"Golf is a game of inches; the 6 inches between your ears"
-Arnold Palmer

While Yogi's figures don't quite add up, his point is well made.  What seperates the athletes who perform best under pressure from those who choke?  It has to do with how they think.

In basketball, anyone can make a free throw.  But making the free throw to tie the game with 1.3 seconds left in the NBA Finals is another story.

Or is it?

The following are all considered to be routine tasks in their respective sports.

• Basketball: shooting a free throw.
• Golf: making a 2 foot putt.
• Baseball: throwing a strike.
• Tennis: serving the ball in bounds.
• Football: kicking a short field goal.

However, when the game is on the line, many great athletes have missed a crucial free throw, missed an easy putt, walked a runner with the bases loaded, and so on.

Granted, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods are gifted athletes.  But there are many other athletes who have similar (even superior) physical abilities.  So why have these two dominated their sports with such regularity?  Why did Jordan make the game-winning shot more often than anyone else?  Why does Tiger play his best in all the biggest tournaments?  Aside from the amount of time they devoted to practicing, the answer is: they learned how to handle pressure.

Not coincidentally, these two remarkable athletes have some experience with hypnosis themselves.  Since the age of 13, Tiger Woods has worked with his mental coach, Jay Brunza.  Brunza hypnotises Woods to block out distractions and focus completely on the golf course.

NBA coach Phil Jackson insists that the Chicago Bulls practiced daily self-hypnosis when he coached Michael Jordan and the Bulls to their 6 NBA Championships.  Later, after coaching the Los Angeles Lakers to a win in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals in 2002, Jackson credited his morning practice of self-hypnosis, meditation, and visualization with giving the Lakers the belief that they could win.

Most athletes know what it's like to be on a roll, to feel like you can do no wrong.  Basketball players get a "hot hand" and hitters get a "hot bat."  However, they don't typically know how it happens.  So what exactly does it mean to be on a hot streak?

The key difference between a baseball player who's on a 12-game hitting streak and one who has struck out 12 times in a row is how they feel when they step up to the plate.  The player on a streak feels confident.  The other guy is afraid of getting benched.

Mentally, golf is perhaps the most demanding game around.  It is well known among golfers that much of the score depends on how a golfer thinks.  Ben Hogan says, "Golf is twenty percent technique and eighty percent mental."  Jack Nicklaus has stated many times that he believes that golf is 90% mental preparation and only 10% skill.  He prepares by visualizing problem putts and mentally rehearsing how he will play each shot.

Let's say you just blew an opportunity to make a birdie, 3-putted and ended up with a bogey.  You take that negative feeling with you to the next hole, and rip your tee shot into the woods.  Chances are, you were still thinking about that blown opportunity.

The truth is, golf is easier when you're focused on the shot you're taking right now, at the present moment, instead of the shots you hit on the previous hole (or will hit on the next hole, for that matter).  So...

• Imagine if every shot could feel like your first shot of the day.
• Imagine if that last-second shot were as easy as one you took in practice.
• Imagine a fresh start.
• Imagine a clean slate.
• Imagine being cool under pressure.

Call today for your free 30-minute consultation.

678.488.7362 | purehypnosis@mac.com | www.purehypnosis.com