Back In The Game!

I am not a golfer, but I am intrigued by golfers.  My husband was in the restaurant business some time ago, and whenever the PGA Westchester Classic came to town the professional golfers would often visit our restaurant for rest and nourishment.   It was an exciting time for all of us ~~ especially for my husband.  My husband personally catered to some pretty good golfers of the time ~~ Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, and Hale Irwin.

Golfers are unique.  While they are competitive sportsmen/women, who play an intense and demanding game, requiring mental focus and endurance, the game itself requires players to maintain a calm and collected demeanor.  To me, I imagine that golfers fall someplace between a chess player and a tennis player. 

I have observed professional golfers both on the golf course and at our restaurant.  What I have learned about professional golfers is that they are disciplined and highly effective in managing their competitive energy, under extreme pressure.       

How do professional golfers manage their competitive energy, maintain mental focus and endurance, and still remain consistently calm and collected under pressure?

One of the ways professional golfers help themselves to be disciplined, calm and collected, and consistent in their performance is to employ sports psychologists, who embrace hypnosis. Both Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus use hypnotherapy for sports enhancement.  

Hypnosis helps to alleviate obstacles ~~ increase confidence, modify behavior, eliminate self-limiting beliefs, reduce stress, etcetera ~~ that prevent one from functioning at one’s optimum levels.  Hypnosis engages both imagination and knowledge to affect positive changes.

Sports psychologists work with the premise that the body-mind cannot distinguish between an imagined event and an actual event.  In essence, by rehearsing one’s golf game using the power of imagination ~~  mentally imagining oneself engaged in a game of golf, minute by minute, play by play, incorporating all of one’s five senses ~~   the brain sends exactly the same messages to the body as if one were actually playing a game of golf.

Hypnosis is an excellent tool for imagined rehearsal practice and, certainly, one can understand why both Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus incorporate hypnosis to improve their golf game. It might be surprising, however, to learn that dreams work to enhance performance, as well.  Dreams help to maximize performance by giving the dreamer the opportunity to rehearse and perfect something that the dreamer may want to accomplish in a waking event.

Jack Nicklaus rehearsed and perfected a golf swing in a dream.  In 1994, Jack Nicklaus' golf scores were in the high seventies; he was in a slump. Then Jack had a dream.  Here is the dream story (recounted in an article written by Lisa D. Micky of The New York Times)  that Jack Nicklaus shared with a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, at that time:      

 ~~ ''I had a dream and it was about my golf swing,'' Nicklaus told the reporter. ''I was hitting them pretty good in the dream and all at once, I realized I wasn't holding the club the way I've actually been holding it lately. I've been having trouble collapsing my right arm, taking the club head away from the ball, but I was doing it perfectly in my sleep. So when I came to the course yesterday morning, I tried it the way I did in my dream and it worked. I shot a 68 yesterday and a 65 today.'' ~~

I love that Jack Nicklaus’ dream put him back in the game! And I love the way that Jack Nicklaus naturally engaged and applied the power and wisdom of his dreams for personal success and well-being.  And you can too!   

References:

Gregory , Sean. "Tiger Woods Is Back To Number One: His Greatest Feat?." Time Magazine. 06 03 2013: n. page. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://keepingscore.blogs.time.com/2013/03/26/tiger-woods-back-to-number-one-his-greatest-feat/>

Micky , Lisa D.. "ON PAR:  It's Golf the Way You Dreamed It Would Be." New York Times 02 07 2012, n. pag. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E7DD163DF931A35754C0A9649D8B63&ref=dreams>.