Your Golf Pro – Nick Bradley introduction

Hi everybody, I am delighted to be contributing for Your Golf Travel. My intention during the blogs and indeed the videos you will have access to is in answering some of the ‘travelling’ golf questions you may have, give you insights from the PGA Tour and be here to assist whenever you have a question; You can mail me anytime @ nrbradleygolf@gmail.com

This first blog deals with the mystery of why it can be difficult to take your current or standard golf game with you every time you board a plane or even tee it up in the next county. Just spare a moment for the tour players; one week they play in the searing heat of a June US Open and one month later they play at Royal Lytham & St.Anne’s where the temperature gauge sometimes doesn’t hit 60F! Also throw into the mix the different time zones players have to adjust into between walking off the 18th green on a Sunday in LA and then teeing it up for a practice round at the Emirates Course Dubai Tuesday morning. How do they pack their golf games away and transport it so efficiently to the next Country or Continent?

The first roadblock I’d like you to avoid in regard to ‘golf on the move’ is Expectation. It seems that the moment you press the ‘purchase’ button or ‘complete my travel plans’ your Ego immediately starts a Steven Spielberg classic that has you wielding the golf club like Ben Hogan or Rory Mcilroy on the first tee at Turnberry. What happens is that the mind starts to demand the standard of play it expects from you because the very LAST thing you want is to spend money playing golf at some extravagant location with your friends only to have more hits than The Beatles on the very first day. How do we overcome this unrealistic portrayal of your golfing skills and calm those surging expectations?

Understand that Expectation is Emotion. The reason the tour players can numbly go from place to place and shoot the lights out is because they have been conditioned to do so. You on the other hand book your vacation, clean your clubs for the first time in five years and go and grab a few golf lessons from the guy down the pub. My advice is this: The only time Expectations can hurt you is when to change what you normally do in an effort to meet those Expectations! Change nothing. Secondly, slow down….The Ego will want to play out that movie as quickly as possible since it can already ‘see your fate’. Take some deep breaths on the first tee, relax your eyes by looking around at objects far away and take some nice slow practice swings. My audio training tool called ‘First Tee Nerves’ on my website is a terrific way to cultivate the same chilled persona on any tee box on any course in the World.

The other feeling that consumes you is pressure. You have just purchased your dream vacation with YourGolfTravel.com and here you stand on the first tee of a beautiful golf course that waits for you to play it; in some perverse way one can feel the need to justify all the effort gone into arriving at this point. Like your mother saying ‘You will eat your greens and you’ll like them’ the ego mirrors this by insisting ‘You have booked this holiday and you will play well!’ So the pressure is there in the form of justification.

So with the disastrous cocktail of Expectations and Pressure swimming around your body you can see that your ability to function at your normal standard of golf is greatly reduced.
My advice to you is a simple slant on perspective because in the final analysis this is what actually changes. Except that you are likely to get a little charged up and excited about your golfing trip, except that you will want to play well to justify the time away and the hard earned money spent and except that you may be anxious to play well at a unfamiliar venue.

Here are three points of focus I want you to use:

1. When you get to the golf course slow your rate of breathing down and relax.
2. When you get to the first tee direct the nervous energy into controlled practice swings.
3. Allow your eyes to look at distant targets & look around you (don’t go blinkered on me!)

This is Nick Bradley in conjunction with YourGolfTravel.com and I hope you enjoy your vacation!

Nick Bradley – www.nickbradleygolf.com – Join the ‘Nick Bradley Insiders’ membership.

About Nick Bradley –

Nick Bradley has worked with European and PGA Tour players for the past twenty years. Author of the best selling golf instruction book in the past ten years ‘The 7 Laws of the Golf Swing’  Nick has coached winners on every major Tour in the World. After taking Justin Rose to World number six and European number 1 in a record twelve events Nick has recently taken Kevin Chappell from the Nationwide Tour to finishing 3rd at the 2011 US Open. Nick writes exclusively for YourGolfTravel and NickBradleyGolf.com