Improve your game from your inbox – Visualisation
Golf Psychology by Coen Welsh – Brian Harman eventually won the Wells Fargo Championship at Eagle Point last week, but it was Patrick Reed who was on top of the leaderboard going into the final round on Sunday.
According to PGWTour.com he has five PGA TOUR victories at age 26, so it’s not like he’s been struggling. Recently however he has been struggling to put it all together, so he decided to make a change.
Rather than consulting with his caddie and his trusted green-reading book before every putt, he decided to go back to the way he did it when he was an amateur. See the putt. Hit the putt.
He told PGATour.com [I decided to] “Go back to how I putted in college, kind of just see the putt and go knock it in.” This is an important skill in the mental side of the gold game. Visualisation.
Tip of the week – Visualisation
One of the key pillars of sport psychology is visualisation. This is the skill of creating a mental image of a desired outcome. In golf visualisation is a crucial skill in all parts of the game, particularly when putting. The best golfers can read a line and are able to visualise the speed and the power of every putt.
To improve your visualisation skills it is important to incorporate visualisation into your pre-shot routine. In your mind’s eye, you need to create a mental image of what your body needs to do and how the ball will react.
Golf.com suggests that most players use the visualisation technique wrong. You want to visualise the whole shot from the movement of your putter to the point where you see the ball falling in the hole.
On an approach shot you need to visualise your swing, the flight of the ball through the air, where it will land, how it will bounce and continue to roll up to the point where the ball stops on the green.
Quote of the week
You can’t swing with hesitation; you can’t try to steer the ball to the flag; you can’t worry about that water hazard as you take the club back. You have to pick the right club, visualize the shot you want to hit, and then focus on that shot until the ball is gone. – Keegan Bradley
For more tips visit www.capacitytrust.com
Coen Welsh, a qualified industrial psychologist, is an expert on the Antecedents and underlying Psychological Conditions predicting Employee Engagement.He has worked in diverse teams in the UK, Egypt and Namibia. Coen regularly gets invited to speak at HR and other conferences. He is a regular contributor to NBC National Radio as well as Tupopyeni and Off-the-Hook on NBC Television. He is a founding member of the Professional Speakers Association of Namibia. You can visit him at www.coenwelsh.com.
