Change Your Putting Philosophy So You Can Stay in the Present, the Zone, and Hole More Putts

If you have read more than one article on playing your best then you will have heard time and time again about forgetting about results and staying in the present. Doing it in real play, especially when you are emotionally tied in with the result is not all that easy to do. One of the worst emotions you can be tied to with a result is humiliation. If you are worried about missing a short one or three stabbing from 20ft and losing the hole or match, humiliating yourself in the process, then you are placing enormous pressure to perform on yourself. No wonder we struggle.

Forget the results is the advice and it makes perfect sense as I am sure you agree. After all we do perform better if we are not scared of messing up. There is also a lot of advice about how to stay in the present but it is about finding the right thoughts and processes that suit you as an individual. Not all the techniques will work all the time for all the people, kind of thing!

Now I do not know if this particular thought process and philosophy is going to work really well for you but here is something you can try and if you give it a serious go for a few weeks and months, it might just improve your putting fantastically. Here it is and remember that this is just a model that may work for you.

Become fascinated by the personal challenge of every putt. Forget about the game or match, let it go and allow the most important thing about your putting to become a game that you play with yourself. A game which you play out of interest to see what happens. The philosophy you want to have with this is that there is no score on the putt. The putt is not worth one shot. It is worth nothing and the only reason you are going to make this putt is to see how good your read of the line and break was and how good you "Just Let it Go" and trusted.

Imagine that you are on a practice green and just trying to see if you can get a putt to do what you think it should. Just a little practice challenge where there is no shot on the line. All you are going to do is imagine the putt and then send the ball on its way and see out of interest what happens.

Look at it from behind the ball and then walk to the other side and look at it from there. Stand side on to your putt on the low side of the hole and visualise your putt going along a line into the hole. Stand behind your putt again and visualise it running along a line and going into the hole and just trust your unconscious mind to come up with the line and pace. DO NOT SECOND GUESS ANYTHING.

Now just go through your setup routine, look at the hole one last time and then stroke the putt.

As you putt try to notice the back of the ball being struck by your putter and hold the image of your target in your mind, count to 3 seconds before looking sideways to see your putt rolling. Now just notice with interest how closely it is doing what you imagined it was going to do. No emotions, no good or bad, just compare the actual putt with what you visualised it doing. You are going to become completely absorbed at putting in order to see how close your actual putt is compared to what your instincts decided.

Putting is: Make an instinctive decision. Roll the putt without trying. Compare the real putt with the visualised putt. Learn and forget it. Repeat the process. Remember that there is no score. The putt is not worth 1 shot, it is simply an act of sending a ball from point A to point B and accepting the personal challenge to see if you can read the break and get the ball to do what you imagined.

In order for this particular putting system to show its magic and work you must treat it as a philosophy that each putt is just a personal challenge to see how good you can read a putt and then let it go. There is no such thing as a good putt or a bad putt; there is just a movement of the ball from one point to another that you can compare with your original decision. If it was a good comparison store it and congratulate yourself and if the actual putt was not the same as you imagined then just learn from it and forget it.

Now I do not know if this putting philosophy is going to work for you and improve your putting significantly, or just let you play with more freedom from results, but I hope you are one of those golfers who benefit significantly. By all means adjust some of the aspects so it fits you better and you can get out of results and just take each putt as a personal and interesting challenge.

Find out more by the mental game of golf now and how to easily apply principals such as visualisation, focus of attention, targeting and many others that will dramatically improve your golf results and enjoyment of the game now go to http://www.golfmindshop.com. Improve By "Every Golfers Guide To The Development And Mastery Of The Inner Game" has extensive guides both written and on MP3 to achieve your best performance by discovering the surprising power of great Sports Thinking - The Mental Game.

Wishing you FIR's, GIR's & Blue Skies,
Mark.

GET YOUR Peak Mental Performance FREE EBookto get your mental game started now at http://www.golfmindshop.com or FREE GOLF GRIP EBook. Mark Wright is a Master Coach and Sport Psychologist, NLP Sports Coach, Hypnosis Expert and Master Club Maker with nearly 25 years of Sports Coaching Experience.