What should I do in a preshot golf routine?

An essential part of playing the game well is understanding that it’s a game of repetition. The better you can get at learning an exact routine, the better your game will become.

A good preshot golf routine goes something like this:
Pick out your target and desired shape of shot in your minds eye. Trace a line back from your target, which most of the time should be a tree or house top in the distance or a part of the fairway or green is fine.

Aim the club face at a spot 12 inches in front of the ball

This line will dissect a point just in front of your ball. This is what you focus on when you walk up to the ball.

It’s way too difficult to aim your club face up with a target that’s 2/3/400 yards in the distance, so make the target 12 inches in front of the ball. This way your first objective when you walk up to the ball is aiming the club face up at a spot on the ground just in front of the ball.

Before you walk up to the ball however, make sure you take a deep breath. We want to control our state, not the other way around.

Once the club face is aligned with the intermediate target spot just in front of the ball, then you can start to separate your feet to get ready to play the shot.

Your focus should be on making the right moves. Once your confident that you’re aligned correctly, don’t stand there dead still looking down at the ball. Move around. By this of course I mean waggling the club in your hands and patting your feet. You want to feel comfortable over the ball, if you don’t feel comfortable and ready to make an explosive move chances are you’re not setup properly.

Once you’re comfortable over the ball, you only really need one or maybe two looks at the target to confirm you’re aimed right. Then let the big dog rip.

You are either going to hit one of three shots. A good one, a bad one or an ok one. Make sure you have a routine to deal with each one.

I like to spin the club out my hands (ala Tiger) when I hit a good one. From my follow through position where my weight’s on my left side and my hands are over my left shoudler I let my arms fall a little and spin the club in hands. I may leave my glove on a little longer than usual so i can savor the good feeling.

If I hit a bad one, I know from experience and my personality that I want to swear, cus, shout, or call myself some stupid name. But I try not to. I’ve played way to may rounds of golf to realize these feelings of anger and frustration are detrimental to performance.

The way I go about handling a bad shot nowadays is to try and remain silent and control my body language as best I can. I still admittedly pull a face that looks like a bulldog chewing a wasp and make a silly little whining sound – that could quite easily lead into dropping the ‘eff bomb’. But I’m generally pretty good about controlling my emotions nowadays.

When you hit an ok shot, and it obviously depends on what your idea of an ok shot is. Hold your finish, just like you would a good shot until the ball lands. If you can get around the golf course making ok swings I promise you you’ll be playing some of the best golf of your life. Something I’ve learned after all these years is that you don’t have to hit the ball perfectly out on the course to be good. You just have to get it around. That’s what many PGA Tour players have been doing for years and they are all millionaires. Just adopt a mind set of getting the ball around the course and let your short game dictate your scores.

In total, a good routine should last no longer than 30 seconds or so. This is from the time you start drawing the imaginary line back from your target to the intermediate target.

A mastermind idea to make people learn a preshot golf routine and end slow play FOREVER

On tour, the marshals start timing players when they fall behind the players in front. One ‘bad time’ is a warning, but your second is a 1 stroke penalty and so on. Perhaps in America if all golf establishments started adopting a ‘bad time’ policy for their patrons there wouldn’t be any 5-6 hour rounds.

A ‘bad time’ is given when a golfer takes longer than 40 seconds to hit his/her shot. Now I’m fully Americanized so to speak, I have no problem promoting a “bad time = Dollars penalty solution”. If I ran a golf club, I’d hire a few old retired serviceman to be marshals out on the course. You know guys who still have the 1000 yard stare from their time in the service. I’d operate a zero tolerance policy, and anyone who receives a ‘bad time’ after their initial warning. Get’s a $5 penalty. Every dollar taken in, goes straight into the head green keepers fund. By this I mean a fund where the head green keeper can purchase the new super mower that he’s had his eye on for a while. Therefor, ensuring the course and grounds are properly taken care of in the future. Call it a non compliance tax.

What do you reckon?

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that there’s a direct correlation between how long you spend over the ball and how skillful you are at this game.

The main reason people take so long is because they fear hitting a bad shot. The best players (who have learned the skill) also take the least amount of time over the ball.

So in closing, make sure you learn the right moves, adopt a good confident routine and just let the fear go. It’s a beautiful way to play the game and in my eyes, the only way to play.

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Sincerely,