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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance! By: Bruce Munch 1)
Proper planning and preparation before the round. Do you know of any sport where the athletes don’t warm up before playing? Baseball players stretch and then take batting and infield practice. Tennis players stretch and then volley. Basketball players stretch, then do layups followed by a shoot around. Ski racers stretch, then ski a few runs, then walk the course and then stretch again before the race. What do all these sports have in common? Stretching! Stretching, doesn’t take long but the benefits are tremendous. Stretching reduces the chance of injury, increases range of motion which helps produce added power, improves circulation, reduces soreness and relaxes and relieves stress. All real good things whether you golf or not. Here is a simple way to quickly stretch before hitting balls. Since the golf swing starts from the ground up, lets start stretching from the ground up. 1) While leaning on a club rotate first one ankle, then the other through a full range of motion. 2) With both feet flat on the ground, raise the heels into the air to tense the calf muscles, then back to flat and raise the toes to stretch the calf muscles. 3) While holding a club in front of you, parallel to the ground, lean down toward your toes to stretch the hamstrings and back. Relax and go as far toward your toes as you can. Remember, don’t bounce, just hang. 4) Assume your address position with a club held parallel to the ground, just below waist height with the hands spread and begin rotating as you would in the golf swing. Do this slowly and try to maintain your spine angle throughout the stretch. 5) While standing, pull the right arm across the chest and stretch gently using the left hand at the elbow, then place right hand over your shoulder on the right shoulder blade and push gently rearward with the left hand. Repeat with the left arm. 6) Finally, loosen the neck by doing a series of “no” and “ yes” motions. Do not attempt to rotate the neck through 360 degrees as this could cause damage to the spine. Now that you are relaxed you are ready to begin the skills preparation for the round.
Having stretched, we are ready to hit some shots. Warm up by swinging two clubs or a club with a weighted doughnut. Swing slowly and concentrate on full extension on the back swing and forward swing. I like to start out with a mid iron as this is the club we use the most when working on swing mechanics. Hit your first 5 or 6 shots using a tee so you can concentrate on the swing mechanics and not worry about the ground. Start with a ¾ swing and focus on swing tempo and extension during impact. Gradually increase the length of the swing but maintain the tempo. Remember, we are not here to work on or improve our swing, but merely to loosen up and see what our swing feels like today. After you have worked up to the full swing, hit some shots off the ground and try to maintain your tempo. Work your way to the long irons and woods and don’t forget to hit some wedges. You should not hit more than 25 or 30 shots so plan accordingly. Don’t worry if you are hitting them poorly and don’t gloat if you are hitting them well because these shots don’t count. You are just getting loose so you can do your best when they do count. Getting some bad shots out of your system on the range might help them to not show up as frequently on the course. We are now ready to move over to the chipping area. Most courses allow chipping on the putting green but some don’t so be sure to check before you start. Start with some short chips and then some longer ones. Remember, we want to be relaxed and smooth rather then tense and jerky and remember to follow through. Always pick a target and practice your pre-shot routine. Now we will putt. Here is where most players make a common mistake. They start by lagging putts from 30 or 40 feet toward the hole and naturally, rarely make any. Instead start with some 1 and 2 foot putts and make every one. This starts you off succeeding. Gradually work your way away from the hole. Focus on putting the putt on the line you have selected every time and don’t worry so much about the result. Keep your stroke smooth and remember to follow through. Now we will train ourselves to control the speed of our putts. Find the flattest part of the green and put two tees in the ground about 20 feet apart. Putt back and forth for a little while and try to memorize the stroke it takes to move the ball 20 feet. If you are successful you will have a standard to take on the course so if you are inside of 20 feet your back swing should be shorter than your standard and if you are outside 20 feet the back swing will be longer. Now you are ready to head for the first tee in a confident and relaxed manner. This entire process shouldn’t take longer than 30 to 45 minutes to do properly. Surely it is worth a little preparation time to ensure greater enjoyment for your round of golf, so next time you set up a round of golf, allow for some time so you can prepare for success. 2)
Proper planning and preparation before each hole. Golf is different from most sports because each hole you prepare to play will be different from the one before and the one after. Tennis courts are the same size, with the same height net. The basket in Basketball is 10 feet tall. Bowling alleys tend to be the same length and width. In golf, every hole starts with a tee and ends with a cup on the green, but this is where the similarity ends. You must prepare to deal with these differences. Too many times we stand on the tee, pick a club and hit away without formulating a strategy for the hole. Did you know that mentally, most pro golfers play the hole from the Green back to tee, rather than the other way, as most of us do. They do have some advantages to aid them in this practice. Before the start of most tournaments, the pros are given a pin sheet, which shows where each pin will be placed on each day of the tournament. The pin position on a given day will dictate the best location in the fairway, from which to attack the pin. By natural progression, the pros will then pick the club and type of shot most likely to put them in that position. Since we are not given pin sheets on the day of play for a casual round, we must at least take advantage of any knowledge we can gain. On your way to the course, make a mental note of any pin positions you can see as you drive in or go to the tee. Many courses try to aid us while on course with the use of different colored flags. The typical pattern is blue flag, back of green, white flag, center of green and red flag, front of green. A few coursed I play in Florida provide a sheet which show each green broken into 6 numbered quadrants and a sign on the first tee indicating which numbered quadrant each pin will be found today. Before you tee off on any hole you should check the yardage, then look down the fairway to see how generous the landing area seems to be. If the landing area is narrow, or if there is a lot of trouble on this hole, driver may not be the best choice. In fact, on most courses, if you use driver on all par 4’s and 5’s you have probably used it too much. If you can see the flag from the tee, or if you saw it on the way into the course, use that information to help you decide where the best landing area is located and then, as Harvey Penick used to say, “Take Dead Aim”. Too many times we stand on the tee with the thought “Please Lord, anything between the water on the left and the trees on the right, I will be thrilled”. I doing so, we have given our mind much too much latitude for error. If you miss that wide corridor by 10% you will be in trouble. If you pick a spot, take dead aim and try to hit it to that spot, even if you miss by 10 or even 20%, you should still be fine. Now you might say that you are not skilled enough to be that specific. That may currently be true, but if you don’t ask your body to perform that precisely, it probably never will. Prior to hitting your approach shot into the green you should do two things. 1) Based upon the view you have of the green, the pin location and the visible trouble around the green, make a determination if it is a “green light pin”, one you can shoot right at, a “yellow light pin”, use caution, of a “red light or sucker pin”, do not shoot at the flag but aim to a safe spot in the middle of the green, use your putting skills to two putt and get out of there without getting hurt. 2) From a distance you can usually see the predominant slope of the green. Make a mental note of the prevalent slope and store it away because it will help you read your putts when you reach the green. 3)
Proper Preparation before each shot: Try to view each shot as a new beginning. It doesn’t matter how you got here, you are here and your job is to find the best way to get to the green. This is where your pre-shot routine comes into play. Every tour player has a routine that they do on every shot and you should have one too. Your pre-shot routine for all shots, should start two or three paces behind the ball. Looking over the ball toward your intended landing location, pick a spot (intermediate target) two to five feet ahead of the ball. This is the best view you will ever have of the shot you are about to make because when you turn sideways to address the ball, the shot may look quite different. Use the line from your intermediate target to the ball to align properly parallel to this line. Before you draw the club away, be sure the face of the club is square to this intermediate target. You will be surprised how many strokes you can save by properly lining up to your target. You may choose to incorporate other moves in your pre-shot routine. It could involve taking the club to the 9 O’clock position to ensure you are turning before returning the club to the address position or maybe a few brushes of the grass prior to address to remind yourself to extend your arms through the hitting area. If you are not sure, ask your pro to help you formulate a pre-shot routine. More than likely it will involve a move that reminds you to make a move you tend to forget in your swing. On full shots, a practice swing is up to you. If it helps you be loose, do it, but on ALL putts, chips and pitches, a practice, or as I like to call it rehearsal swing, is absolutely essential. Each putt, chip and pitch you encounter during your round will be somewhat different from the last one. Each is an event unto itself. Your rehearsal swing is designed to be the swing you intend to use when you strike the shot. Since there is no ball and hence, no pressure during a rehearsal swing, there is a good chance that if it feels good, it is probably the swing that will allow you to best succeed during the shot itself. Since this is the case, don’t change your mind during the back swing of the shot itself. What would make you think that you can make a better instant decision during the act of hitting the shot than you did with the pressure free exercise of a rehearsal swing? Almost always, you cannot. Trust your rehearsal swing and then learn from it. If you execute the shot you rehearsed and it turns out to be a poor choice of shots, you will learn and make a better choice of shot next time. If you change your mind and it doesn’t work, you will learn nothing because you will not know what type of shot you finally used. Even on a three foot putt, pick an intermediate target and try to roll the ball over that spot. If your choices have been good and you roll it over that spot with sufficient force to reach the hole, it should go in. If it doesn’t go in, you will make a better choice next time. A patient pre-shot routine will not cause slow play if you start lining up and choosing club, etc. while your playing partners are hitting. On the PGA tour, if players are playing too slowly, they are put “on the clock” which means they are timed from the time it is their turn to play till they execute the shot. Anything less than 45 seconds is acceptable. Have someone time you, you might be surprised to find out that with a deliberate, complete pre-shot, you don’t exceed 30 let alone 45 seconds. So spend a little time doing proper preparation and you might find that your poor performances of the past, can be prevented.
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Copyright © 1999 Bruce R. Munch |