Golf_ The Mind Game - Marlin M. Mackenzie [21]
Near the end of the process Brian asked, “When and how do I fire this anchor?”
“The only time I want you to fire it,” I replied, “is when you lose concentration while playing, when you find yourself thinking about too many things, and when you’re not hitting the ball well. And the way to fire it is to merely look at your left shoe and say, ‘Okay, unconscious mind, take over.’ ”
“How will that make me concentrate?”
“Concentration is paradoxical. The less you think about, the more you concentrate. Honest. And the better you’ll hit golf balls. You’ll be as good as your body and swing allow. You just demonstrated this principle while you were building the anchor.
“You were able to hit fine shots while concentrating on only one cue. That meant your unconscious mind was attending to all the rest of the stuff that made the shot good. It was free to do that because your conscious mind was not interfering.
“You were in what a pro friend of mine, Bill Adams, calls a ‘trusting state.’ Firing the anchor puts you back into that state.”
I told Brian to make sure he understood the difference between practice and playing. Practice was for concentrating on only one of his important cues at a time. Five minutes for shoulder turn, five minutes for clubhead moving back the first 12 inches behind the ball, and so on.
“When you’re on the course,” I said, “just play. Get into that trusting state and stay there.”
The uptime anchor may not be for you if you’re a low handicap golfer. It could be more distracting than helpful, for you’re already skilled at not paying attention to swing details.
UPTIME ANCHOR
Select a part of your body or equipment that will serve as a “clean” V-anchor.
Identify the club and the particular shot you want to improve (putting, bunker shots, fairway woods).
Identify the external auditory (A), visual (V), and kinesthetic (K) cues that you notice while executing a particular shot during practice. (See Appendix A for cues which others believe are important.)
Execute the shot about six times, paying attention to one, and only one, sensory cue, and rate each on a scale of one to ten.
Anchor the mechanical feelings of making a satisfactory shot, not the emotional feelings you had about its quality.
Do this by looking at your anchor and saying, “I’m storing the mechanical feelings of making (fill in the shot) in relation to paying attention to (such and such cue).”
Repeat steps 4 through 6 for each external visual, auditory, and kinesthetic cue. This is “stacking.”
Repeat steps 4 through 7 for each club or situation.
Build the anchor over a two- to three-week period. To fire it look at the specific anchor spot for about sixty seconds and say, “Okay, unconscious mind, take over!”
Remember: This is a process mostly for fairly high handicappers and for beginners. Low handicappers should pass this one by.
Mechanical Just-Right Anchor
Another way to increase your concentration is by using a Mechanical Just-Right Anchor. It consists of making an internal metaphorical picture that represents either your entire swing or parts of it. This kind of image tends to distract the conscious mind from paying direct attention to too many parts of the swing.
The celebrated golf teacher Peter Kostis suggests using the image of touch-and-go airplane landings for pitch shots taken from a foot or so off the green in fairly heavy rough. A client of mine, with a 16 handicap, uses the image of the St. Louis arch as a visual anchor for the flight of the ball on approach shots. Peter Jacobsen sees a door hinge to represent how his hips ought to turn during the downswing.
These images might work for you. You can test their usefulness. Ones you develop yourself probably will be better. In any case, the following are instructions