Sport psychology

Also deals with incessant self talk.

We have little tolerance for our playing partners when they make comments during our play and would start a world war for the smallest of reasons at the drop of a pin. (Could you imagine your reaction to a comment like, "I bet you miss.")

However we tolerate unending harassment from our own inner voice, which has the impertinence to barrage us with endless recollections of past failures. I notice this most when I am putting and it verges on the ridiculous when I get to those three to four footers. I can hear my inner voice advising me of my tendancy to pull to the left or push to the right etc. It's absurd and I actually listen to this and sometimes thank it for the warning.

At my worst, I was totally unaware of this voice and when I became more attentive could not believe the incessant barraging that was coming from it. All of this occurred before I adopted a drill to silence it.

For this drill, I sought out some natural activities; throwing or catching a ball or simply throwing/bowling a golf ball towards a hole.

I noticed, as I was doing this, that I was using similar mechanics to putting but there was little or no interference from my inner voice.

Why is it so easy to perform bowling like this in near silence? Our challenge is the same, to bowl the ball as close to the hole as possible.

The difference is we are not so obsessed with the end result during the swing or preparation to swing.

Try this for yourself and you will experience a quiet inner voice and a much higher level of fun. I often work with groups of total beginners and it always shocks me how extremely diverse their judgement of a twenty foot putt is.

I find from a group of six perhaps one will judge it quite well but the rest will vary from far too short to far too long. I find the difference between the shortest ball and longest ball can often be more than twice the distance of the initial putt.

I then ask them to bowl the ball to the same target and the results are immediately much better. When they return to putting and are advised to use their putter with similar fundamentals to how they just bowled, their putting improves immediately.

I have however been playing this game for over 30 years and have, until fairly recently, not properly noticed this destructive commentator. So how can it be silenced? Initially it is crucial to be aware of this voice and then adopt a trick to silence it.

Dave Pelz has his metronome drill where one putts to the tempo that suits ones own personality. Tick-tock, tick-tock, ... I have tried this and have had a certain level of success but the voice still gets through.

I do this when I am putting, on the practice green and on the course, and although at first the interference is higher under pressure, I am now performing with much lower levels of interference and am having much more fun and success.

This drill can of course be used for every shot and I find that the humming picks up all interference. I of course tried and tested this on the practice ground before testing it on the course.

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