The concept of Stressless Golf is based upon working towards an ideal while playing a sport with intent in a relaxed mind and body, specifically golf.

Any competitive sport will elicit some degree of psychological tension, which is needed to mobilize us to be committed to the highest level of play, and even enjoyment. Some psychological tension keeps us alert, focused and motivated to make commitments as we play, but too much tension translates to too much tension in the body. To play golf effectively you need to have a steady and enjoyable flow that fits your natural rhythms, but we know that psychological tension translates into muscular tension which interferes with maintaining that flow. There is no such thing as an event in life that is truly "stressless", but it's and ideal you can work towards.

I am a clinical psychologist with a subspecialty in Sports Psychology, and a focus on teaching others how to perform at the highest level in golf. I have been teaching golf in different domains with a focus on the mind for over 3 decades. The model of this concept of Stressless Golf comes from the thinking of the famous philosopher Descartes. He put it quite simply: "You are what you think!"

The philosopher poet Milton furthermore commented what often goes on in all high level sports performance:

You can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven, only thinking makes it so!

Watch some of the finest world athletes in golf in a tournament. Watch their facial movements and body movements when they make a mistake. Within minutes you can usually predict who will blow a tournament by their facial expressions. If they are unable to dissipate anger, disappointment, frustration or various forms of tension rather quickly, they usually make one error after the other. The ones who can let go of an error and move on to a better shot while keeping their basic natural rhythm intact are the ones who keep a calm mental focus.

When an individual starts thinking in virtually any negativistic form, there is a tendency to focus even momentarily on a place or shot that the golfer doesn't really want to make, but that negative focus, albeit brief, is disastrous. What the mind can conceive we usually can achieve. Think about something negative or an errant shot, and more often than not that is what is accomplished.

Whether on or off the golf course, visualizing the achievement of a particular goal is essential to its accomplishment. Unfortunately many of us have learned dysfunctional thinking styles that create psychological and consequent physical tensions, but these dysfunctional styles can be replaced. There is a period of time needed to unlearn old styles while learning a new style of thought. The greatest golfer in the world plays with intent, and the concept of intent is based on "wanting" followed by "doing." In the process of "wanting", the individual is visualizing the shot or the steps in the plan, and figures out what to do to accomplish the intended shot. This requires target shooting, but to acquire this skill there is a learning curve and a lot of practice. Einstein postulated that it takes at least 11 new trials of practice to ingrain a new habit, and then it must be practiced over and over again to make it natural.

When I teach golfers something new about their thinking process, they must go out and practice the new process. Remember, most of the golfers on the various tours have excellent shot making skills, but only a handful rise to the top. The top is filled with golfers whose mental state is better than the others. Unfortunately, too many instructors teach a concept of practice to develop "muscle memory", but that's a faulty concept because the only real memory is in your brain. There are ways to combine physical practice of a shot, a swing motion, and even a position or rhythm with the psychological state of a subjective feeling. In fact, they need to be combined in order for a person to repeatedly produce the same shot under different conditions.

A person can have practiced a certain shot repeatedly so that they are confident in what they can do with that shot. In a competition however, if thinking turns to comparison to another player, tension rises and the rhythm is lost. A slight shift in the rhythm of a golf motion will interfere with the flow leading to an errant shot. Tension is the enemy, and positive thinking and imagination are the antidotes. These mental states must be rehearsed, practiced and anchored.

To work towards Stressless Golf the individual must learn various forms of relaxation methods, especially when used for competition, whether friendly or for money. There are different forms of breathing, forms of hypnosis, forms of medication and similar relaxation methods that are easily acquired, but even these require a lot of practice. In the last 35 years I have been teaching people who want to improve all forms of performance with these various relaxation methods, and over the years have developed a program that will connect the relaxation methods with cognition (what you think) in development of a repeatable swing motion. The perfect swing motion takes the form of a rhythmic pendular movement, and any tension, both psychological and physical, interferes with that perfect motion. When we have a perfect swing motion, the club head always returns to the exact same spot, therefore executing a perfect shot that's quite repeatable.

We are products of our past, our present and our visualization of our future: We are what we think! Until we fully appreciate how we think and even how we came to think that way, it's difficult to shift to the simple "positive thinking" which has been preached for decades. What sets the current greatest golfer in the world, Mr. Tiger Woods, from the remainder of his highly skilled competitors is above the shoulders! He learned relaxation methods, hypnosis and meditation when he was a teenager. He has subsequently acquired other skills to keep himself exquisitely focused so he can recover from a bad shot quickly, and so he can appreciate his exquisite shot making during the course of the tournament and even enjoy himself. He has such self-confidence and powers of visualization that he is simply above just about everyone in the sport.

Stressless Golf is a dedicated program to develop these mental skills that we take to the course and carrywith us in the future. My program involves some in-office training and relaxation methods and identification of thinking styles, as well as on-the-course execution of what is learned.

Below I have outlined the fundamental characteristics of what I call The Greatest Golfer in the World. Take a few minutes to read this article to understand what we might achieve.

The Greatest Golfer in the World