Want to Lower Your Golf Score? Hypnotize Your Caddy
For many years, I have counseled golfers who play at various levels. My patients have included professionals, highly ranked amateurs, college players, high school golfers and warriors.
Golfers who are playing at a high level do not exist in a vacuum. That is, they have relationships with coaches, spouses, parents, agents and last but not least, caddies.
In addition to working with the golfer by himself or herself, I frequently include include parents, coaches, agents, caddies, managers, spouses and significant others in the process. They are the athlete’s support system. And sometimes, I lead this support system through a group exercise which is a combination of hypnosis, visualization, guided imagery or visualization. This can be quite powerful since it can help everyone to discover interesting ideas and it can help all the key people to get on the same page as the golfer.
In some instances, I have hypnotized both the golfer and his or her caddie in order to prepare them for an upcoming event. As golf professionals know, the relationship between the player and the caddie is a crucial one. If it is conflict or dysfunctional, it can cause a player to perform poorly and lose strokes and, in turn, tournaments.
Conversely, if the relationship is solid, it can allow a player to compete effectively. Recently, after a placing a golfer and his caddie into a trance, the caddie and the golfer told me in great detail a lot about their goals, And their dreams and how they felt their lives might change if they were successful in their sport. This conversation gave us all some insight into what was motivating this duo.
In my view, when a caddie and golfer are functioning as a team, they enter a rather special shared mental space. Some therapists would say they move into a shared trance state or a joint hypnotic state.
Knowing how to get into this kind of state of mind can help the duo to improve the synergy between them and to learn how to perform to their full potential more often.