The winter time is great to finally incorporate a pre-shot routine into your game that you can stick to and help you under pressure.
Many of us play most of our golf at the same course and we become guilty of selecting our club halfway down the fairway. Then we come up 20 yards short because we haven’t factored in the lie, wind and temperature from the last time we played a shot from a similar spot.
One of the keys with a good pre-shot routine is to make sure that, regardless of the shot you have, it’s the same. So it’s the same for a full swing, short-game shot or even a putt. We become self-conscious about taking too much time but, if we can get it right, we can get it down to a very manageable time and it will help save us time as we’ll be hitting better shots.
Sometimes we’re playing well and there’s almost a bit of a false sense of security. We’re just walking up to it and hitting some good shots but then, all of a sudden, we hit a bad shot and it’s like, why have we done that? And sometimes it’s not a bad shot.
We’ve struck it well and it’s just offline and that might be because we haven’t really paid enough attention to what the wind’s doing or where the slopes are or our alignment. A good pre-shot routine takes all of these into account all the time.
Pay attention
Firstly, analyse the lie. If it’s bad, we might not be able to hit the shot we want to hit. We might not be able to carry the distance that we need to carry so we need to take that into account.
Ask the questions that that the golf course is asking you. What’s the weather like? What’s the temperature? Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it windy? Is it humid? Because not all shots from the same place will require the same golf club on each day.
Also, analyse your landing area. Is it going to land on a down slope? Is it an up slope? Is it uphill? Is it downhill? All these things come into question.
Your new routine
Once we’ve answered these questions and we’ve selected our club, make your practice swings away from the golf ball, so we’re almost behind the ball. Too many people look at where they aim, stand to the side of the ball, make some practice swings and then step into the ball.
So make your practice swings behind the ball, two is ideal, stand behind the ball, and look at your target where you want the golf ball to finish. If you were to really look at it and analyse it from behind, you’d be ever so slightly left of the ball’s target line as this is where we’re standing.
Then pick a spot a couple of inches in front of the ball, which is in line with that, and walk into it with your eyes on that spot. So you aim the club face at that point, because it’s easier to aim the face at something that’s two inches in front of the ball, than it is that’s 150 yards away from it.
Then, once the face is in position, get your feet together, and have your feet and your clubface all matched up. So then when you take your set-up, your body is aligned.
A lot of people build their stance and then put the clubface in, the face is the important bit and then you build your feet around that point.
The pros
It might not look like they have a routine but they’ll have built this in over the years and it will look very natural. Some, like Justin Rose, have a very premeditated process while others do it as more speed but everything they do is the same. Then, when they come down the stretch, they can repeat that.
Some players, when they’re feeling it, will noticeably more and more practice swings. We all feel the nerves, whatever level we’re playing at, but a sound pre-shot routine will only help with this.
About Ged Walters
Ged is a Golf Monthly Top 50 coach and one of the leading teachers in the North West. For more tips follow Ged on Instagram – gedwaltersgolf
