Most of the blogs I have shared to date focus on what to do with your feelings and >visual imagination before, during and after shots. I haven’t written about what to do for the other 3 hours! Yes, like me, you spend a lot of time loyally following your ball around the golf course. Since the vast majority of time playing golf is not actually spent playing golf, how you spend that time massively impacts the time that you are. It’s a lot if time to think, to talk yourself into or out of great golf, to see clearly or get stuck in unwanted feelings. So here’s a very basic golf psychology technique to help you feel great and see your next shot easily when approaching your ball.

When you look at top tour players, what do you see them doing when walking in between shots? Are they spending much time looking down with hunched shoulders muttering to themselves? For the top players, the answer is most definitely NO. In fact even when they’re not playing well, they deliberately continue to stride on purposefully whilst looking up to the horizon. Are they looking for divine intervention, praying for a win?! Or are they simply developing their mental toughness and accessing their optimum state? Either way, looking up works - here’s why:

1. ENERGY

Your state (ie how you feel) depends massively on your physiology. For example, try this out yourself now. Look down to the floor, slump your shoulders and put a really miserable looking face on. Now, try to be happy and confident WITHOUT changing your physiology……I’m guessing you’re finding it pretty difficult to be those things without changing your physiology. Now look up to the ceiling, put a really big stupid grin on your face! (yes you may feel like an idiot, everyone else will too!). Now keeping the really big grin on your face try to be unhappy and nervous. Try it now……tricky isn’t it!

As you’ve just experienced, feeling “down” requires your body to slump down, restricting the energy flow through your body and making you physically and emotionally less strong. Feeling “UP” on the other hand requires your body to literally be UP, allowing more energy to flow through your body so you’re naturally going to feel stronger and more UP for it!

2. VISUALISING

Where you direct your eyes has a direct link to the part of your brain that you are activating. So:

• When you look DOWN you will be accessing feelings and talking to yourself. Self talk (even positive self talk) is not that useful in golf as your body needs it’s instructions in the form of pictures. Feelings are absolutely crucial to use when playing BUT not between shots. It often leads to dwelling on past shots and not being present. If you wanted to talk to yourself about what an idiot you have been and then feel really bad about it for a few holes, look down a lot! If not…
• When you look UP, you will be accessing the visual parts of your brain. If you ever struggle to visualise your upcoming shot, stop looking down – LOOK UP. This way you will be able to create new pictures more easily and compare your options with visual memories from the past of what’s worked well in that situation.

The most powerful and natural way to do this is to use the Playing State all the way through your round, in between and during shots. This will help you keep your eyes on the horizon, noticing everything around you AND crucially keep you present.

I hope you find these basic mental golf tips useful. If you have questions about controlling your state or other aspects of your own golf psychology, I’m more than happy to give you ideas. Also, I’m giving away audio mental golf tips through a series of six free tipcasts to help you through the toughest parts of the game. Sign up for my newsletter now if you would like to receive these.

Love every shot!

Adam Sprackling

Mental Golf Coach