Improve your Mental Game
Vision - Part I
The Golf Mentor offers a mental game training program that can dramatically improve your golfing performance. It is based on a mix of modern cognitive science and awareness techniques. If you want to play golf to the best of your abilities, you need to be totally aware. Aware of your surroundings, what is happening with your body, and what is happening in your mind. Once you start your club selection, you should be totally focused. You need to be notice the lie of the ball, any hazards or impediments along the flight of the ball, the nature of the landing spot, etc. All this integrates into your club selection and shot strategy. Once you have made your club selection and decided how you are going to hit the shot, you have made all your decisions, and so move into your pre-shot routine. If your mind is quiet, then you will execute the pre-shot routine exactly has you have done in practice, making any modifications needed for this particular shot. Then you setup for the actual shot. If you are aware, you will notice if your shoulders are tightening or your grip is too tight. You will sense the lie of the ball and make the appropriate adjustments. When you start you back-swing, you will enter a zone of unconscious effort, allowing you to hit the ball without any interference from you conscious mind.
So the vision we have for your mental game is that once you start your club selection you enter a zone of awareness, a zone where your mind is quiet and aware. You continue in this aware state through club selection, pre-shot routine, setup, and the start of the back-swing. As you start the back-swing, your unconscious mind will take over and you will make the best swing that you can, pre-programmed by the information and decisions that you made during the awareness phase. I have a detailed training program to assist you to achieve this vision. Please click Part 2 to read more.
Awareness Exercise - Part II
It is surprising difficult to quiet your mind and be aware on the golf course. Indeed it is difficult to do this in everyday life. However, there are tremendous benefits associated with maintaining a quiet awareness. A proven way to do this is by practicing awareness meditation.
The Golf Mentor team has developed an exercise that can train your mind to be more aware and quiet. This exercise is targeted at the golf course, but it can help in everyday life. The awareness exercise can be done on a computer or your smart phone. It only need take 5 minutes each day, but it is not magic, so you will need to do it for a while to gain benefit from it. You should try to do the exercise at least five times a week. The AI Golf Mentor can keep track of how much you have practiced and of your mental game progress.
Awareness Test - Part III
A key innovation of the Golf Mentor program is a test of your awareness that you can use on the golf course. It is very common to think you are being aware on the golf course when in fact your mind is racing, so you lose awareness of your mind, body, and surroundings. Although this might work for a shot or two, pretty soon you will be in trouble.
Our program provides a test of your awareness level that you take before every stroke. The test not only monitors your awareness but actually helps you to calm you down and play better golf. As your mental game proficiency improves, the test will become harder, reflecting your greater level of awareness.
In order to monitor your performance, you keep track of the number of times that you fail your awareness test during a round and post it into the Golf Mentor at the end of the round.
Keeping Track - Part IV
When you begin, your mental game level will be a Novice. As you gain greater proficiency you will pass through different levels up to Master.
After finishing a game of golf, you should post your game results in the Golf Mentor, including your number of errors. The Golf Mentor automatically calculates your mental game score. If your total number of errors in a game is less or equal to two then you will be upgraded to the next level.
An single error happens when you to fail your awareness test during any stroke on a hole. After you fail an awareness test, any further failures during that hole do not add to the error count. This way, one bad hole does not overly affect your mental game score. As well, if you are having a terrible day and have got to 9 errors, then stop counting, and just enjoy the day.
To summarise, you can only make one error on a single hole and you can only make 9 errors in total during a round of golf. Your aim is to play a round with a perfect mental outlook, so you do not make any mental game errors during the round.
Pre-Shot Routine - Part V
Just about any professional will tell you that the pre-shot routine is a key aspect of improving your mental game. The pre-shot routine serves two purposes, it is a rehearsal of your final swing and it helps to calm the mind as you enter into familiar repetitive territory. No matter what mental game level you are on, mindfully doing the pre-shot routine is part of the awareness test.
The Golf Mentor provides you with a custom pre-shot routine designed to fit with our mental game program. If you already have a pre-shot routine, you can use that. You can also print a reminder sheet that has your pre-shot routine and current awareness test.
Summary - Part VI
The AI Golf Mentor has a detailed system to improve your Mental Game. There is a free 7 day trial.