How to make your opponent have the worst round of his life
 

Recently when looking at how the mind works I found a site dedicated to using Neuro Linguistic Programming (a form of hypnosis) and other techniques to make your playing partners play worse by decreasing their mental state.

Let me just show you one of the free articals...

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Traditional golf psychology techniques include positive thinking, visualization, and self-hypnosis. Many of these self-improvement methods were founded on the principles of the pioneering work in hypnosis by Milton Erickson in the mid 70s and Neuro-Linguistic Programming™ (NLP™) by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.

Forward thinking golf psychology coaches have been using these techniques for years to eliminate tension and anxiety, increase confidence, and get golfers “into the zone”. These approaches work very well, and most of the successful PGA players use some variation of them everyday.

There exists, however, a darker and very devious way to use these same tools to your advantage on the course.

The same way that you can create a positive peak state in yourself, you can also sabotage your unknowing opponents by creating doubt, insecurity, and frustration within them at will.

Sounds like fun, eh?

Let’s take anchors for example.

Traditionally, you would create an anchor to instantly put yourself into an emotional state… say a positive state of mind. You might simply imagine yourself in the past doing something incredibly well and feeling very confident. As you reach the peak of your confident state, you would do something unique… like tap your index finger and thumb together. After doing this several times, your brain will actually link up the action of touching those fingers together with a feeling of confidence. Then all you need to do is perform that action on the course to feel confident.

That’s all well and good, but the really exciting thing is that you can also negatively anchor other players!

For example, when your opponent misses a short putt and berates himself, it’s obvious that he is in a negative mental state. At that moment, you can do something unique, like snap your fingers, hum a song, yawn – almost anything that is unique and is easily duplicated.

You’ve successfully set a negative anchor.

Do that each time he flubs a shot, and the anchor will become even stronger. Fire that anchor off (perform the unique action) when your opponent is feeling fine – and watch what happens. Your opponent will return to that negative feeling associated with the anchor – and his performance will suffer.

Now that’s the dark side of golf psychology!

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Anyone want to try this....:laughing1

No place in golf
 

Matthew,

Maybe you give up the gentleman's game and find one of those games with referees. Your post should warn all of us that read your other posts that your intentions may be less than honorable.

Andrew

Appalling etiquette
 

Anyone who indulges in this type of beahvior will find themselves playing most of their golf on their own. :naughty: :naughty:

I think Matthew was just sharing in a light hearted manner that's all. He is a gentleman who will never resort to such tactics. :)

Thank you, it seems everytime I write a post around here I have people more than willing to critique me in everyway.

You are right that this was meant to be light hearted. However the reason I posted this is that I found it interesting that there are perhaps certain techniques that people can use against you. Regardless of the ethics, I think it is important to find out if ideas such as this have validity whether you personally wish to use them or not inorder to recognise such ploys taken against yourself and the only way you can find out if it works is to test them out. If successful then it is up to the individual whether he wishes to use this technique.

Manchurian Candidate
 

This is not far fetched at all! So just getting on someones last nerve is a form of mental conditioning! I played a lot of golf with a fella that used to commiserate with every poor shot I hit! I think his little verbal trigger (Manchurian Candidate that I was) "Isn't that the darndest thing, huh?" Eventually I broke down and responded "What is so ****ing surprising about a snap hook into the weeds you ****er!" Needless to say our golfing relationship ended. I am glad to know that my rude response was not my fault! The ****er made me do it!

For the record I like Matthew's brand. Scotsmen are mankind's gadflies! If there was never someone pointing my idiocy out I may think of myself as a finished product...dangerous thought!

This idea reminds me of Seve Ballesteros' Ryder Cup cough. :lol:

Gamesmanship
 

So, Mathew what would the work say of Lee Trevino's tactics in the 1971 U.S. Open playoff with Jack Nicklaus?

Trevino threw the rubber snake at the unsuspecting Nicklaus on the first tee. Nicklaus promptly birdied that hole, but then lost the match 68-71.

Did Gamesmanship play a role here? Or was Lee simply the better player that day?

Well, Trevino is not exactly being subtle. I think that their is a certain transparency of his intentions that would allow Jack Nicklaus to play just as well as he would of anyhow. Generally I have found that if one is transparent in off-putting an opponent in games makes people more motivated.

What is more sinister in the tactic that I posted above however is that the victim is unaware of it happening, which if works makes the effect more dramatic. The real sinister effect is that by using a tactic like this might enduce the other golfer to lose self-esteem and over time really have a damaging effect.

Winning Versus Sleeping
 

Yes, I see that now.

A new high in gamesmanship.

And a new low in sportsmanship.

:crybaby:

But, hey, if that technique is now 'in play', it's best we all know about it now. No doubt, a series of training classes in 'psychological trigger abuse' is now in order (especially for match play tournament players).

Forewarned is forearmed.

:salut:

Well tried this out. I have a friend who I play at pool and we do these types of things to each other all the time as part of the fun - so its a good enviroment for testing experiment no.1. I have to say it really does work - bugged the hell outta him everytime he missed a shot and he heard me click my fingers which enhanced the negativity more and more with each shot he missed. Then when I used it before a shot, it really did trigger him back into a poor mental state. Since we do off-putting things to each other - we are both quite conditioned to falling cues, well timed chalking, standing and moving infront of pockets..etc and it has been a long time since anything has really gotten under his skin this badly. Even he thought it quite funny 'afterwards'..lol

I was hardly subtle so now I need to test out a less noticable application to see whether it has a similar effect without detection so need to test on new subject.

Something else to consider. In performing an experiment like this, how would you be able to tell whether or not the cue is working as a trigger, as opposed to simply being an irritant itself?

This is a very simple NLP technique that absolutely and definitely does work.

However, like most dark sides of the force, you need to be careful with it. Make sure you 'de-program' your friend afterwards. Get him into a very positive state and repeat the clicking fingers again. The two states will collide and the 'good' experience always prevails :)

This initial experiment was meant to be completely blatent to the opponent.

What I found was that - I really did have the impression that by having him hear that click everytime he missed a shot really did have a reinforcing effect on the fact he misses shots instead of allowing his mind to have instant amnesia of the event which produced the growing irratability you talked about. If I had done this on his successful shots or all shots - I felt as though this would of just been slightly bugging but not produce the reaction I envoked - obviously this needs to be tested.

Now after a few games, I then tested this trigger just as he was going to down to take his shot. Now it is obvious to me that it definately did trigger him into a negative mental state - either he associated it with being annoyed and/or the shots he's missed. Whether he would still associate without the blatent clicking and then at opportune moments reminding him of those missed shots without the blatent, almost taunting manner I did them in remains to be seen.

My next experiment is going to be much more subtle - almost to the other extreme.

A child song my 3 years old son loves to listen...."I throw it to you; I throw it back to you...catch"

The 'good' experience will NOT always prevail. It will only prevail, IF the positive state is more positive, than the negative state is negative. So make sure the positive state is VERY positive.


Of course doing the opposite with your own game is a totally a cool thing to do.