to see your shirt moving because yourheart’s pounding so hard? That’s biofeedback.

Other symptoms of biofeedback: Our knees get a littleshaky, you sweat more. How many times have you seena guy hit a bad shot on the golf course, turn around andsay, “Goll, my hands slipped.” They did slip. He wassweating more, he hit a lousy shot, now he’s back in hiscomfort zone. He’s no longer under pressure. Anothersymptom of biofeedback is your voice kind of gives outevery now and then. By the way, the next time your

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of tension in a putting stroke that could cause you tochoke? I not only know it can, I know how it can. Andthat’s what I want to show you now.

In order to show you this, I want to bring in another newterm, and that term is "comfort zone". Do any of youknow how a thermostat works? You say, “Yeah, I studythat every day.” Well, let me explain it to you. If I set thethermostat on 70 degrees, then if the room temperaturegets down to, say, 68 degrees, a stimulus, an electricalstimulus goes from the thermostat to the heater. Turnsthe heater on, the heater warms up the room until thetemperature gets back to around 70 degrees. Thenanother electrical stimulus goes back to the heater toturn it off. Just the opposite happens if the roomtemperature gets too hot, say, if it gets up to 78. Then astimulus goes to the air conditioner, air conditionerturns on until the room temperature is back to around70, then the stimulus turns the air conditioner off. Thepoint is, there has to be a comfort zone there. There hasto be a range in which, if the room temperature remainswithin that range, neither the air conditioner nor theheater will turn on or off. You can’t have the temperaturein the room exactly 70 degrees all the time. I mean, you’dalways have either the air conditioner or the heaterflicking on or off; you’d have an electrical short. Hence,there is a comfort zone. As long as the temperature isbetween, say, 69 and 71, then neither the air conditionernor the heater will get clicked on or off. If it gets outsidethat range, then the appropriate one will be triggereduntil the room temperature gets back to the comfortzone. You see, you and I have a comfort zone that worksa lot like the comfort zone of a thermostat.

Our comfort zone is that range area inwhich we perform most consistently, mostefficiently. Our comfort zone correspondswith our self-image.

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this guy shot par just as sure as the sun came up in themorning. I thought I’d seen the examples of how hecreatively shot par that took the hat, but then after Istopped caddying for him, I saw his name in a box score,here – you can see it’s right out of the paper – this reallytakes the cake. Par on this course is 72. Now, he comesout of the chute with a 64; 64, wow, that’s eight underpar. What do you think he shot the second round?Eighty, right on the nose. Eight under first day, eight overthe second day. Even par for two days. So he comes outthe third round and he shoots 73. That’s one over par.Guess what he shoots the last round? 71, right on thenose; 288, even par.

Another tour player that I was working with had notwon a tournament at this point in time in his career, andhe was talking to me how he creatively blew atournament. You ever notice how good playerscreatively win tournaments? This guy was playingnumber 14 at Pebble Beach and, for those of you whohave never played it, it’s a dogleg to the right. He usuallyhits a one iron off the tee and if he ever misses his oneiron, he misses it to the left. He stepped up to his ball,knowing that he was tied for the lead, knowing that if hecould par in he’d have an excellent chance to win hisfirst golf tournament, and guess where his tee shotwent? Dead right out of bounds. He never hits his oneiron to the right. But now, out of the clear blue, hecreatively hit it to the right. His creative subconsciouscaused him to creatively hit the shot to the right; hence,maintaining his subconscious self-image.

So now that we understand how the self-image controlsour performance, I think the next natural step is tounderstand how the self-image is formed. So let's goback to the seminar to talk about that.

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partner has a 16-foot downhill putt with a break in it, tohave the bet, and he turns around to you and says,“Don’t worry, partner, I’ve got it.” You might as well takeyour money out and give it to him.

We cannot perform consistently at any levelthat is inconsistent with our subconsciousself-image.

That is why, if you remember the beginning of thissection, we said, “Why does a ten-handicap who shoots37 on the front always go to a 45 on the back?” We canperform inconsistently at a level that is not consistentwith our subconscious self-image, but we can’t performconsistently there. That’s why if the ten-handicap shoots37, he’s going to go to a 45. At the same time, that’s whyif he shoots 93 one day, he’s going to go to a 75 or 76 thenext day. You average them both together and theycome out to, well, lo and behold, right at his handicap.You can use this in your bets and presses. If you’replaying with a guy whose handicap is ten and he shoots45 on the front, is that the time to press on the back?Uh-uh. Of course, if you’re playing a ten and he shoots45 on the front and you’re down to the point you’ve gotto press anyway, you’re in trouble, period.

I haven’t ever had the chance, but I would love to knowwhat the average amateur had scored right after he hada hole in one. I’ve only had one hole in one, and twofriends of mine that are here were with me as a matter offact, and they can vouch for the fact that after my hole inone, I got a double bogie on the next hole. And I wastotally aware of these principles.

This is not a unique thing with just amateurs. I wascaddying for a professional once on the tour, caddied forhim for quite a while. His comfort zone was par. I mean,

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support our subconscious self-image. If I believe thatI’m a choker, I’m only going to notice stuff that verifiesthat. Even though there may be other things occurringin my game that show where I’m not a choker. On theother hand, if I believe that I am an 80 shooter, thensometimes I’m not going to see solutions that are rightin front of me that may be able to prevent me frombeing an 80 shooter. That’s the first problem that we runinto with the process of self-image formation.

The second problem that we run into is that we areconditioned to notice more about what is wrong withour performance than what is right.

What do you immediately see on that slide?Go ahead, don’t be afraid to say it. Notice ismisspelled. Isn’t that funny? Here I’m sayingwe are conditioned to notice more aboutwhat is wrong than what is right, and here

I’ve got 16 words spelled right and one spelled wrong.But which one do we all notice? The one that’s spelledwrong. I guarantee there weren’t any of you in the chairsaying, “Ed got 16 out of 17, and that’s not too bad, Imean, I understood what he was trying to say”. On theother hand, I guarantee there was quite a few of yousaying, “Oh look, Harriet, Ed misspelled notice in frontof all these people and he doesn’t even realize it.”

Well, I did it on purpose to verify the point because weall are conditioned to notice more about what is wrongwith our performance than what is right. You see, we’vebeen conditioned this way since we were kids. When wewere in second grade and the paper came back with bigred marks on it, were the red marks on the right answersor the wrong answers? How about the paper? Here’s justa typical paper, I just picked it up. Nothing special, I canshow you the same example in many different papers.

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The self-image formation process is a four-step formula. The first thing that happens isa performance occurs. After a performanceoccurs, we then evaluate our performancethrough our self-talk. Then the third step isthe subconscious stores and records the

resulting pictures, emotions, feelings, so forth and soon, and uses them in the formation or reinforcement ofour self-image. Then after that has occurred, thecreative subconscious in step number four then affectsfuture performance by doing its job, which is tomaintain the subconscious self-image.

Now, the problem with this four-step process is twofold.First of all, a principle called cognitive dissonance. Thiswas put forth by a man by the name of Leon Festinger.Basically, it says we cannot have two conflicting beliefsat one time without causing disharmony. Weautomatically gather information to support andreinforce our subconscious self-image. We gatherinformation to support whatever we believe. Let me giveyou a couple examples.

Did you ever notice how you can listen to two guyscoming off the 18th green after a match. One of themsays, “Man, this guy was the luckiest thing I’ve ever seenin my life.” And then the guy comes by that wassupposedly so lucky and he says, “Jeez, I couldn’t buy abreak today.” And they both just witnessed the samematch. How about two guys watching a football gameon TV. One of them’s rooting for one team, and the otherone’s rooting for another team. Their team, whicheverone it may be, gets all the bad calls, doesn’t it? Andthey’re both watching the same game.

Sometimes we are more rationalizing than rational. Wetend to only observe and perceive what is going to

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back on the college years saying, “Boy, I really had it a lotbetter than I thought, didn’t I?”

Listen to golfers evaluating their round of golf. Are youmore likely to hear, "Jeez, if I only wouldn’t have three-putted the first five greens, I would have got off to agood start." Or, "If I only wouldn’t have knocked the ballout of bounds on #10 and #11 and #12, I could have hada pretty decent back nine." Or, are you likely to hear,"Boy, I really sunk that clutch putt on #18, didn’t I, I justput it right in the middle of the hole, I mean, I’m a heckof a clutch player, aren’t I?" You don’t hear anybodytalking like that. If they are, they’re talking tothemselves. They’re certainly not talking to anybodyelse, because society not only conditions us to benegative about our own performance, it conditions us tobe negative toward anyone else who’s positive.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for modesty. It’s justthat evaluating our performance through negative self-talk is programming our mind for failure. That’s notmodesty. That’s making our mind work more against usthan for us. By controlling our self-talk, weautomatically control the pictures that are in our mind,because of the trigger process, and by controlling thepictures in our mind we control the corresponding self-image and we control the performance and we controlthe attitude. Most golfers get on the golf course and theyallow their performance to control their self-talk. And aslong as they’ve got good performance, they’ve got greatself-talk. But what happens when they have badperformance? Because we all have bad performancesooner or later. As soon as you have bad performanceyou have bad self-talk. If you have bad self-talk, you’regoing to have a bad picture or trigger process, which isgoing to reinforce a negative self-image, which meansthat your creative subconscious is going to work to

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The headlines say, "Chance of rain today, Sunday, ratedat 20%". Doesn’t it make a little more sense to say,chance of sunshine 80%? There’s also a story there abouthow – on the front page by the way – about how a manrobbed a liquor store. But way back in the back there’s astory about a volunteer who’s helping literally hundredsof kids in the ghetto. Now which one’s more importantto you? I know which one’s more important to me. Butagain, we accentuate the negative. I mean, society hasall sorts of phrases for us: the grass is always greeneron...the other side of the hill. The negative. It’s a sad fact,but we’re unhappy with what we’ve got many times.

We always want what we can’t have. It usually starts inabout eighth grade. You say, “Boy, I can’t wait until I’m afreshman. Get out of this eighth grade and, hey,everything’s going to be great.” Then when you’re afreshman, you say, “Oh, jeez, I didn’t know I was going toget all this grief from the upper classmen, I can’t waituntil I’m an upper classmen, 'til I’m a senior. I mean,everything will be hunky-dory then.” Then you say,“Well, high school’s so blah blah, I mean, I can’t waituntil I get out of high school and go to college. I mean,college is where it’s really at. I get to move away fromhome, and everything will be great then.”

But then, after 16 years of college, you’re saying, “Man, Ican’t wait to get out into the real world. I can’t wait to getout in the real world. I hate having to go to all theseclasses, hate having to do all these tests and everything.”I had a PE coach in college. He said, "You guys don’tknow how easy you got it right now. You’re going toschool, you go to class when you want to, you takeexams when you want to, you do, you got it made.” And Isaid, “Who is he fooling?” Then you get out of schooland all of a sudden you find out what the real world islike and you’ve got to make a living. And then you look

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SELF-TALK RULES

Performance and self-talk are directly related because ofthe automatic trigger process. How we are playing golfon any particular day has a lot to do with how we aretalking to ourselves. And as we all know, it can changeduring the round, sometimes with every single shot. Allgolfers have got favorite clubs and least favorite clubs,strong parts of their game and weak parts of their game,and chances are their self-talk with each of those areas isconsistent with how they evaluate that particular part oftheir game. Most golfers allow their performance tocontrol their self-talk. This is the real challenge in golf. Imean, how hard is it to have good self-talk wheneverything's going the way we want it to? It's easy then.But what separates the good players from the not asgood players is the players that have some self-discipline, some awareness, and they control what iswithin their control, and by doing that they will controlthe pictures that automatically appear in their mind andtheir corresponding thoughts that they have. So let's goback to the seminar and learn how to control our self-talk.

Since I'm putting such an emphasis on self-talk, to giveyou some specific ways of controlling our self-talk.

One key is to eliminate self-put-downs.What's a self-put-down? A self-put-down iswhen you miss a clutch putt and you say,"You choker, you couldn't hit a clutch putt

to save your life." You guys never say that, do you?

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make that negative self-image a reality, which meansthat that’s going to lead to more bad performance,which is going to lead to more bad self-talk, which isgoing to lead to more negative self-image, and it’s avicious circle that keeps going and going and going.

On the other hand, if we will have enough discipline andenough awareness to realize that self-talk can becontrolled. All the time. It’s a habit that we’ve got tochange, but we can do it. By controlling our self-talk, wewill control our self-image, and by controlling our self-image our creative subconscious will work more toattain that self-image, which will be a more positive self-image because we’ve controlled the self-talk andcontrolled the pictures. Hence, our performance will beeasier to maintain at a higher level; hence, it’ll be eveneasier to have good self-talk and then we’ve got apositive cycle going. A positive circle.

It's not hard to have good self-talk when you've got goodperformance. The difference between the good playersand the not-so-good players is that they understandthey can control their self-talk, they understand theycan control their thoughts, and they do just that. In thenext section I'm going to teach you how to do that.


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"Sweetheart, that's not a problem. Just move your grip alittle to the left."

As I mentioned, some people literally revolve theirentire life around their last round of golf. Everything. Iknow wives, when he comes home if he had a badround, she ain't even gonna come close to crossing hispath. Read any autobiography from a major tournamentplayer or a major winner, a great golfer so to speak, asuper star, and you will see somewhere along theircareer they learned to put golf in perspective. Mostpeople never learn that lesson until it's too late, untilafter they jeopardize their relationship with their bestfriend, until after they jeopardize their image around theclub, until after they've put pressure on their marriage. Imean, it reminds me of the story about the wife whoasked her husband, "Honey, why aren't you playing golfwith George every Saturday anymore?" And he says,"Well, sweetheart, would you play golf with somebodywho cheated, kicked his ball out from bushes, lied aboutwhat he scored on the hole? I mean, he does everythinghe can do just to try and look like he's a better golferthan he is. Would you play golf with him?" She says, "Icertainly would not." And he says, "Well, neither wouldGeorge."

Some people literally put that much emphasis on thegame. They'll literally threaten their own self-image,their own self-respect. I come across a lot ofprofessional golfers, not only touring players, butplayers who haven't yet made it to the tour. And theirwhole life literally revolves around the golf game. Andthey don't make it, for one reason or another. They quitthe tour, they quit trying, they get a regular job, and youknow what happens? They're playing the best golf oftheir career. I guarantee you, if I've had one guy say it tome I've had a dozen say it to me. "If I could play golf as

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That's a self-put-down. Another self-put-down is, "Whycan't I be as good as So-and-So? I mean, I got as muchability as he or she does. Why can't I be as good asthem?" What kind of pictures do those automaticallypicture in our mind? We cannot prevent it.

A second way to control self-talk is toestablish a value system and then keep it inmind.

I'm going to make a statement now that is going toprobably shock some of you. It'll just surprise the rest ofyou. But believe it or not, it's true. Golf is not the mostimportant thing in the world. Now I know that justshocks some people. I mean, some people, everythingyou say to them revolves around golf. It reminds me ofthe story of the newlywed who was about to get marriedand he decides, hey, I better have a good heart-to-hearttalk with my fiancée. So he calls her over to his house.He says, "Honey, there's something I want you tounderstand before we get married. I don't want it tocause any problems." And she says, "Well, what's that?"And he says, "I am the epitome of what you call a golfnut. I mean, I'm going to play golf every singleWednesday, every single Friday, every single Saturday,every single Sunday. I'm going to go to vacation spotsthat have good golf courses. I mean, I really like thegame. And if that's going to be a problem with you,honey, then we better talk about it 'cause that's just theway I want it to be and, I mean, I got some friends andthat causes some real problems in their marriage.” Soshe says, "Sweetheart, that's no problem. With me." Andhe breathes a big sigh of relief. He's thinking, "Whooo! Isthis ever going to be fun." All of a sudden she says, "Aslong as we're getting things out in the open, I think Ibetter tell you something, too." And he says, "What'sthat?" And she says, "I'm a hooker." And he says,

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turns out to be one of those days, doesn't it?Performance and self-talk are directly related.

How about this one? Somebody hits a nice shot and agolfer in the group says, "Hey, nice shot, Joe." And Joeturns around and says, "Well, I mean, sooner or later,law of averages you're bound to hit a good shot." Or,"Don't worry. I'll make up for it on the next shot."Something to downgrade themselves. Society conditionsus negatively here too. Ask somebody on Mondaymorning how they're doing. What are you going to hear?"Eh! Not bad for a Monday."

Rule number four is accept accountability.As you have already seen, a high self-imageand a high performance level go hand inhand.

Well, now I want you to realize that a high self-imageand a high sense of accountability go hand in hand.Don't blame others. Don't blame intangibles for yourown lack of success. Don't complain about the badbounce that the ball took out of bounds if you were theone that hit it close enough that a bad bounce couldtake it out in the first place. Every club has got thesebionic eared players that cannot wait to blame everybad shot on a velcro glove being removed or an airplanepassing overhead, a truck going by a couple miles awayon the road, or some guy celebrating his first birdie ofthe year three fairways over.

A fifth way to control your self-talk is towhisper under your breath.

When you're walking down the middle of the fairwayunder the pressure of having to par the hole, to birdie

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good then as I'm playing right now, I coulda made it."We've all known people who were really good insomething that maybe they really didn't care that muchabout? And you might have heard people say, "Boy, theycould be a heck of a player if they really wanted to." Butchances are, if they really wanted to they'd getconscious and start pushing and they probably wouldn'tbe as good as they are right now.

A value scale. For many people, a value scale, the firstand most important thing in their life is a relationshipwith God and their family. The second most importantthing is their health. The third most important thing istheir job. And down here at four or five is their golf orsome hobby. Now, I don't even care if your career is golf.When you have a bad round, when you miss a four-footer, when you suffer frustration in your golf game,why act like something just happened with the first orsecond priority because it didn't? This is a vital cog inbecoming a better golfer because, you see, the moreimportant you make golf, the more you push, and themore you push the more you get conscious. The moreyou get conscious the less subconscious you play, andthe less subconscious you play, as we've already learned,the less chance you have to succeed, to play to yourpotential level. For many people, golf is the spice of life,but if you make spice the whole meal you're going toget sick.

The third step on controlling your self-talkis to eliminate negative habit phrases.

You're on the practice range and you hit some balls so-so and you get on the first tee and you hit it so-so. Youstruggle through the first hole and you lip out your puttfor a par. As you're walking to the second hole you say,"It's gonna be one of those days!" And sure enough, it

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player. I have got to find out what I am doing wrong withmy long irons, change it. My long irons definitely hurtme." That's realistic. It's critical to say, "I'm the worstlong iron player anybody's ever seen in their life and, Imean, if I ever get a chance to blow it with my longirons, believe me, I'll do it." That's being critical. Onereaction triggers a more positive picture in my mind,realistic picture. One triggers a more negative picture inmy mind. Works more against me than for me. I wantyou to re-live a bad performance long enough to learnwhat you did wrong and then forget it. It does no goodto re-live the clutch putt that you missed 19 timesbecause you just put it into your mind 19 times, youreinforced your self-image 19 times. You've justincreased the amount of negative experiences that youhave registered as opposed to positive ones. Gotta learnwhat you did wrong and then forget it.

If we continually re-live a bad experience ora bad performance long after we havelearned what we did wrong, we are simplyincreasing our chances of failure byprogramming our minds to work moreagainst us than for us.

I think too many golfers have unrealistically highperformance standards and as a result they're toocritical of their performance. One reactionautomatically triggers a more positive picture in yourmind and one triggers a more negative picture in yourmind. One automatically makes your mind work morefor you, the other automatically — remember,automatically — makes your mind work more againstyou. Listen to winners talk. You'll hear that they showcompassion for themselves even to the point that theysometimes make excuses. Now I know that's a fine linewith the rule we just discussed on accepting

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the hole, to do whatever in order to make the cut, inorder to have the match, in order to win thetournament, win the match, whatever, and you'rehaving trouble controlling your self-talk there's nothingbut negative pictures rolling through your mind, you'reseeing more of what you want to avoid instead of whatyou want to attain, start whispering to yourself. Literallyforce yourself to whisper the kind of performance youwant to attain instead of the kind of performance youwant to avoid and you will see positive pictures.

When you're fighting that demon in your head whowants to see nothing but negative pictures and you'reseeing more of what you want to avoid instead of whatyou want to attain, literally force yourself to whisperunder your breath the kind of results that you want toattain. Just describe the shot that you're trying to hit indetail. Just verbalize it and you will automatically seemore positive pictures in your mind and you willautomatically start to think more positive thoughts.

Number 6, be realistic, not critical. Positivethinking stuff. If all you do is ignore whatyou're doing wrong, that's not positivethinking. That's unrealistic thinking.

In a game as exacting as golf, if you're a choker you'dbetter deal with it. If you've got a swing flaw, you betterdeal with it. Don't ignore it because if you ignore it that'sunrealistic thinking. Dealing with it is realistic. I wantyou to be realistic, not critical. You see, if I'm in a terribleputting slump, it's realistic to say, "Hey, I'm in a badputting slump. I gotta find out what I'm doing wrongand change it." That's realistic. It's critical to say, "Jeeze,I couldn't hit a putt to save my life and I mean if I couldputt I'd be dangerous and, I mean, I'm gonna give up."That's critical. It's realistic to say, "I'm a bad long iron

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round of golf and you think that they expect to hit manymore good shots than a man like Ben Hogan hit, andthat's just not realistic. So again, we want to be realistic,not critical.

For many golfers, golf seems to be a Catch-22. Theydon't think they can play to their best if they're nottough on themselves. But yet they can't be tough onthemselves and play to their best. There's a theory inpsychology called the intermittent theory ofreinforcement. Basically it means that the hardestbehavior to extinguish is the behavior that is reinforcedintermittently, not consistently but intermittently. And Ithink that's got something to do with why people are sotough on themselves. Because every now and then theydo get good performance after being tough onthemselves, they will receive intermittentreinforcement, hence that's a very hard behavior toextinguish.

I want to quickly reiterate three principles because theywill be the foundation for much of what we'll belearning from this point on.

NUMBER ONE, we cannot prevent self-talk.

NUMBER TWO, as self-talk occurs the trigger processautomatically occurs.

NUMBER THREE, even though we can't stop self-talk,we can control self-talk.

By controlling self-talk we will control the pictures thatautomatically trigger in our minds. I want you tounderstand how powerful this concept is that we'retalking about. Modern psychologists have learned thatteaching someone to become aware of and change andcontrol their self-talk is actually more powerful in

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accountability, but winners seem to be more realistic.They don't seem to be perfectionists. Perfection and golfare not compatible. It's like fire and gas. If you have aperfectionistic personality, I don't think you can playthis game very long because this game cannot beperfected. It cannot be mastered. But yet trying tomaster it is part of the reason that the game is soaddictive. I was watching a tournament last week andthe announcer said about the golfer that they happenedto be focusing on at the time that if he could just treathimself as good as he treats everybody else that hewould see a dramatic improvement in his game and thenumber of wins he would accomplish because, notunlike a lot of us, he is overly critical of himself.

I think that is one big advantage to seeing some of thestatistical analysis on tour players today because if youlook at those stats you can see that they don't hit goodshots all the time. I remember distinctly the first fewprofessional tournaments I got to go to. My reactionwas, well, they don't hit perfect shots all the time. So ifthey don't hit perfect shots all the time, we sure as heckshouldn't expect to hit perfect shots all the time. And itcan help us in our attitude of being less critical towardsourselves. I really think this is a big reason why someprofessional golfers play so much better when they getto the Champions Tour. They're not as critical ofthemselves and their play. They are more realistic. Theyknow they don't have to hit every shot perfect to win.

Ben Hogan, who by most people's account was one ofthe finest ball strikers, if not the finest ball striker of alltime, called golf a game of mis-shots. It's a game ofconstant recovery. We're not going to hit all our shotsexactly like we want. Ben Hogan would say that he onlyhit two to three shots a round exactly like he wanted.But yet you watch the average player react during a

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it's easier to remember the name. I'm also seeing moreand more golf instructors starting to take advantage ofthese principles as well. They are getting more and morecreative in thinking of ways to show students the propermoves in the golf swing by creating unique pictures.

I saw a teacher recently who was using a padlock toillustrate the proper release motion of the right handthrough impact. She was also using a door jamb toillustrate the proper hand and arm position at the top ofa back swing. One of her students who she had recentlybumped into remembered those pictures ten years afterthe fact. Ten years after she was given those pictures in alesson she still had those pictures vividly in her mind.It's so much easier to remember pictures because ourmind works in pictures. I've read a Jack Nicklaus quotewhere he says that he pictured a wall of razor bladesduring his back swing to prevent him from taking theclub too far back to the outside. A good picture truly isworth a thousand words, at least as far as our mind isconcerned.

I hope you're beginning to see how these principles willallow us to control our thoughts on a golf course or, forthat matter, what we're thinking anywhere or anytime.

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dealing with someone's severe depression than anti-depressant drugs are. Cognitive therapy practitionersget almost four times – four times – more positive resultsby teaching patients this principle that we are nowdiscussing than they do with drug therapy.

Another example of how powerful this technique is, isthe most advanced prosthetics known to man arecontrolled by thoughts. A person with a prosthetic istaught to think that his hand will move, and that's how itmoves. An electrical stimulus from the brain to theprosthetic makes the limb move the same way you and Imove our limbs.

Taking advantage of these principles is how easternmeditation techniques like transcendental meditationwork. You are given a word to repeat over and over andover again. The word is called a mantra. A mantra is aword that will not trigger any pictures in your mind. So ifyou repeat this mantra continuously over and over againthe mind is quieted because no corresponding pictureautomatically will be triggered in your mind as long asyou keep your thoughts on that word. If your mindwanders, corresponding pictures of what you arethinking about will appear in your mind until you getback to repeating the mantra, which again will nottrigger any pictures in your mind when you say it toyourself over and over again. An example of a mantra isa word iama, I-A-M-A. If I say the word iama over andover in my mind, it will not trigger any pictures in mymind so the conscious mind is automatically going to bequieted. If you want to quiet your mind, you've got tocontrol this automatic trigger process.

Taking advantage of these principles is also how most oftoday's memory techniques work. By learning toassociate names with pictures or words with pictures,

The Learning Process

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THE LEARNING PROCESS

Psychologists tell us that there are three basic types oflearning. You can learn by feel, which is kinestheticlearning; by hearing, auditory learning; or by sight,visual learning. The more of these senses that we canuse when we're learning something new, the quickerand the more thoroughly we will learn the new behavior.Said differently, the better your ability to learn an over-learned skill like the golf swing, the better your chancesare for consistent and lasting improvement. So let's goback to the seminar now and learn how to learn.

Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to improve?Why is it that you hear so many golfers say, “I know whatI’m doing wrong. I just can’t stop doing it”? The game ofgolf is a subject of literally thousands of how-toinstruction books and articles that most of us find mucheasier to read and understand than to execute, than toduplicate. Especially under pressure. Far too often, it’snot as much a matter of knowing what to perform as it isa matter of performing what we know.

I’ve come to see that the difference between the playerwho improves and the player who improves but not asmuch as he has the potential to improve is his ability tolearn.

The better their ability to learn an over-learned skill like the golf swing, the bettertheir chances are for consistent and lastingimprovement. So because the learningprocess is so crucial to us being able to

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head path that is from the outside to the inside of histarget line. His ball takes off to the left of the target. Now,that’s the first error in his swing, the first major error.The second major error in his swing is that he has anopen club face at impact. In other words, after his balltakes off left of the target, it curves back toward thetarget. Ball-flight principles, which we’ll get into in just amoment, tell us two things about this gentleman’sswing. First of all, he has an outside-to-inside club-headpath, and we know that from the fact that the ball takesoff left of the target. And then the fact that the ballcurves with a left-to-right spin action back toward thetarget means that he had an open club face in relation tohis target path at impact. He’s got two wrongs. Andsometimes he can get away with it. Sometimes that sliceworks out okay.

The first wrong, which is swinging over top the ball, is adisruptive wrong. The second wrong, which is an openclub face at impact, is a corrective wrong because itcauses the ball to slice back toward the target. Now, ifthis particular gentleman took a lesson from his pro andthe pro says, "Okay, we’ve got two major things we’ve gotto correct on your swing. The first major thing we’ve gotto correct is we’ve got to change that club head path.Instead of swinging over top the ball, instead of comingfrom the outside to the inside, I want you to comestraight along the target line. Instead of your ballstarting out left of the target, I want it to start out towardthe target. So they work on that error for a while, andnow they get his swing so that the club head now goeson the target line at and through impact, and now theball starts out online. But what about the second wrong?Remember the open club face? Now it is changed from acorrective wrong to a major disruptive wrong. Now,instead of the ball starting out left and then going righttoward the target and being able to get away with it

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perform to the level that we want to be able to performto, that we have the potential to perform to, I want tospend some time helping you learn how to learn.

Most learning is a result of one of two types of swingchanges. Most improvement is a result of one of twotypes of swing changes. Either a major swingcorrection or a minor swing correction. Now, a minorswing correction is a swing correction that theconscious can grasp immediately. Most minor swingcorrections deal with either shot selection, swingselection, club selection, pre-shot routine, or set-up. Forexample, a different grip would be a minor swingcorrection. It’s something that your conscious mind cangrasp after maybe 25, 30 shots. It still feels a littleawkward, but you can learn it pretty quickly. Andusually, a minor correction is followed by immediateimprovement.

But, the second type of correction, that is a major swingcorrection, is many times followed by performance thatgets worse. Have you ever been told, you’re going tohave to get worse before you get better? You everwonder why that has to happen? Let me explain to youwhy it has to happen. If you have a major swingcorrection, that has to be handled by the subconscious.In other words, the conscious has to learn it to the pointthat the subconscious can perform it as an over-learnedskill. Have you ever heard the expression two wrongsdon’t make a...a right? Well, in golf, two wrongs canmake a right. Let me explain to you what I mean. I’mgoing to use the example of a guy who has been hitting abig old banana slice for ten years. Not an uncommonproblem, right? Any of you guys slice at all? I didn’t thinkso. Okay, this guy’s been hitting a big old banana slicefor ten years. Now, he’s got two major swing flaws in hisgame. The first swing flaw is that he swings on a club-


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The third step involves learning it. Understand it, feel it,learn it. The first step deals mainly with my mind. Thesecond step, the mind and the body. The third stepinvolves mainly the body. Let me talk about each one ofthese steps in more detail.

As far as the attitude and desire throughout, what typeof an attitude gives us the best chance to learn, tomaximize our learning? What type of an attitudeminimizes our learning? And once we know which one’sbest, how do we control our attitude? Well, let me usethe example of the guy that we just got done referring to,who had been hitting the slice for ten years. If his procorrected only the first wrong in his swing, he is nowgoing to be going straight to right, instead of left to right.He’s going to have results that are probably worse thanthey were. Now, the typical student is going to respondone of three ways. He’s going to say something along thelines of, "Pro, I know you’re teaching me the right thing,but I mean, I can’t learn anything." Or, he’s going to saysomething along the lines of, "Go ahead, way right, goon, go way out there, I don’t care." Or, he’s going to saysomething along the lines of, "I’m going back to my oldswing. I mean, at least I could hit a shot decent once in awhile." And remember, this is the way he responds afterhe just made a major swing correction. Each one ofthose statements obviously triggers negative pictures inour mind automatically, reinforces a more negative self-image, our creative subconscious works more against usthan for us.

The question that I ask students that are respondingthat way on the lesson tee is how would you respond toyour wife or your kids if they were trying to make amajor swing correction just like you are? You’d probably,on the contrary, be very reinforcing. You’d saysomething along the lines of, "Hey, you’ve been doing it

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every now and then, now his ball starts out straighttoward the target and what does it do then? Goes wayright. Hence, he gets worse before he’s going to getbetter. He’s not going to get better 'til he improves andcorrects the second wrong. So even though he’s made amajor swing correction that is a major step in the rightdirection to giving him the consistency that heultimately desires, he’s going to play worse before heplays better.

So now that you understand that principle, I want todefine the learning process. My definition, it’s a three-step process.

The first step of the learning process is toanswer the question, what am I doingwrong now? What new moves do I need toacquire in order to start playing golf the way

I want to play golf? The second step of the learningprocess is to attain a personal kinesthetic awareness of

the desired moves that I need to acquire.

The second step, we find out what do theyfeel like when I do them right.

The third step then is to allow the consciousmind to learn the new swing moves to thepoint that the subconscious mind canperform them as over-learned skills. And of

course, our attitude and desire throughout the learningprocess are very crucial, as you’re all already aware rightnow from previous learning experiences.

The first step of the learning process meansunderstanding it. The second step involves feeling it.


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The first way is by going to your pro. Andthat’s the way I recommend the first and theforemost.

By going to your pro, you can find out what you reallyare doing in your swing instead of what you think you’redoing. What’s the average person’s reaction the first timethey see their swing on videotape reply? "Am I doingthat? I mean, I know you told me that I had my handsover there, but I didn’t think they were that far over. Iknow you told me I was spinning out, but I didn’t think Iwas spinning out that bad." It’s very important to learnwhat you are doing compared to what you think you’redoing. That’s the first thing you gain from a pro. Thesecond thing you gain from a pro is you find out if you’retrying to do the right thing in the first place. I know anawful lot of golfers who just beat their head against thewalls trying to groove a certain swing habit and it’s noteven the right swing habit in the first place. Not only arethey not doing what they think they’re doing, but they’renot even trying to do what’s right in the first place.

The way that I phrase this is by saying,motivation without knowledge equalsfrustration. I know an awful lot of golfersthat are motivated to be better golfers, but I

know an awful lot of golfers that are frustrated. Andthey’re frustrated because they don’t have theknowledge to become a better golfer. Sure they’ve gotthe motivation, but they don’t have the knowledge.Remember when we talked about the function of thesubconscious was to perform over-learned skills? A skillthat was consciously learned, subconsciouslyperformed? How can the conscious ever learn it to thepoint that the subconscious can perform it, if theconscious never becomes aware of it in the first place?

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bad for ten years, I mean, it’s going to take a little whileto change it, give yourself a chance. I mean, come on,let’s go, just keep working on it, it’ll come, it’ll come."Well, if you’ll respond to your wife and kids that way,why won’t you respond to yourself that way? I mean,who’s got the best chance to learn? Somebody withthose kind of pictures going through his mind orsomebody with a picture of a klutz who couldn’t learnanything if his life depended on it going through hismind? Obviously.

Frustration is a natural reaction. You can see it in littlethree-month-old babies that can’t get the nipple of theirbottle in their mouth. You can see it in five year oldswhen they can’t get the bolt to fit in the hole. You can seeit in adults when they can’t get the car to work the wayit’s supposed to. You can see it in everybody. I want tominimize the frustration so we can maximize ouropportunity for learning. And I want to do it by having arealistic attitude toward learning, a realistic expectationinstead of an unrealistic fantasy. It’s an unrealisticfantasy for me to expect to see improvement until I get achance to deal with the second wrong in my swing. Notjust the first wrong. It’s a realistic expectation for me tosay to myself, "Hey, I’ve been doing it for ten years, it’sgoing to take a little while to change it. I mean, I alreadysolved the first major flaw being corrected because nowthe ball’s starting straight toward the target instead ofleft." One is a realistic expectation; the other is anunrealistic fantasy. And by controlling your self-talk, youcontrol the pictures and you control the attitude.

What about the first step of the learning process? Whatam I doing wrong now? What new moves do I need toacquire? There’s basically three ways you can answerthat question.


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happening. Because if you see yourself on camera, youknow what’s happening, you don’t have to think what’shappening, you know what’s happening because youcan see it. You can begin to coordinate what you think ishappening with what really is happening, and by doingthat you obviously increase your kinesthetic awareness agreat deal.

A second way to increase your kinestheticawareness is to allow your subconscious toperform the over-learned skills so that theconscious can observe and perceive. The

reason so many people see themselves on camera andrespond with, “Am I doing that? I didn’t know I wasdoing that” is because their conscious mind was so busytrying to perform the swing that it couldn’t do it’s ownjob, which was to observe and perceive, to feel, to sensewhere the club was, versus trying to put it where itshould be.

A third way to increase your kinestheticawareness is to take notes on your personalfeelings when the given move that you’retrying to acquire was performed correctly.

Now, I didn’t say write down what your pro felt, writedown what you feel. An interesting demonstration that Iuse in my PGA seminars around the country is I’ll havefive pros commit basically the same move. And then,while the other four leave the room, I’ll have them oneat a time describe to the class what they felt happenedwhen they performed that move. And it’s absolutelyunbelievable, well you’ll get five different answers everysingle time. Did you ever wonder why you look atinstruction material and you see two top players, one ofthem says slide your hips on the downswing, the othersays turn them as if they were in a barrel. Now that’sobviously two completely different statements. But what

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Our mind is a very sophisticated thing, but it’s not sosophisticated that it can perform somethingconsistently that we’ve never even taught it. I mean, howrealistic is that? I’ve had pros take this and put it in aframe, a nice, embossed frame, or they’ll have it carvedout of a piece of wood or something, put it behind theirdesk in their golf shop, and literally sell lessons off of it.People read that and they know they’re frustrated andthey know they’re motivated to be better golfers, so itmust be that they don’t have the knowledge.

The higher degree your personal, kinestheticawareness, the better your chance to playgood golf. This is proven by the fact that aftermost people take a lesson, they play better,

don’t they? That’s because their personal, kinestheticawareness is now at a higher level. They've just learnedsomething new. Their mind had more input to work on.If we don’t give it a personal, kinesthetic awareness, ifwe don’t ever acquire that kinesthetic awareness, ifwe’ve never felt the move, then we’ve never becomeaware of it, and how can our conscious mind perform itto the point that the subconscious can learn it andperform it as an over-learned skill, if the consciousnever became aware of it in the first place? Let me giveyou some drills to acquire kinesthetic awareness.

How can we and our students increase ourkinesthetic awareness?

The first way, and a way which I hope is notnew to any of you, is videotape replay andgraph check. It’s amazing how many peopleare so surprised when they see themselves

on camera for the first time. When you get a chance tolook at yourselves on camera, you begin to associatewhat you feel is happening with what really is


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By removing the sense of sight, you increase thesensitivity of feel.

Exaggeration. If I have a student who isusing an unusually strong grip, if his handsare way over to the right side of the club,most people, most professionals, and I

would have done this too before I learned this principle,but most professionals would take his grip and turn it toa neutral position. And that’s going to feel weird as allget-out to that golfer, isn’t it? So as a result, as long as hethinks about it, he can keep them up here, but as soonas he stops thinking about it, his hands get back overhere where they feel more comfortable. Right? Well, ifyou took that same golfer and instead of moving hishands from the strong position to a neutral position,instead you moved them from a strong position to avery weak position, an exaggeratedly weak position,then in turn when he lets them slip back, he’s goingto have a tendency only to let them slip back to theneutral position, instead of all the way back to thestrong position.

You have a better chance to feel thekinesthetic feelings associated with thecorrect movement, or the correct grip, if youhave felt the opposite extremes of both other

ways. If I have a student who’s taking the club backinside too fast, I’ll go put him next to a wall and makehim swing so that the club head is touching the wall forabout 25 times. Then when he goes and starts to swing,it’ll have a tendency to go straight back instead of keepgoing back to the inside. Because he has feltkinesthetically the wrong move to both extremes. Andthat in turn lets him identify the correct feeling muchmore accurately, much more efficiently and consistently.

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makes it even more confusing is when you look atpictures of both golfers, and they’re both obviously goodplayers, they’ve both got the track record, when you lookat the picture of each of them swinging, they look likethey’re doing the same move. But yet they describe itcompletely differently. That’s why there’s so muchconflicting instruction in golf, because what feels fast tome, feels slow to you. What feels medium to you, mayfeel to an extreme to me. What feels like sliding yourhips to one of those gentlemen feels like turning them ina barrel to the other one. So that is why it is vital whenyou are taking a lesson and you perform the move thatyour pro wants you to acquire correctly, you write itdown. You write down what you felt. Not what you readin a book, not what you heard, what you felt happen.

Read any good instruction book and you’ll see it. JackNicklaus in his book Golf My Way talks about on theback swing his hands reach for the sky. That phrasetriggers the right pictures for him. Well, for me, it mayput my hands up here in front of my head. Nowobviously, that’s no position to hit a golf ball from. Butfor him, they work. Ben Hogan in his book talks about abig belt on the back of the wall behind him, and as hestarts his downswing the belt pulls his hips around andturns them very quickly to start the downswing. Well,when I do that, it makes me spin out. For Hogan, itobviously worked. That doesn’t mean he’s right and I’mwrong, it just means that what felt one way to him, feelsanother way to me. So you need to identify what yourpersonal, kinesthetic feelings are when you do the movecorrectly.

Close your eyes and make the move a fewtimes that you’re trying to make. You see, byremoving one sense, you increase thesensitivity of another.


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over during a back swing. As a result, the mind has noanchor point, no reference point from which to drawthe kinesthetic feelings from.

An excellent way to increase yourkinesthetic awareness is to make sure thatyour eyes stay exactly where they were whenthey started the swing, and by doing that

you’ll have an anchor from which to draw thekinesthetic feelings from.

Number nine, demonstrate in slow motionwhile the student observes and perceives,while he feels. I drive tour pros crazy when Iplay with them, because I always ask them,

“Could you swing about one mile an hour for me, whileI’m standing right over here looking over your shoulder,and just let me look and see what happens?” TommyPercher is a good friend of mine, and I have learnedmore playing golf with him, as good a swing as he hasgot, and putting my head over his shoulder while heswings in slow motion for me, than I can possibly tellyou. Because it lets me perceive more what he perceives.And by doing that, I increase my feel because I feel morewhat he feels.

The tenth way to increase your kinestheticawareness, of course, is to control your self-talk. It does no good to be sitting on a lessontee saying, “I just can’t feel it,” because what

kind of picture’s going to go through your mind whenyou say that?

An eleventh way is to swing in slow motion.By doing that, you accomplish much whatwe did in Rule #6, we don’t become so ball-result-oriented, we become more swing-

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Become more swing-oriented andreinforced instead of ball-oriented andreinforced. The problem with most golfers,when you’re trying to get them to perform aspecific move is that they’re so worried about

where the ball goes that they don’t feel what happenedin the first place. So to eradicate that and solve that, Ihave them perform the move consistently without aball. If you can’t perform the move you’re trying toperform without a ball, you can’t do it with a ball, Iguarantee you. On the other hand, if you have no ballthere to get worried on whether or not it goes straight oryou hit it the way you want it to, you don’t have as muchtendency to try and push and make it happen, and youhave more of a tendency to feel what actually ishappening, to identify the kinesthetic feelings with thecorrect move. After they’ve learned to make the moveconsistently with no ball, then I’ll have them hit it into anet for a while, so they still can’t see where the ball’sgoing, but they at least hit a ball. Then after they get to apoint where they’re performing the move, where theycan feel the move pretty consistently, then and only thenwe’ll let them get on the lesson tee and hit full shots.And they will progress much faster than the student whois hitting balls the whole time because he’s too ball-oriented instead of swing-oriented.

Put students in the proper position. That is,put yourself in the correct position and holdit for about 60 seconds and identify whatthe kinesthetic feelings are while you’re inthat position. Then you write them down

and it makes it easier to associate those kinestheticfeelings when you leave the lesson tee and moreconsistently perform them on your own.

You can’t believe how many people’s eyes wander all


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as over-learned skills. Let me ask you a question. Areyou committing any of the same swing mistakes nowthat you were committing a year ago? Two years ago?Five years ago? A lot of us are. Right? I can see a lot ofheads nodding up and down. Let me explain to you whythat happens.

It’s because you have never allowed theconscious mind to learn the new swing habitthat would replace that bad swing habit, tothe point that the subconscious mind couldperform it as an over-learned skill.

Let me explain to you the typical golf lesson. The proworks with a player on the tee. They find one or twomistakes in his swing, they make the changes. Theplayer leaves playing better golf. Calls all his friends, getsall excited, "Hey, I got it, I’m going to beat you nowbecause I just figured out, finally, what I’ve been doingwrong." And he may play better for a while, but then allof a sudden out of nowhere, he starts hitting it badagain. So he decides to start working on some otheraspect of his swing, since the move that the pro gavehim is no longer working. So they work on anothermove. And that may work for a while, but then all of asudden he starts hitting bad, so he works on yet anothermove.

He goes back to his pro six months later and what’s hedoing wrong? The same move they corrected six monthsprevious to that. You see, a mistake too many golfersmake is they get too result-oriented and reinforced. It’sentirely possible for you to execute the move that yourpro gave you and still hit a lousy shot. That’s because thegolf swing is made up of many components that all haveto be executed correctly to get the final result of a goodshot. If I’m on a practice tee, I’m working on mistake

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oriented. I’ll take the five iron and I’ll aim at the 150-yard sign instead of the 175-yard sign like I normally do.And by swinging in slow motion, I’m not worried abouthitting the ball hard and making it get out to the 175-yard sign where it usually does, so I'll have a tendencynot to push so much, to let it happen more, to not tryand make it happen. And by not trying, I'll have theability to feel higher or feel more than I feel when I’mtaking a full swing and trying to get it all the way to the175-yard marker where it usually goes.

The last thing, the last one that I have, isjust to use drills. Now, I can’t give you a drillright now because I don’t know exactly whatyou’re trying to accomplish. But I can assure

you that golfers are so bad at drills. I mean, every othersport you look at, they all use drills. They spend halftheir practice doing drills. Golfers never do any drills.But I would encourage you to use as many drills as youcan because it will greatly increase your kinestheticawareness.The better our kinesthetic awareness, thebetter our chances of playing good, consistent golf. Idon’t think you’ll find one successful player who doesnot have a very high degree of kinesthetic awareness.

Our definition of over-learned skill wasconsciously learned, subconsciouslyperformed. And as I’ve already mentioned,the conscious can’t learn it if it’s never

become aware of it. And it can never become aware of it,if it’s never felt it. So kinesthetic awareness is a vital stepto our learning process.

Now the third and the final step to thelearning process is to allow the consciousmind to learn the new swing moves, so thatour subconscious mind can perform them


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big X on number two. After I’ve done it 21 times, I’ll havea big X on number 21.

And what this does, you see, is it keeps youin line with giving your conscious enoughtime to learn a new habit to the point thatthe subconscious can perform it as an over-

learned skill. Because the problem with most golfers isthey work on mistake number one as long as they’rehitting good shots. But as soon as they hit a couple badshots, they start working on mistake number two andnumber three. And they may hit better shots for a while,but then sooner or later, mistake number one rears itshead again. And that’s why people go back to their pro ayear later committing the same move. That’s why when Iasked you if you were committing the same wrongmoves now that you were two, three, five years ago, yousaid yes. You never allowed the correct swing habit to beconsciously learned to the point that the subconsciouscould perform it as an over-learned skill.

This means that when I’m working on ahabit formation calendar can I get allconcerned about what my results are? Ican’t. And that’s where the tough part is. If I

get concerned with what my results are, then I’ll have atendency to start working on mistake number two ormistake number three. And if I do that, I may hit bettershots, but sooner or later mistake number one is goingto crop up all over again. A habit formation calendar is avery good tool, but it’s a double-edged sword becausewhen you adapt a habit formation calendar, you cannotmake your primary consideration results. For instance,the guy who had been slicing for ten years. If I said tohim, “Sir, if you’ll work for 60 days on these two swingmoves, I’ll bet you get better results. But during the 60days you can’t care what you shoot." Would it be worth

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number one, so to speak, that my pro gave me to workon, that he corrected, and something else crops upwrong with my swing, so I start working on mistakenumber two. Then sooner or later, mistake number oneis going to rear its ugly head again, isn’t it? Because youdid not allow it to become an over-learned skill.

What I used to combat this is what’s knownas a habit formation calendar. A habitformation calendar, as you can see, is 21squares numbered as such. Inside each

square is a small number one and a small number two.At the bottom of the habit formation calendar it says,"In order to more permanently improve my golf game,for the next 21 days, I am going to concentrate on:Number one, a lighter right-hand grip pressure ataddress and throughout the swing. Number two,starting my downswing with my left arm." Then it says,"When I execute this move correctly, I feel – not my profeels, not the book said, but what I feel – that my righthand was caressing the club from start to finish, that myleft arm started down and forward, while my back wasstill facing the target."

Now, that may or may not be what actuallywas happening, but that’s what I felt washappening. Just like Jack Nicklaus felt likehe was reaching for the sky.

Just like Ben Hogan felt that there was a belt on the wallturning his hips very quickly to start his downswing.When these words are in my mind, they trigger theproper pictures that in turn will give me the best chanceto perform the move that I’m working on. As I completea practice session where I have executed moves where Iconsciously worked on only these two things, I’ll put abig X on number one. After I’ve done it twice, I’ll put a


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You remember as I defined the learning process, the firststep involved basically the mind? Second step was themind and the body. Third step was mainly the body. Doyou remember I asked you the question, why is it socommon to hear people say, "I know what I’m doingwrong, I just can’t stop doing it"? That’s because they’veaccomplished step number one and step number two,but they haven’t accomplished step number three.

That’s where most golfers fail. So I hope by learning alittle bit more about the learning process that that willcause you to have enough discipline, to have enoughawareness, to realize that if you do lock on to one swingmove long enough for your conscious to learn it to thepoint that the subconscious can perform it as an over-learned skill, you’ll see more improvement and fasterimprovement than you’ve ever seen in your life.

Our definition of an over-learned skill was a skill thatwas consciously learned but subconsciously performed,and as I've already mentioned, the conscious can't learnthe sophisticated types of moves that are involved in thegolf swing if it has never become aware of them. And theconscious mind won't become aware of these moves ifyou've never felt them. Increasing your personalkinesthetic awareness is a vital step to your successfullearning process. Talk to any teaching professional andhe or she will tell you that one of the most rewardingtimes that they have is when a student feels the newmove they're trying to get them to make because whenthey feel it it's like an "Ah-ha!" It's an epiphany. Thenthey can truly take a step toward repeating that moveover and over, adapting that move and making it a habit.If a good picture truly is worth a thousand words, then apicture with a feel associated to it is even more valuable.And remember, we're starting a new good habit; we'renot stopping or breaking a bad habit. If we're

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60 days' effort if I could assure you that you couldchange that slice and stop slicing in 60 days whenyou've been trying to do it the other way, the traditionalways, for ten years? When you phrase it like that, all of asudden sixty days sounds like a bargain, doesn’t it?

It’s all in the way you look at it; you’ve got to keep it inperspective. It’s tough to follow a habit formationcalendar. Especially if you’re working on mistakenumber one, and you know you’re committing mistakenumber two, and mistake number two is what’s causingyour bad results right now. It’s really tough then. But ifyou want to permanently improve, if you want tochange those swing habits to the point that you canbegin to play up to the potential that you have, then youhave got to work on mistake number one long enoughfor it to be learned by the subconscious to the point itcan be performed as an over-learned skill. If you don’t,then mistake number one’s going to crop up all overagain somewhere down the road and you’re going to beanswering the question, are you still committing thesame mistakes today as you did five years ago, you’regoing to be answering that affirmatively five years fromnow, just like you do now from five years previous. Iprefer education to frustration.

Remember earlier when I said motivation withoutknowledge equals frustration?

In essence, what I’m saying now ismotivation with knowledge but withoutpractice still equals frustration. Effectivelearning with the minimum amount offrustration and a maximum amount ofprogress is a coordinated effort between themind and the body.


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of the shaft for a right-handed golfer, you will changethat bad habit much faster if you can first getcomfortable with a grip that is too strong. If the only twofeelings you have associated with the grip are too weakand just right, you will constantly fight having a grip thatis too weak. You'll keep wanting to go back to where it'scomfortable. On the other hand, if you will first getcomfortable – I didn't say "make it a habit" – I just saidget comfortable with a grip that is too strong, then yourtendency will be to go back to a grip that is just right, asopposed to one that is too weak. I want to make surethis is clear. I'm not asking you to start using a stronggrip all the time. I just want you to get comfortable orsemi-comfortable with it because then when youconsciously stop thinking about it your grip will have atendency to go back to the correct neutral positioninstead of the too weak position. Said differently, we willre-set our auto-pilot faster by getting comfortable with akinesthetic feeling of the incorrect opposite extremeinstead of just the kinesthetic feeling of the wrong way Iam currently doing it and the correct way that myteacher wants me to do it.

This theory was verified by a study that was done by agolf magazine, a national golf magazine, just this pastJune. They had 90 golfers of varying handicaps test atleast six different drills specifically designed to cure aslice. The drill that worked effectively was the one thatmost exaggerated the cure for a slice. As we said earlier,a slice is caused by an open club face at impact relativeto the club head path. The drill that worked the bestmade the golfers exaggerate the cure by getting theposition of the club closed at impact, not just square butclosed. And this is exactly what I said earlier. Don't justget the kinesthetic of the correct position, but first getcomfortable with, understand, feel the exaggeratedincorrect position of the opposite extreme. And you will

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concentrating on starting a good habit, our self-talk ismore likely to create positive pictures automatically inour mind. By starting a good habit and having self-talkthat is associated with that, we automatically formpictures in our mind that are more positive, pictures wewant to attain. If we're saying to ourselves to stop thebad habit, we're doing just the opposite and our mind isworking against us.

When you're taking a lesson from your professional, I'dlike to see you accomplish two things: Don't leave untilyou have a good kinesthetic awareness of what your newmove feels like, the new move you're trying toaccomplish in your swing. Secondly, get some drillsfrom your professional. Get some drills that willexaggerate the feeling that you're trying to accomplish.Let me explain it like this. A habit formation calendar isdesigned to make sure that you stay consciously focusedon one new swing move until it becomes a move thatthe subconscious mind can consistently performautomatically. Now that may be three weeks for somepeople. I used the example of 21 days earlier. But it maybe four weeks for other people. It may be two weeks forsome people. Depending on how much time you get topractice and how committed you are to learning thenew habit. By the way, I have found that if you have anhour a day to practice, if you could do two 30-minutesessions as opposed to just one hour straight, mostpeople learn the habit faster.

Another factor that will determine how fast you canlearn a new habit is the quality of drills that you have.You see, it's easier to learn the correct position if youfirst learn the exaggerated, incorrect position of theopposite extreme. Let me again use the example of agrip change to explain this principle. If your bad habit isa grip that is too weak, that is too much on the left side

Programmed Visualization

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PROGRAMMED VISUALIZATION

Another technique for changing or improving oursubconscious self-image is called "programmedvisualization". The main formula behind programmedvisualization is I times V equals RSC. Imagination timesvividness equals reality in the subconscious.

Our subconscious can't tell the differencebetween a real experience and one that'svividly imagined. I'm sure that you have allat one time or another imagined an

experience happening to you in such vivid detail thatyou got a pitty feeling in your stomach? What happens ifI don't make it? Or you get goose bumps on your armsor you literally get tears in your eyes because youimagined in such detail the subconscious accepted it?Creative subconscious did its job by causing theappropriate reaction to occur, probably the samereaction that would occur if the event actually tookplace in reality.

One of the tour players that I was working with had beenthrough the qualifying school two times and had failedboth times. We had him go through a series of programvisualizations where he imagined with great vividnessattaining and receiving his tournament player's card.And the next time he went through the school he tied forsecond and he said that when he walked up to get hiscard it was actually a little of a downer because he'dbeen there so many times before, so to speak, in hismind. You know, when you go to one of the football

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learn the new swing move faster. The ironic thing to meabout this study was that not only did they identify thedrill that worked the best to help golfers stop slicing, butthey also identified the best learning style. And that isthe learning style that I'm teaching you now.

When using a habit formation calendar, I want you tocome up with drills that are going to exaggerate yourswing cure. Be sure you heard that. Drills that exaggerateyour swing correction. As you complete a practicesession where you've focused and executed specificallydrills that do that, that is, you've worked consciouslyonly on the drills that exaggerate your swing cure, put abig X on the small number 1. If you have a chance to do ittwice in that day, then put a big X on the small number 2.

Using a habit formation calendar like this willaccomplish two very important things. First, it willkeep you focused on one new swing move long enoughto give your conscious mind the time it needs to learnthe new swing move so that the subconscious canperform it as an over-learned skill. Second, it will allowyou to become comfortable with a move that is theopposite of the swing flaw that you are working on and,as such, you'll change your swing flaw faster. When youconsciously stop focusing on the new move, you'll havea tendency just to go back to the correct position asopposed to going all the way back to the incorrectposition. And by the way, when you can consistentlyexecute this new move that you want – not theexaggerated move, but the correct move – withoutconsciously thinking about it and trying to do it, thenobviously you've changed your habit and you can moveon to another swing change.



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starts going around the room? You're aware that they'rethere, but you're so tired and you're so close to going tosleep it's like you don't even care. That's the alpha stateof consciousness.

Okay. Now that we've got these basics down we can getinto the specific steps for programmed visualization.

We attain the alpha state. That is, we sit in a chair, putour legs down, we relax. We relax muscle group bymuscle group. My dialogue usually goes something likethis: I am aware of my feet and I'm allowing my feet torelax. With every breath that I take my feet are becomingmore and more relaxed. My feet are now completely andtotally relaxed. As I breathe I can feel the relaxationmoving up and through my ankles into my calves, myshins, and I can feel them becoming more and moredeeply relaxed. With every breath that I take they aremore and more fully relaxed. My calves and my shins arenow completely relaxed and I can feel the relaxationmoving up and through my knees into my thighs and Ican feel my thighs becoming more and more relaxed.My thighs are now totally and completely relaxed. Howdo your legs feel right now? Chances are they feel prettygood because we have just begun to put you into a alphastate of consciousness. That is, we relax muscle group bymuscle group all the way from my feet to my facialmuscles.

After you do that, you're ready for step two. That is,subjectively imagine the changes that you want to occurfirst person present tense. I don't want you to seeyourself performing the swing move that you want toperform on TV. I want you to see yourself performingthe swing move you want to perform as you would see itif you actually did it. From your own eyes. If I'm goalsetting to see my putter go back low and straight, if I'm

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games on Saturday night and the big play's happeningyou get all excited, don't you? You're caught up in asituation. The next day when you watch the replays onTV, do you get quite as excited? 'Cause you know what'sgoing to happen. We want to use that same principle tobegin to work for us.

Before I can get into more detail on it I want to discussimagination in a little more detail since it's such animportant ingredient to the formula itself. Imaginationshould not be confused with fantasizing. Fantasizinginvolves unrealistic fantasies. Imagination involvesrealistic expectations. Imagination involvescommitment. Fantasizing involves intention.

There's two types of imagination – objective and subjective.

Objective imagination usually takes place with eyesopen. It takes place in the beta level of consciousness.The beta level of consciousness is the one that you're inright now. It's the waking state. Daydreaming isprobably the best example of objective imagination. Inobjective imagination you usually see yourself likeyou're on a TV. However, in subjective imagination yousee yourself first person present tense. In other words,you're in your body actually experiencing what you areimagining. Instead of just watching it happen, you'reexperiencing it.

Subjective imagination is usually done in the alphastate of consciousness, which is a step below the betastate of consciousness. The best description I've evercome across of an alpha state of consciousness, youknow when you're right about to go to sleep at night?Just about to go to sleep and somebody comes in and


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Remember before when I had the habit formationcalendar I had a small number 1 and a small number 2in each box? Well, as you complete a programvisualization you mark off a number 1 or a number 2 inthe box for the appropriate day that you were workingon the given swing skill that you were working on forthat habit formation calendar. During practice sessionnumber 1 through 21 on this habit formation calendar,I'm going to be working on the lighter right hand grippressure and starting my downswing with my left arm.So that's what I'm going to see when I go through myprogram visualization.

After I have completed the actual physical practicesession one day, I'm going to mark out the big letter.After I've completed either one or two programvisualization sessions that day, I'm going to mark out asmall number 1 or small number 2. I recommend you dotwo sessions a day if you can. It takes less than fiveminutes a day. If you can't, then at least do one. But ifyou do any and you stick to your habit formationcalendar, control your self-talk, start a new habit insteadof stop a bad one, you're going to change yoursubconscious self-image.

Psychologists call this principlepsycholinguistics. All meaningful andlasting improvement begins in the mind. Wechange the self-image first and then

improvement starts to happen automatically becausethe creative subconscious is working more for us asopposed to against us.

But this doesn't mean forget about the other thingswe've talked about. For instance, I don't want you tovisualize yourself coming through in the clutch and thengo on out and calling yourself a choker on the golf

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visualizing that change in my swing, then I'm going tosee my golf shoes, I'm going to see my pants, I'm goingto see from chest down on my shirt, I'm going to see myhands and my arms, and I'm going to see it just like Iwould see it if it were really occurring. And when you seeit I want you to simultaneously use all the senses. I wantyou to feel the wind messing up your hair. I want you tosmell the aroma from fresh-cut grass like you do on agolf course. I want you to hear the birds chirping or thecrickets chirping. I want you to use all the senses thatyou would use if it were really happening. And at thesame time I want you to think of past successes, in otherwords, time that you have done it successfully in yourpast experience.

If you do this, if you vividly imagine yourselfaccomplishing what you want in your golf swing, thenthe subconscious records the experience as real –because remember, imagination times vividness equalsreality in the subconscious – your self-image is affectedin a positive way, and your creative subconscious willbegin to make the self-image a reality. Your mind willstart working more for you as opposed to against you.

After you have imagined the changes that you want tooccur in first person, in present tense, with all yoursenses and flashing back on past successes, you then goon to step three.

That is, attain the beta state ofconsciousness. I usually say somethingalong the lines of: At the count of four I'mgoing to wake up feeling very invigorated,energetic both emotionally and physically.Rest assured that the goals I have just seenare rapidly coming to fruition. One, two,three, four.

Goals

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GOALS

In order for program visualization to occur,in order for self-talk to be improved, inorder for us to raise our comfort zone we'vegot to have goals.

You see, our mind is a servo mechanism. That is, wehave to have goals to survive. When you got in your cartonight, you obviously had a goal to come down here.You call it an objective, call it a goal, whatever you want,nobody can exist without goals.

So let me give you some goal-setting rules. I think you'llfind it more effective to use goals if you have someguidelines because there are some specific guidelines.

Goals must be exciting. I want them to beexciting enough that they control your self-talk to the point that you get goose bumpswhen you think about them happening.

I want your goals to be consistent andcompatible. I don't want you to goal-set toswing like Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, andJohnny Miller because those aren'tcompatible. I don't want you goal-setting to

spend more time with your family, more time on the golfcourse practicing, and more time at your job becausethere's only so much time. Make them compatible.Make them consistent.

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course. That obviously won't do any good. Practice doesnot make perfect. Only practice of perfection makesperfect. And your mind is the only place that that canoccur. Using program visualization can enter the resultsthat we want and begin to make our mind work more forus as opposed to against us.



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career after my automobile accident at age 40"?Probably wouldn't be realistic for most people. It wasrealistic for him, thank goodness. And you see what theresults are. You have to determine what's realistic andwhat's not. It's not realistic for a 10-handicap to expectto beat the club champion that year. But it is realistic fora 10-handicap to go to a 5 handicap.

Be specific about your goals. I don't wantyou just to goal-set to be a better golfer. Iwant you to goal-set exactly how you'regoing to be a better golfer. And I don't want

this principle to work against you as it does with manypeople. For instance, they come up with a goal of "Ialways 2-putt." Now, that's great sometimes. If I'm 40feet from the hole, that's a great goal. But if I'm only 6inches from the hole that's not too good.

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Make them constructive and positive.I talked to some players once. I was talkingto two golfers at one time. I asked one ofthem what their goal was and they said notto choke so much. I asked the other one

what his goal was and he said not to three-putt so much.What kind of pictures will that put in your mindautomatically? Can't prevent it. So make your goalsconstructive and positive.

Lock on to your goals long enough to createa sense of positive dissonance between theself image and the creative subconscious.Lock onto your goals long enough that your

creative subconscious will be able to say, “Hey, thosegoals aren't being maintained and my job is to maintainthe goals so let's start maintaining them.” Give yourselfa chance to let your mind work for you. Did you ever getaround people who every week they were going to dosomething different, accomplish something different?That's what we want to avoid.

Update your goals when they are withinreach. Our creative subconscious, rememberits function was to maintain yoursubconscious self-image, not exceed it. To

maintain it. That's why I believe one reason you see thetour player whose goal was to win a golf tournamentand then he wins a tournament and you never hearfrom him again the rest of the year.

Goals should be realistic. There's only somuch time. We all have time limitations. Weall have physical limitations. You, on theother hand, have to determine what's

realistic and what's not realistic. Was it realistic for BenHogan to say, "I'm going to play the best golf of my

Motivation

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MOTIVATION

There's two basic types of motivation – fear and desire.Fear is a have-to. Desire, on the other hand, is a want-to. Now, fear and desire have totally opposite resultsbut equally effective results. For instance, I cut out anarticle on a psychologist who did a study with kids onmotivating them by fear or motivating them by desire.He took 25 kids and had them run and timed theirperformance in the a hundred yard dash. After he hadthem run, he then took some of the kids and motivatedthem by fear. In other words, he told them you mustimprove or you're going to have to come back afterschool and work on it then.

And the other group of kids, he took them and he said,"If you improve you get to get out early." One was fear,one was desire. One was a want-to, one was a have-to.Now a lot of people aren't surprised by the results of thisbecause the desire group, the want-to group, actuallyran faster. But what does surprise some people is when Itell them that the have-to group, the fear group, actuallyran slower. When we're motivated by fear we have atendency to get conscious, to try to push it, try andmake it happen. When we try and make it happen,force it to happen, as we've already learned, oursubconscious can't do its job.

Did you ever see somebody who has club deceleration,who decelerates through a putt, a clutch putt or abunker shot? It's very common to see most amateursdecelerate through a bunker shot. If you see somebody

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a tournament, the last round of a tournament thanplayers who do have the lead. Because when they havethe lead they have to keep the lead or they lose. I have toget good shots or they catch up with me. On the otherhand, the guy who is not in the lead is saying, "Hey, if Iget a couple birdies I can put the pressure on and I canwin this tournament." He's looking at want-tos, theleader's looking at have-tos.

Now this is the key. Both golfers turn want-tos into have-tos. It's easy to look at a birdie putt on number one as awant-to. It's easy to look at playing the Masters as awant-to. It's easy to look at my favorite club as a want-to.

The difference between a good player and abad player many times is the guy who can'tlook at what he needs to accomplish as awant-to; instead, he looks at it as a have-to.

When he steps up on a four footer on number 18 that hehas to win in order to have the bet, he says to himself, "Ihave to hit this or else." Do me this favor. Next timeyou're in a position where you're saying to yourself, "Ihave to hit this four-footer or else," take your putter andknock the ball over into the bunker. You say, "Well, Idon't want to do that. I mean, I don't want to do that. I'dlose the hole." Well, don't you realize that by looking atit as a have-to, that's what you're doing. You'reincreasing the chances that you're going to getconscious. By increasing the chances that you're goingto get conscious and make it happen, force it to happen,you're going to increase your chances of failure.

There are no have-tos. What's a have-to?There's no have-tos. You don't have to hitthat four foot putt. Take it and hit it in thebunker.

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decelerating, that's a person who's motivated by fear.You see a guy who's got a clutch three-foot putt he hasto hit on number 18 and he leaves it short of the hole?That's a guy motivated by fear. He's more worried aboutwhat he wants to avoid than what he wants to attain.

Fear also causes us to panic. Did you ever hear anybodyon the golf course say, "Jeez, I have tried everything. Ican't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I mean, I don'tknow what to do!" That's a guy motivated by fear.

On the other hand, someone motivated by desire, theirself-talk usually focuses on the reward and their mindmoves automatically toward it. Tell me this, Gary, wouldyou rather wake up at five o'clock in the morning if I hadit arranged so you could play Augusta National the dayafter the Masters or would you rather wake up at fiveo'clock in the morning to go to work? We'd play theMasters obviously, right? We'd get very creative to makesure we could play the Masters as a matter of fact. Formost people work is a have-to, golf is a want-to.

Our self-talk with a have-to is usually I have-to or elseI'll get fired, or else I'll lose my pay check, or else I won'tbe able to get what I want. Whereas golf, I want to so Ican play the Masters where they played the big one.Have-tos for most people is their least favorite club,want-to is their favorite club. Your self-talk with yourfavorite club is positive, your results are usually positive.Self-talk with your have-to, with your least favorite club,is usually negative and your performance is usuallynegative. A birdie putt on the 18th green is a have-to formany people. A birdie putt on the first green is a want-to. On number one, oh man, I get off to a good start. I'moff and rolling. But if you have to hit that birdie putt on18 to have the bet, oh boy. I have to hit it or else. This isanother reason why you see golfers who are not in thelead have so much better performance on the last day of

Practice

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PRACTICE

The closer that we can match our practice and playingenvironment, the better chance we will have tobecome a good golfer, the better chance we will have tobe able to play golf up to our potential. As amateurs,one of the biggest obstacles we have to deal with in ourefforts to become better golfers is that we don't get toplay that much, and some of us don't even get topractice that much. As a result, if we want to improve weneed to know how to practice smarter. We need to learnhow to get more out of less, more results out of less time.Now, even though that makes common sense and seemsobvious, most golfers still don't do it. Most golfers don'tpractice smart. In the section on learning where wecovered specific techniques of increasing ourkinesthetic awareness and how to learn a new skill andreplace a bad swing habit with a good swing habit, Icovered several techniques regarding practice and howto practice smarter. What I'd like to do here is go oversome additional practice techniques that I did notdiscuss there but I really encourage you to review thelearning section again if you want specific tips on howto practice smarter.

One of the first things you can do to practice smarter isto make sure that every session you practice some ofyour major weaknesses. Don't just practice yourstrengths. It's human nature to want to focus practicingon your strengths because you feel the best aboutyourself after you perform your best, but you're going toimprove more by improving your weaknesses. Another

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Well, I don't want to do that. I mean, I'd lose the bet.Well then don't turn the four-footer in your own mindinto a have-to. Keep it a want-to, you'll increase yourchances of success.

Should-haves, could-haves, shouldn't-haves, and if-I-only-would-haves are all the same as have-tos. When weuse those phrases, when we talk to ourselves that way,we're using coercion, and as we've learned, oursubconscious does not respond positively to coercion.Remember to control your self-talk and you'll controlyour motivation. Just like life, golf is a want-to, not ahave-to.


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play better when it counts.

Another very important practice rule. Use your pre-shot routine periodically. Every three or four shots, gothrough your entire pre-shot routine. Pick out a specificshot that you'll have to hit in a playing environment andgo through your entire pre-shot routine.

The next practice rule: set up, set up, set up. You knowfrom our earlier conversation how important the set-upis for consistent golf shots. Practice your set-up in such away as to get objective feedback. I bet if you go to anyprofessional tournament and look at the driving range,you'll see more golfers practicing with clubs on theground to check their ball position and set-up than Iwould if I went to any country club and looked at thatdriving range. And who practices and plays more? Whoneeds to practice more on ball position and set-up? Theprofessionals or us? Obviously, we do. The best playersin the world right now say that between set-up and shotvisualization it's over 90% of hitting a good shot. Sowhen we want to practice smarter, that's a good place tostart.

Another good practice rule is to review before youpractice. What I mean is, at the end of each practicesession I'd like to see you make some notes about whatyou learned and what you worked on, what you feltwhen you performed the moves you were working oncorrectly. Then before going out to practice, take thetime to mentally review what you learned the last timeyou practiced. Maybe it was a certain kinesthetic feelingor a certain key swing thought. This is an especiallyimportant rule if the last time you practiced you took alesson. Review what you learned and use this nextpractice session as an opportunity to stay focused onwhatever swing changes you were making until it

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key to practicing smarter that's along these same lines,use drills when you practice. Specifically, use drills topractice your weaknesses. Every professional sportscoach that I've talked to sets their practice schedule sothey spend at least half to three-quarters of all practicetime practicing drills. Whatever the teams are weakest inat that particular time, those are the drills they focus on.One of the real improvements in the game of golf, in mymind, there are significantly more drills now than therewere ten years ago. There are specifically more practiceaids now than there were ten years ago. You can findpractice aids that focus on your weaknesses if you justlook. The Internet is a great resource.

Another practice rule is that I recommend you useonly one ball when practicing your short game. Forinstance, if you are practicing your chipping, chip oneball to the green, then go hole out the putt just like youwould if you were playing. Or, if you want to hit three orfour chips at a time, just go to different holes, then gohole out each putt just like you would when you wereplaying.

Another good practice rule, practice in differentweather conditions. A well-known tour professionalwho's always been known as being a great bad weatherplayer grew up in the Midwest where, as you know, badweather is really not all that unusual. And every timethey had a spell of bad weather he'd go practice becausehe knew that some day he'd be playing in thoseconditions and that the more accustomed he was toplaying in those conditions he'd have an edge on therest of the field. It's the same principle when you hearfootball coaches that pump loud music and fan noiseinto their practices, blaring it over the loudspeakers.They are recreating their playing environment duringpractice and as a result they will have a better chance to

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necessary and important in becoming a better ballstriker.

Another important aspect of practicing that's veryimportant to understand is that you need to practicethe right parts of the right parts. Let me give you anexample. Putting is obviously something you shouldpractice a great deal. But not just putting, per se. Mostright-handed golfers have more trouble with left-to-right putts than right-to-left putts. So practice thosemore often. Or, if lagging putts is your weakness, thenpractice lagging putts specifically, not just putting perse, but the specific parts of putting that you need helpwith the most. If it's chipping and you have moretrouble hitting lob shots over a bunker, then obviouslyyou should spend more time practicing lob shots. Asobvious as this sounds, it's amazing when you look atany golfer how they don't usually practice the weakestparts of their game. It just makes common sense that ifwe want to improve the weak parts of our game, that'sthe area that we do need to practice the most. So beaware of it, number one, and then have enough self-discipline to make sure you do it, number two.

The last practice rule I want to give you is what I callthe driver, putter, wedge practice rule. It's estimatedthat 70% of the average amateur shots are with one ofthose clubs, either the driver, the putter, or the wedge.So if you've only got an hour to practice, it makes senseto make sure that you practice each one of those clubs.Practicing all your golf clubs is important, but it'sespecially important to practice the driver. The driver iswhat many golf teachers call "the truth club" becauseanything that you're doing wrong in your swing willmost likely show up in your driver swing. It has the leastdegree of loft on the club head and, as such, it willimpart more spin on the ball and any weakness that you

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becomes a new swing habit. If you're following a habitformation calendar, make sure that you know whatyou're working on and have the self-discipline to keepworking on it until the conscious learns it to the pointthat the subconscious can perform it as an over-learnedskill without thinking about it, without trying to do it.

The next practice rule is to try practicing without aball. If you're having trouble making a specific swingmove, I can assure you that because we're all so ball-oriented and ball-flight-reinforced, if you can't make themove consistently without the ball you won't be able tomake the move consistently with the ball. The sameprinciple goes to hitting a ball into a net. I know somevery successful teachers, teachers who work with tourplayers, that will only work inside where their studentsare hitting a ball into a net because that limits theirability to become so ball-oriented and ball-flight-reinforced. If you can't perform a move without a ball,you can't do it with a ball consistently. If you can'tperform the move with a ball into a net, you can't do iton the driving range consistently. So try learning a newmove without a ball. Then when you can perform themove consistently, try making the new move whileyou're hitting balls into a net. Then once you get thatdown, you can take it to the driving range and the golfcourse.

Another good practice rule is have enough self-discipline not to just go out and beat balls. Take thetime to analyze the flight of your practice shots. Applyball flight principles to understand what your club headpath and face angle are at impact. As I said in thebeginning, that really is the most important aspect ofany swing, is the impact position because that's reallygoing to determine what kind of shot you actually hit.This will give your mind more of the feedback that is

Course Management

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COURSE MANAGEMENT

I'd like to talk about course management now from amental and a thinking perspective. Most tourprofessionals will tell you that scoring is more strategyand angles and putting and short game than it is ballstriking. It's amazing how many times the winner of atournament really didn't hit the ball all that well, butthey scored well. And many of us have had times whenwe hit the ball really well, but we didn't score that well.My experience is that most amateurs do not think aboutthe things that I'm going to talk about in this section.They don't think these thoughts before each shot. Theyjust get up and hit the obvious shot. If they're hitting anapproach into the green, then they just try to get on thegreen. What I've found is that all good players really dohave some mental routines that they go through wherethey think certain thoughts at certain times, and if youcan establish a new habit of thinking the mentalthoughts that will put you in the best position to score,then it will help you become a better player, too.

The first thing I'd like to see you do whenever you'regoing to play a particular course is come up with a gameplan. Most of the time you're going to be playing acourse you're familiar with, so I'd like to see you analyzeyour strengths to the course weaknesses just like acoach does in the pros. If they're going to play anotherteam, they scout that team, find out what their strengthsand weaknesses are. They play away from theirstrengths and toward their weaknesses. Then once youhave that game plan established, understand that it will

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have will be shown when you hit that club. Hence, theycall it the truth club.

Be sure that every time you practice you have apurpose. Remember, it's results that count. Many timesyou can get better results by just practicing smarter, notharder. It's especially true for you and I as amateursbecause we don't get the time to practice the way othersdo. We don't get the time to play under pressure the wayothers do. So the more important time is to us, thesmarter we've got to practice.


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Without question, one of the biggest mental barrierswe've got to get over in order to play better golf is ourfear of making a bogey. We try to hit miracle shots inorder to save par when better players, when faced withthe same situation, would simply chip the ball out, taketheir medicine, and go on. What many amateurs do isthey try to hit a miracle shot, end up ricocheting off thetree into another worse position. Now they're looking atdouble or triple bogey, and one or two of those a roundwill ruin our chances of playing a good round of golf.

Another tip I would give you as far as coursemanagement, confront your home course nemesis. Ifyou have a bad hole, if you have a bunker with yourname on it, if you have a lake which you never seemable to avoid, go out late in the day or early in themorning and hit shots on that hole until your mentalimages and your mental tendencies change.

One more mental technique that I would ask you toconsider is to think outside the box. I just recently readan article about one of the longer hitters in the gamewho decided that after trying to reach par 5s most of hiscareer that this particular year he was going to lay up.He was going to make sure that he had around ahundred yard shot into each green and the only par 5she would try to reach were ones that were very easilyreachable. He would play the par 5s much, much lessaggressively than he had in the past. And guess what?After a full year of this new strategy, he birdied more par5s that year than he had any previous year in his career.One of the premier players in the game just won his firstmajor this year, and I got a kick out of how many peoplewere talking how his strategy had changed. He startedplaying the majors much more conservatively. He cameup with a game plan, and he stuck to it. To me, that wasa huge mental adjustment, not as much a physical

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change. It will change with the pin positions. It'll changewith the weather conditions. It may change dependingon what situation you're in and where you stand in yourround or where you stand in your match.

A big part of establishing that game plan should beconsidering your strengths. Leave yourself with shotsthat are your bread-and-butter clubs, not your leastfavorite clubs. Know how far you hit each and every clubin your bag. Then when you're laying up on a par 5, youcan leave yourself with a distance that you'recomfortable with, not a distance that requires a clubthat you're not comfortable with.

It's really important before every shot you take the timeto think about angles. It does a couple things. Numberone, it gives your mind more input to work on. It givesyour subconscious a clearer picture of what you'retrying to accomplish and increases your chance of doingjust that. Decide which angle will give you the best andeasiest approach shot. Decide which angle will give youthe easiest putt. Decide which angle will give you themost likely chance to get up and in, because it's realisticthat we will miss greens. Just missing shots on the rightside of the hole will save you strokes. And by thinkingthat way we're not being negative, we're being realistic.We aren't going to hit every green. We need to thinkabout worst case scenarios. This is especially true inrecovery shots. Most golfers, in my mind, areunbelievable optimists. They think they can regularly hitshots that the pros wouldn't even try in competition. Ifyou can't hit a shot seven out of ten times, then it'sprobably not a realistic shot to try to accomplish on agolf course. Too many times I see golfers trying to hitshots that maybe they'll execute successfully only threeout of ten times.

Anger

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ANGER

Anger. Any of you ever get mad on a golf course? Nomatter how well we play there's never any accountingfor the fact that there's bad bounces, bad breaks. Imean, you can hit two shots from the same place andone of them bounces up next to the pin for an eagle andthe other one bounces over into a bunker absolutelydead. We're forced with the task of absorbing these badbreaks without losing our cool.

Emotions under control act in a positiveway, emotions out of control react in anegative way. Although the law of averagesstates that these breaks are going to even

out, the bad breaks always win, don't they? I mean, weall get nailed, right? I have yet to have a player come tome and say, "Ed, I got a problem. I mean, I just can't buya bad break! I get nothing but good breaks." Obviously,that's never gonna happen either. We want to learn toaccept bad breaks in a way that we can make them workfor us instead of react to them in a way that worksagainst us, as is most common with most golfers.

The first step in dealing with angerconstructively, in my opinion, is to let it out.I mentioned earlier when I was talking abouthow to control our self-talk that I wanted

golfers to get mad. And I do. I just want you to get madin a way that will be a positive, constructive way, not anegative, destructive way. For instance, I can leave a 12-foot putt an inch short right in the middle of a hole on

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adjustment. Sure it was a physical adjustment on howhe played the shots, but before he could make thatphysical adjustment he made the mental adjustment.And since we've learned how to control our thoughtsand how to think the thoughts that will give us the bestchance of success, we can do the same thing. Goodcourse management will bring confidence because youwill not try to hit so many unrealistic shots, you'll planyour shots out better; therefore, you'll get more success,therefore, you'll breed more confidence. It's a positivecycle that will allow our mind to work more for us andhelp us play as good at golf as we can.


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to look up and see that the ball bounced right on thegreen. Don't get mad until you've got a reason to getmad. When you have a reason to get mad make sure youlet it out in a positive, constructive way not a negative,destructive way.

After you have let it out, control your self-talk to the next shot at hand. But you see, ifyou never let it out you can't control yourself-talk to the next shot at hand because

that's the guy who's still thinking about, as he addresseshis next putt, "If you wouldn't have knocked your ballout of bounds this would be for a four instead of a six."

You've got to let it out first.

Then you control the self-talk to the next shot at hand,to the results you want to attain.

Then number 3, you get back in your groove.Your groove is going to match yourpersonality. So once you do let it out, youcontrol your self-talk to the task at hand, put

yourself back in the mental frame of mind, your keythought frame of mind, that's going to give you the bestchance of success.

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number 18 for all the marbles. And I can say, "Youchoker!" Now, that got it out, didn't it? I yelled and got itout of my system so to speak. But it also created a prettynegative picture. On the other hand, I could have hit thesame putt and said, "Come on, Eddie. Get it to the hole!"I got it out, didn't I? But I did it in a positive way, Iwanted to put a positive picture in my mind. I can hitthe first tee shot bad and I can say, "Oh! Go ahead. Startscrambling. Go ahead. Put yourself on the defensive theway you always do." Or I can react with, Well, that's alousy shot but at least that's the nice part about thisgame. You can hit a lousy shot and still par the hole.You can have a lousy hole and still have a good round.You can have a lousy round and still have a goodtournament. That's part of the beauty of golf.

Most people get rid of their anger by throwing theirclubs down, kicking their bag, kicking the ground,actions along those lines. That's good from thestandpoint of it gets it out of your system, but it doesn'tdo much for your image, whether it's your image of atour player on TV, whether it's your image at the club,whether it's your image in front of your kids.

This is the way that I developed that works just aseffectively. I have players grit their teeth. In other words,after you hit a bad shot take your teeth and bite themtogether as hard as you can for about 60 seconds and Iguarantee your gums will start burning. But you'll get itout! And you'll get it out in a way that's just as positiveas the other way of getting it out and it won't make youlook like a jerk.

One thing I would like to point out though, don't getmad until you've got a reason to get mad. How manytimes do you see golfers hit a shot and as soon as theyhit the shot they throw their club down in disgust only

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CHOKING AND NERVOUSNESS

One of the more humorous examples of a golfer facingpressure that I've heard was when a particular playerhad to play a match against Jack Nicklaus when he wasin his prime. He was quoted as saying, "Nicklaus knowshe's going to beat you, you know he's going to beat you,and Nicklaus knows that you know he's going to beatyou."

Choking and nervousness are just part of manyemotions that we feel when we play the game of golf.Doesn't matter if it's the first tee jitters or playing withgolfers that are better than us or playing for some kindof prize or title. Being able to control our emotions is avery, very valuable skill in the game of golf. There aremental techniques you can use to control nervousnessand choking and there are physical techniques tocontrol it. Let's go back to the seminar and talk aboutthese techniques in detail.

What do you do when you're nervous on the golf course,when you're choking? Everybody gets nervous. I thinkthe question is some people can control it and somepeople can't control it. When you get nervous there's acouple mental techniques you can use to help control it.There's also one particular physical technique that I'vefound very effective.

A man by the name of Jacobson proposed atheory that by relaxing the muscles that aretense you reduce what caused the tension in

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Here is an article – I can show you a lot of them – quotedhere as he was about to face a clutch putt. "You've beenhere before. Just make up your mind, get the line, hit asolid putt." Sure enough, it went in.

Quoted after this year's Master's. "He admitted beingnervous but he said that he took deep breathsthroughout the round to keep himself under control."Quoted on yet another tournament, one that he was thedefending champion and he consequently defended hischampionship successfully, he said, "Being thedefending champion makes it easier because youremember what you did before." You remember thatyou won there. And that's a benefit that others don'thave.

So take a deep breath and think of times you've done itsuccessfully before. Or, take a deep breath and think ofhow your opponent is going to look at you with a snarlon his face when he's paying you the bet he just lost.

Another way to control nervousness is tocontrol your movements. By controllingyour movements you control your pre-shotroutine to a great deal.

You remember when I talked about pre-shot routine Isaid slow players get fast? Well, the reason they do that isbecause they are getting conscious. They are stoppingtheir pre-shot routine and because they stop their pre-shot routine they get into another pre-shot routine and,like I said, that's learning it all over again for the firsttime, they increase their chances of failure. Make surewhen you're under pressure that you control yourmovements, that they are exactly like they are when theyare not under pressure. Don't walk down the fairwaytwice as fast. Walk at the same rate you usually do. Don't

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the first place. Have you ever bent down to hit a clutchputt and seen the putter just shaking on the ground tothe point you could hardly put it down behind the ball?We all have. Next time you're in a position where you'regoing to have to hit a clutch putt, while you're waitingfor your turn to putt take your hands and clench them ina tight fist, as tight as you can for about 30, 40 seconds.Just as tight as you can. Then when it's your turn to puttyou're going to find that these muscles are now relaxedbecause they've just been tensed and you'll find it mucheasier to keep the putter quiet.

Here are some mental techniques on dealing withnervousness.

Control your self-talk to want versus avoid.Most people, when they get nervous theirself-talk is worried more about what theywant to avoid than what they want to attain.

Make sure you're controlling your self-talk to what youwant to attain, not what you want to avoid. To provetheir self-talk is concentrating on what they want toavoid instead of what they want to attain, if it was reallyconcentrating on what they wanted to attain then theproblem would be excitement, not nervousness 'causeyou would be excited about what you were going toattain.

Take a deep breath and think of times thatyou have completed it, whatever the task isin front of you, successfully before. A deepbreath is nature's way of releasing tension

out of your body.

Did you ever notice a little child when they're windingdown their cry? Breathes in, then breathes out. That'sthe way that we release tension.


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Another technique for dealing withnervousness is what I call the putting,driving, chipping, bunker drill. You see, thedisadvantage that you and I have asamateurs is that we don't get a chance to

play in a tournament every week like a pro does 'causehe gets a chance to get under pressure every singleweek; hence, he gets a chance to learn how to deal withit more than you and I do because he gets under the gunmore than you and I do. Try to recreate pressuresituations when you're practicing. For instance, makeyourself hit five 10-foot putts before you can go home.Make yourself drive in between two yard markers thatoutline the fairway before you let yourself leave thedriving range. Three balls within the yard markers. Makeyourself chip five balls within five feet of the hole. Makeyourself hit bunker shots, so many bunker shots withinso many feet of the hole.

Now, it doesn't sound like that would be a lot of pressurebut, believe me, if you tell yourself that you've got to hitten 5-footers before you can go home, by the time youget to number 8 and number 9, there's some pressurethere. Believe me. It doesn't sound like much, but try it.And I'll tell you when there's really some pressure there.If it's 6:15 and you told your wife you'd be home by 6:00.There's really some pressure there.

So recreate situations like that and you'll learn to dealmore effectively with nervousness.

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take three looks at the hole instead of your normal twolooks. Don't take five waggles instead of your normalthree waggles.

Another concept or another technique tocontrol nervousness is to think of a peacefulsetting. For instance, think of a leaf as it fallsoff a tree and floats very softly to the ground.Think of the ocean that you sat on lastsummer when you were vacationing in

California. It's literally impossible to think of a situationlike that under a pressure situation and not relax a littlebit.

An excellent technique for controllingnervousness is to remember your valuescale. Cary Middlekoff, who was called bymany golfers the best frontrunner who's ever

played the game, says, "When I got under pressure Ifigured the worst thing that could happen was I wouldmiss the shot. If I did, my wife would still love me, we'dstill have steak that night, and that kind of put things inperspective." Remember, it's a want-to, not a have-to.

Think of negative pressure experiences in apositive way. Remember last time youchoked you said, "If I only had it to do overagain. I wouldn't choke this time. I mean, I

could do it." That's what I want you to flash back on. Idon't want you to think about the negative experienceof choking, obviously. That would be defeating all thethings that we've been talking about. But flash back andthink about the times that you failed in a positive way.Think of how you wished and you said, “Boy, if I onlyhad it to do over again.” Well, now you do have it to doover again.

Excitement

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EXCITEMENT

Those of us who have played the game know thatsometimes excitement can be as big a problem asnervousness. It can hurt us as much to get excited as itcan to get nervous. I was playing once at a course herein Phoenix called Apache Wells, which many of you arefamiliar with, and we were going down number 14fairway and the guy I was playing with looked at me andhe says, "You know what, Ed?" I said, "What's that?" Hesaid, "This is the first time I've ever gotten to the 14thhole even par. First time ever!" Well, guess what he didon the 14th hole. He blew it. He got excited. He startedthinking, "Boy, if I can just play in at one over par, I'llhave my career round." You see, that's one of theproblems with excitement.

We've got to learn to take one shot at a time.We want to put our mind in a position wherewe control our self-talk and we don't think toourself, "Boy, if I could just par in, I can befour under par. I'll be leading thetournament."

You want to control your self-talk tokeep your mind in the present to the shotat hand.

You want to take the attitude of, hey, I've earned it. I canlook at a clutch three-foot putt one of two ways. I cansay, "What happens if I miss," or I can say, "Hey, I've

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Concentration

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CONCENTRATION

Concentration is another very important key as far asthe mental game of golf is concerned. It's an opponentthat we all have to learn to control more effectively ifwe're going to become a better golfer.

A primary technique to help youconcentrate better is to control your self-talk to the task at hand.

Lapses in concentration usually occur when you startthinking about, Did I put the roast in the oven? Or whenyou think of, Did I return Joe's phone call? Or, Did Ileave the guest passes at the will call like I was supposedto? Or, Did I make my flight reservations? Those are thethings that cause lapses in concentration. You're notthinking about the task at hand. So keep your mind inthe present tense and control your self-talk to the task athand and you'll automatically concentrate on the task athand.

Limit the movement of the eyes. Every timeyou look at an object that object that yousee, that message flashes itself to the brain. Imean, that's the way the eyes work. What I

found very effective, especially with tournament golfers,where they have a chance to look outside the rope so tospeak and see people that they know that automaticallytriggers pictures of, Well, there's Joe, I should go overthere and say hi to him so he won't think I'm ignoringhim or something like that. Limit the movement of your

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been working my tail off on the practice range. I deservethis clutch three-foot putt and I'm going to make it."You can talk yourself into it, so to speak. You can realizethat you have earned it and what you've waited for isthat clutch three-foot putt.

Another way to deal with excitement againis by thinking of past negative experiencesin a positive way.

Thinking of other times when you had a chance to breakyour own personal course record and you blew it. Don'tthink of the failure of that time, but think of the feelingsyou had afterwards. Think of the way you said, "If I onlyhad it to do over again." Think of the way that youdeserve it.


Concentration

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makes it more difficult to concentrate, obviously. Sountil you get in your groove, isolate yourself.

Make sure that there is a place in your pre-shot routine for your key thought. Youremember when I talked about pre-shotroutine I said that it would be a great deal ofhelp if you can have a place in your pre-shot

routine for your key thought. It was in step number 5 inour pre-shot routine. We intentionally put our keythought in at the same place every single time, and bydoing that it put our mind in a specific frame ofreference which gave us the best chance to succeed.

So you will find it easier to concentrate if you put aspecific place in your pre-shot routine for you keythought to occur, and remember I said that if you're thetype of player who immediately begins his swing after awaggle, then you're going to find it most effective tothink your key thought during the waggles. If you're thetype of player who stops waggling, has a pause, and thenuses some sort of swing trigger, then you're the type ofperson who is probably going to get most out of his keythought by putting it into the area where he's pausing.

Another way to deal with excitement againis by thinking of past negative experiencesin a positive way.

Thinking of other times when you had a chance to breakyour own personal course record and you blew it. Don'tthink of the failure of that time, but think of the feelingsyou had afterwards. Think of the way you said, "If I onlyhad it to do over again." Think of the way that youdeserve it.

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eyes. Keep your eyes right on the task at hand. Bykeeping your eyes on the task at hand – that is, thefairway in front of you, the hole in front of you, the shotin front of you – you will limit the pictures thatautomatically go into your mind; hence you will find iteasier to concentrate. There won't be as manydistractions.

Turn your concentration on and off. Don'ttry to concentrate for four straight hours.Ben Hogan can do it and a couple other guyscan do it, but most of us are going to find it

very difficult. Turn your self-talk on and off. In otherwords, concentrate on the task at hand when it's thetask at hand, but after it's finished and you can't doanything until you get to your next shot turn yourconcentration off.

Make sure that the time in your pre-shotroutine coincides with your personality. Ifyou're taking two or three seconds over theball while you're subconscious is saying,

"Come on, baby, I'm ready to hit this thing," that'sfighting your personality. You're going to find it harderto concentrate if you do that.

Isolate yourself until you're in the groove. Ifyou're having a great deal of troubleconcentrating, don't walk down the fairwaytalking with all the boys or all the girls.

Sometimes you've got to gather your thoughts, you'vegot to get the task at hand in your mind, and if you reallywant to increase the chances of being able toconcentrate more effectively you have to isolate yourselfsometimes. I mean, sometimes when you're thinkingabout what you're trying to accomplish and somebodyelse is talking about who won the game last night it

Visualization

VISUALIZATION

How do we begin to apply this information to the on-course part of the game of golf? Visualizing shots iscertainly one of the most common pieces of advice thatyou ever see in golf. You hear it everywhere, you see iteverywhere, everybody tells you to do it. Visualize yourshots. But nobody ever tells you how to do it.

To show you how powerful shot visualization is insome people's eyes, Jack Nicklaus has been quoted assaying that sometimes when he misses shots it'sbecause he's visualized them wrong. That's howpowerful he feels visualization is. To give you anexample of how powerful visualization is that you canrelate to, have you ever been playing with a guy, ormaybe you were this golfer yourself, where they hit ashot in the woods. I mean, in jail. And they literally hadto take four or five minutes just to see how it was evenphysically possible to get out. I mean, they had to getdown on their hands and knees and say, "Jeez, I guess if Ihit a high hook I might be able to get back on thefairway." Then they line up to the ball, hit a high hook,and lo and behold they hit it out of a two foot opening.Then they get out in the middle of the fairway where theobject is even more defined, where the target is evenmore defined, and they just get up and whack it. Theynever even take the time to visualize then. You see amuch higher success ratio when people visualize theshots, but unfortunately most people only visualizethe shots when they're forced to visualize them.

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One of the best keys you can use to startvisualizing shots consistently is to put it inyour pre-shot routine. I visualize the shot atthe same point in time during every pre-shotroutine. Then it becomes habit.

If it becomes habit, then you literally visualize the shotby force so to speak, by force of habit, and you will moreconsistently see what you are trying to accomplish,you'll give your mind more input to work on, you'll havea better chance of success in the same way that we havea better ratio of success when we're hitting out oftrouble from the woods.

Visualize your shots by verbalizing them. Ifyou verbalize the shot you want in detail,it's impossible for your mind not to see itbecause of the trigger process.

A second key toward shot visualization is tocontrol your self-talk. If you're over the ballsaying,"Man, I just can't see it," obviouslythat creates appropriate pictures in yourmind and you can't see it.

By the way, if you get in a position where you literallyhave trouble seeing the ball going in the hole, a drill thatI heard about through a mini tour player, he said he washaving trouble seeing the ball go in a hole so he wentover, put his ball down about 12 inches from the holeand hit it in the middle 50 times in a row. And it startedto get him in the habit of being able to see his ball go inthe hole and he found it easier to visualize the shots, theputts going in the hole after he went through a drill likethat.

Closing

When I want to visualize my shots I flubbermy shots, F.L.B.R. Flight, landing, behavioron landing, and resting point. I guaranteeyou'll get better results because it gives yourmind more to work with. Flight, landing,

behavior on landing, and resting point. Is it going to kickright, kick left, take one bounce and suck back, bounceforward? What's it gonna do?

Another key toward visualizing shots is tosee tight shots in reverse. This is particularlya good point for better players.

Have you ever been on a fairway and looked up to thegreen and said, "Jeez, it looks like I got about six inchesto land the ball up there." And then you walk up afterhitting your shot into the bunker that you were trying toavoid and you see, well, there was a lot more room therethan I thought there was. Well, take the time to visualizethe shot in reverse. You'll realize that there's more room,you'll take some of the pressure off, you'll let your mindknow that there's more margin of error than you thinkthere is. You won't push so hard, try to make it happen,force it to happen. You won't get so conscious, you'llincrease your chances of success.

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CLOSING

If I've accomplished what I wanted to during the class,you should realize that all the concepts that I've talkedabout are going to happen, every single one of them. It'snot a matter of if they happen, it's a matter of how theyhappen, when they happen because they will happen.

So I hope what you do is you use the concepts we'vetalked about to more effectively control your mindworking for you for results that you want to attaininstead of allowing it to work against you for results thatyou don't want to attain. See, what we're talking about isnot some techniques that will guarantee goodperformance all the time because nothing will,obviously. But what they will do is they will increaseyour chances of success. Everything will happen.

So as long as it's going to happen and as long as it willincrease your chances of success, why not controlthem for the kind of results you want instead ofallowing them to control you for random and most ofthe time negative results.

I'd like to end with a little poem.


About the Author

You Can If You Think You Can.

If you think you are beaten, you are.If you think you dare not, you don't.If you like to win but think you can't,It's almost certain that you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost.For out in this world we findSuccess begins with a fellow's will.It's all in the state of mind.

If you think you're outclassed, you are.You've got to think high to rise.You've got to be sure of yourselfBefore you can ever win a prize.Life's battles don't always goTo the stronger or faster man,But sooner or later the man who winsIs the man who thinks he can.

We've all got them in our club. We've all got them in ourfoursome or group. They got no business playing asgood as they do. They got no business winning the waythey do. But they do because they think they can.

The only way that we are going to begin to play golfcloser to our own true physical potential is by playingsubconscious golf, and now you've got the tools thatyou need to do it.

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ED GRANT

I first started playing thiswonderful game in collegewhile I was attending theUniversity of Arizona,studying Psychology. Itaught myself how to playthe “physical” game fromreading instruction booksthat were readily available.When I got down to a singledigit handicap, I knew frommy studies in Psychologythat I would have to

improve my “mental” game of golf to continue my rateof overall improvement. But when I looked around forinstruction books on the “mental” part of golf, Isurprisingly found that there were none.

So, with the help of my good friend Dr. Bill Cole, wewrote the first version of Subconscious Golf, mainly forapplication to my own golf game. But when othergolfers, equally frustrated at the lack of availableinstruction in such an obvious vital part of the game,heard the tapes, they wanted copies. Enough so thatthis really proved to be the beginning of SubconsciousGolf. We wrote and produced the first complete set ofSubconscious Golf cassette tapes in 1975. To say wewere a little ahead of our time would be quite anunderstatement!

You can’t imagine the thrill I felt when I unexpectedlygot a call from Jim Flick and Bob Toski asking me tocome and teach Subconscious Golf at some their golfschools, or the excitement of getting a call from Dr. GaryWiren wanting me to come and teach at PGA Sectional

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Education meetings all over the country. But the biggestthrill and by far the most intimidating I might add, was acall I received from the TOUR to teach a class of currentTOUR Players. Here I was, fresh out of college, teachinga class that included a U.S. Open champion, the winnerof the most recent PGA, and one golfer who had recentlywon the U.S. Amateur. I was teaching a class with guysin attendance I was using as examples of how tomentally do something right, and sometimes examplesof “how not to” do something mentally wrong! Now thatwas intimidating!

Since the first edition of Subconscious Golf was met withsuch success, I was constantly being asked by amateurs,Tour players and some of the country’s top teachers to“update” the material and come out with a “new andimproved” version.

And that is what this is!

Anyone who has written and produced a project likethis knows that it takes a great deal of time and effort.But, with the encouragement of my wife, Diane; my sonsEddie and Jeff, my daughters, Becky and Debbie, andmy brother, Tim, we have been able to successfullycomplete it.

I’d like to dedicate this updated edition to ToddRosenzweig, who suddenly died in the final months ofour efforts. Todd’s wife, Debby, and his best friend BrianBernheim made sure that Todd and Brian’s dream ofproducing this “new and improved” version became areality.

I can thank each of these people now, but Todd…I hopeto see you in heaven so then I can thank you personally!

subconscious golf presented by ed...

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