[Fred Brattain]

Hi all...

Thanks for the suggestions...

However...

What exactly is anxiety?

Anxiety is the worry or fear about what hasn't happened yet. It manifests itself in increased heart rate, increased muscle tension, turning off the thought centers in your head. All of this is called the "fight or flight syndrome". When you are standing over that little white ball and all you can think about is the lake off to the right, you have anxiety. When notice the lake and then it disappears from your mind because all you can see is your ball sitting in the middle of the fairway out about 265, you don't have anxiety.

You must learn, through practice, just as you practice the mechanics of the golf swing, to see what is GOOD out there and not what is BAD. Your subconscious cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is vividly imagined. It will do WHATEVER IT CAN to make what you "see" come true. If you see success and TRUST YOURSELF, you will succeed. If you see your ball going in the water, and it is a real image in your head, I don't care what swing thought you have, your subconscious is going to say "What PhillyGolf wants is to have his ball splash just about THERE" and it's going there, my friend.

Practice visualizing the outcome you want and ignoring, not even given a passing credence, to the outcome you don't want. One of the things that helps me a lot is to look at whomever I am playing with and say "Ok, this is starting out at that tree on the right of the fairway and drawing back into the middle." For me vocalizing what I want makes it more "real" to me and makes it easier to do. Then I just go hit the shot.

Does it work all the time ? No, does it work more often than not YES. Is it a LOT better than saying "Deal Lord, don't let me hit it in the water?" YES IT IS.

Training your golf brain is just as important as training your golf muscles. If you envision success rather than failure you will succeed more often than fail, and then you will succeed more often because it becomes easier to envision success, because you have already done so successfully. It's called builiding confidence.

Just as when I stand over a 4 foot putt, regardless of the "need" to sink it. The idea that I might miss NEVER crosses my mind. Do I make every 4 footer I ever stand over? I don't remember ever having missed one THAT IS THE KEY.

Hope this helps,

Obi WunPutt