Do you show up to the golf course five minutes before your tee time? I used to do this all the time, but is can cause a few issues!
First off, I’m usually pretty amped up to golf when I get to the course, which sometimes translates into my swing, resulting in a duck hook off the first tee. Not exactly the way you want to start a round.
Secondly, you just never know what swing you are going to bring to the course. Your ball’s flight path may normally be a nice little draw, but I highly doubt you have that shot every time you golf. Even the pros don’t have their A shot every time out. Your swing today may produce a bigger draw than usual or even a slight fade.
How do you help fix this two issues?
A great way to lower your anxiety, settle into golf mode, and see what kind shot you have today is to show up thirty minutes before your tee time and hit a small bucket of balls at the practice range.
The key point of the preceding sentence is a small bucket. This is a warmup session and not a practice session. A small bucket, 30 to 50 balls, is the perfect amount of swings to get comfortable without tiring yourself out. This is also the right number of swings to determine what kind of ball flight path your swing will produce that day. During warm up is not the time to change your swing to match your desired ball flight path. You are instead finding the swing you will be playing with today.
Hitting a small bucket of balls also gives you the opportunity to fix your swing in an emergency. Remember, you are not using the warmup session to change slight differences in your swing that result in a slightly different ball flight path. That work is for a longer practice session with a large bucket of balls. I’m talking about when you show up to the course with a terrible swing. Many times this is caused by you performing a piece of your swing majorly wrong. By slowing down and resetting your swing, you can many times get it corrected in the course of hitting a small bucket of balls. Trying to reset your swing on the course is much more difficult.
So why show up thirty minutes early when you can hit a small bucket of balls in 15-20 minutes? You’ll want to use the extra 5-10 minutes on the practice green to determine the speed of the greens. Putting some balls on the practice green, while not a perfect indicator of green speed on the course, will help you gauge the speed of the greens before you get to the first green.
Hopefully, I’ve convinced you of the benefits of hitting some warmup shots before your next round. It will go a long way in getting you off to the good start needed to score well for your round.