Enhance Brain Function and Improve Your Golf Game With Neurofeedback Therapy

Everyone knows that golf is a mental game.  Jack Nicklaus’ swing coach Jim Flick once famously declared golf as “90 percent mental – and the other 10 percent is mental, too.”

Yes, golf requires good eye hand coordination and the ability to hit the ball long distances, but it also requires extreme focus and concentration along with the ability to perform under pressure.  To play your best golf, you must be mentally prepared.  

If you aren’t in the right frame of mind, it can have a devastating effect on your overall performance.  Neurofeedback, or (EEG) biofeedback, uses visual and audio feedback to provide an experience to the brain of enhanced function, specifically to improve its regulation of thoughts, feelings, and focus.  In essence, it teaches self-regulation of brain function.  

In the book, A Symphony in the Brain, by Jim Robbins, Robbins references Ed Galvan, a professional golfer who plays regular tournaments in Asia, Australia, and southern California.  Galvan says neurofeedback dramatically changed his golf game.  He credits neurofeedback training for taking three strokes off his game and the reason he was ranked in the top twenty in the southern California section of the PGA of America.  

Here is a direct quote from the book by Galvan regarding neurofeedback: 

“It’s eliminated the head trips and taken my game to the next level,” he says.  “I’m definitely much more relaxed.  We play golf, too many thoughts come into your head – doubts about your skills or where the troubles lie, a lake or out of bounds.  What EEG (training) does is develop the brain to maintain a thought for a longer period of time.  I can focus on the target line, where I want to hit the ball.  It’s turning everything else off and being in that one line.  It’s a whole new level on concentration” (227). 

In golf, everything is dependent on regulated brain functionality, including your breathing, posture, muscle memory, rhythm, tempo, and swing.  The result of neurofeedback, or brain training, is an increased ability to focus, a healthy mental response to stress and pressure, and an overall increase in confidence.  Neurofeedback also helps when you are not on the course, improving your ability to relax, sleep and release the negative thoughts and anxiety leading up to a big tournament. 

Many golfers that have their best scores will often say they were “in the zone” and everything “just felt right”.  Neurofeedback can help get you those mental states on a more consistent basis.