The Ultimate Test
Golf is a wonderful game but also at times very cruel. In many ways it can be the ultimate test of managing your emotions. It doesn’t matter how motivated, talented and committed you are to improving your game. The challenge is, can you stay in the moment, trust yourself, play freely one shot at a time whilst fighting the destructive power of your inner voice- the voice of all of your fears?
If a player loses confidence and develops a problem with their game this can prove to be a nightmare. More coaching, practice, new clubs, advice from friends and your swing gets worse. You lose your rhythm, timing and possibly the will to live.
A while ago I was working with a frustrated golfer (Tony Dowling) who happened to be the Managing Director of Real Radio in South Wales. Impressed with how I was able to help him relax and enjoy himself more when playing golf Tony suggested I be a guest on their weekly sports hour talking about how to use EFT to develop mental toughness in sport.
The host of the show was an ex Welsh International football (soccer) player David Giles. David was a keen golfer and agreed to do an on-air session of EFT with me to help him with some of his challenges playing golf.
Mental block
David was a 15 handicap golfer whose progress was suddenly halted by a mental block when trying to chip the ball onto the green. This of course was affecting his confidence and enjoyment of the game.
I asked him what was getting in the way of him playing well his best golf, he said “I’ve been playing well but my game hit a wall as I began shanking the ball (the ball goes sideways) when trying to chip the ball onto the green.” I asked how often does it happen and is there any time when it is worse? “One particular course on the seventh hole.” I asked him to imagine standing over the ball about to play the shot, how does he feel, what are the strongest emotions? “I feel I am doing everything right and at the critical moment the ball goes sideways, my friends offer helpful suggestions about how to correct it but nothing works, I feel frustrated that I cant work out what’s going wrong.”
Frustration and Anger
We scaled his level of frustration and anger at not knowing why this was happening to measure how he felt from 0-10. (0 feels fine, 10 high level of intensity). David registered an 8. So we tapped a few rounds on the body’s acupressure points whilst focusing on that negative emotion.
I then asked David to scale how it felt standing over the ball again on the seventh hole. “I am standing over the shot , thinking about playing the ball but I’m not so worried, more relaxed, very relaxed, down to a three.”
Because there was such a dramatic shift in the way David felt about playing the shot we were able to introduce the positive affirmations, how he would ideally like to strike the ball. This is what he said: “I would like to get under the ball drop it onto the green, hit what they call a flop shot, a Phil Nickolson shot and flop it on to the green, two foot from the hole.”
We tapped another few rounds focusing again on the positive affirmations. When I tested David by asking him to imagine standing over the ball. He now felt calm, relaxed and eager to go out and play- the number had dropped to 0.
A dramatic shift
David was amazed at how different he felt in such a short time. He still had to go and play of course and as you can imagine working in a sporting environment, there were plenty of his colleagues lining up to poke fun at him for using this weird looking technique.
As I have grown up in the sporting world I understand the resistance to using something new, especially as it initially focuses on the negative thinking.
The next evening when David was on radio again reviewing the up and coming weekend’s sports events, his co-presenter couldn’t resist asking how his golf went “How did it go today, how many shots did you play on the seventh hole, don’t tell me eight?
David said “I stepped up to the ball just off the green, thought about the points I worked on with Sean played the shot and placed it two foot from the hole!
Not bad, after a few rounds of tapping David was free of his mental block and regained his love of golf.
The story may test your belief systems, and this is just one example of the subtle power of this simple technique.
If you would like to read the full article click here. I have included a ‘tapping‘ script of the work I did with David. Hopefully this give you an idea of how EFT works, the tapping points are shown in the diagram above and I also have a short video demonstrating the tapping points.
Over to you, do you have any demons in your game you would like to be free of? What have you tried, has it worked? If you have problems with a part of your golf game you are desperate to be free of, just get in touch, I would like to help.
Contact me at sean@confidenceontap.com for a free 15 min initial consultation if you would like to release any ‘mental’ demons in your game!
P.S. In a session lasting just twenty minutes David’s mindset was transformed. In future blogs I would like to explain more about how this simple technique is setting new standards of performance excellence.