Archive for April 2010
What The US Open Tournament Means To Your Game…
19. April 2010 by Tee It Up Pro Shop.
What does the US Open have to do with your game? Well if you want to function well in your own club tournament it could have a lot to do with your success. When you go to the driving range to work on your swing and pound ball after ball it’s only one small part of practise. You are using the practice makes perfect formula. But if you have played golf for any length of time you know that it simply isn’t the truth; practise doesn’t make perfect! Practice makes permanent. So practice what is really necessary to play at your peak. Your mental game training requires the same attention .
In order to play well with the anxiety of stress you need to practise under similar conditions. When the chips are down and you need to hit the shot of your life, the self imposed pressure experienced increases 10 fold for most golfers. Trying to improve your inner game of golf toughness this way is a hit and miss method to say the least. Yet this is all most people know.
By entering more competitions and tournaments they have the false notion that this is going to improve their mental game and concentration skills. Unfortunately it just doesn’t work that way. What do you see happen most of the time with this typical tactic? Yes you guessed it; the vast majority of players never perform up to their own capabilities because they lack mental game preparedness.
Then they merely chalk it up to experience and hope to get in the position to win again. This tactic , if you can call it one, is the “natural” way. Just get in position as many times as possible and you’re bound to win. It’s a very haphazard mental game approach. Well this might be true, since a player will succeed eventually if they give themselves enough chances.
My belief is that the more times your put yourself in the position to win and fail, in actual fact what you are doing is increasing the likelihood that you will fail. It doesn’t make winning any easier! Why is this, lack of mental game training? You have built a mindset of losing in your subconscious mind around not performing well under pressure. It will drive your behaviour (your thought processes and the swings you make under stress). You will without thinking duplicate the experience of losing that you are accustomed to.
It certainly is a hard pill to swallow but if you want real and lasting change then mental game training can save you months, and even years for some golfers, of pointless inner turmoil around pressure, performance anxiety, competitive stress and its influence on your game . Now what if you could reconstruct the pressure of the US Open in your practice sessions and then go and play with this mindset?
What if your practice included a mental game imagery process that mirrored any and every pressure filled situation you might face and incorporated it into your practice routine? Do you think you would be perhaps a step or two ahead of your average golfer with the “natural” approach? I believe you most certainly would be!
By feeling with your mind’s eye, not simply seeing, you can undergo the exact pressure you’ll face in competition. Your subconscious mind will absorb these sessions and add them to your mental game library and integrate them into your golfing self image. These become real events to your mind. With this approach you are providing your mind and body with sensory specific information about what pressure is to you and how to perform when it’s present .
You are, in very real terms, preparing your mind and body to act and perform in a preferred way when under pressure. Practise your mental game by imagining you are in the US Open and at the range hitting balls. Give yourself only one shot to hit your desired target. Establish a scoring structure to monitor how well you perform this way. Increase the pressure by taking only one drive, then one iron, then a chip shot if you miss your imagined green with your approach shot. Try to pay very close attention to how your perform when using this technique.
If you want to accelerate your mental game progress and begin to perform well under pressure then it’s critical you simulate pressure in your practice routine. How else are you going to prepare for the inevitable? Do you honestly want to rely on the time worn approach of entering more and more tournaments and matches with the hopes of getting used to it? How much time money are you prepared to lose before you make the changes needed?
Take hold of your potential by developing a rock solid mental game. Your overall mindset on the course, your mental game, your sense of clarity and inner confidence under the gun, and a list of other benefits will enter your game. Not just occasionally but for a lifetime. You will be amazed how the little things that used to distract you before no longer enter your mind.
Control The Mental Game To Lower Your Golf Scores
18. April 2010 by Tee It Up Pro Shop.
As a golfer you must certainlybe aware that learning the mental game of golf is just as important if not more imperative as learning even something as fundamentalas swing basics. Possiblyto a greater degreethan with any other sport, conquering the inner game of golf is essentialto becoming a single digit handicapgolfer. Without the mental game of golf, you can pretty much reserve yourself to ordinary playat best.
Think about the last time you played golf did you visualize your shot before making your swing? If not, you are robbingyourself of a very importantstep. Withoutmental pictureyou have less of a chance to send your ball down the middle of the fairway upon contact.
If you failed to take the time to visualize your shot, the chances are pretty good that you did not have a great shot. If indeed this was the case, were you able to bounce back after sending your ball in the wrong direction? Or was your mental game of golf such that you fell quickly into a rut? On the other hand, when you have a great shot are you able to duplicate it on your subsequentshots? When you learn to turn the mental game into one of your strengths the bad shots will be less apt to bother you and you will rebound much faster.
To develop mental game you must be able to handle every little distractionthat comes your way, be that a bad shot or a hazard on the course. Mastering your golf swing doesn’t come easily and either does mastering the mental side of golf.
Additionally to visualizing your swing and having the capacityto not let a bad shot get to you, there are many other components to the mental game of golf. Learning to handle with pressure is a huge part of the mental game. We all know that anxiety levels rise when the game gets competitive. Learning to redirect pressure to your advantage will drasticallyimprove your game. It is, in fact, quite possible to use pressure to take your game to the next level.
Also, it is essential to the game of golf that you remain in the moment. This technique is practiced by Buddhist monks from all over the world; and it can be applied quite relevantly to the game of golf. If you are not focused, centered and attentive to your game, it is unrealistic to play at your best. Learning to stay in the moment is perhaps one of the best methods to improving your game.
If you learn to commandthe mental game of golf the rest will fall into place. While you might think it’s counter productive to work on the psychological component of a sport before even the fundamentals, this approach works. Any professional golfer will tell you that the mental game of golf is a very important aspect of the game that can’t be over looked. By working on the psychological element of the game, you in reality simplify the rest of the learning process.
Understandingthe mental side of golf can also be a very rewardingpart of the game. Watching yourself as you get better at this part of the game gives you a feeling of accomplishment.But along with this mental game you can’t leave out the necessity for a good physical one either.When you can combine these two elements of the game that is when you will become a great golfer.
Why Are Hybrid Golf Clubs Better For Your Game?
15. April 2010 by Tee It Up Pro Shop.
They say you can’t have your cake and eat it too, but that is not always true. Case in point, the hybrid golf club. You get the best of the iron and the fairway woods in a single club. The head is looks more like a wood than an iron so you have a much larger club face than with an iron. But the shaft of more like an iron, which is to say, shorter. So you don’t need to sweet it when you find your ball sitting in a difficult area that would make the wide swing arc of a fairway wood problematic. No wonder the pros and the golf press have sung the praises of hybrid golf clubs.
When hybrid clubs initially showed up out there, the typical golfer had a lot of difficulty with them and they were not very popular. In response to this, the makers of these clubs began experimenting with the design and eventually found a winning combination of design elements that really improved the usability of these clubs. The marketplace responsed by demanding more and more of these clubs..
What are the advantages of hybrid clubs? There are a couple of design factors that help even an average golfer.
The low center of gravity is one thing that makes hybrids so great to use. They help even an average golf drive the ball high in the air, whereas with a typical long iron, getting this type of balance and results is all but impossible.
For the most part, a hybrid golf club features a flat club face which also provides a higher ball trajectory than what you would find in an iron. Accompanying this is the fact that the ball will have a faster spin rate when hit with a hybrid, which results in less ball roll after it lands, resulting in better accuracy.
The bottom line is that nearly all the pros have decided that hybrid golf clubs can provide benefits to most golfers. Specifically, they will be able to hit the ball more accurately and hit is for greater distance. Without a doubt, if you want to improve your golf score you need to try out a hybrid golf clubs set as soon as possible.
