Starting your Pre Swing Soutine

Chapter 2 Routine

Technically speaking, your routine begins as you approach your ball and look at your lie. You find a target. Step off the distance, check the wind and determine the type of shots you want to hit. And the club you want to use.This series of links in the pre swing routine chain is referred to as course management. You’ve completed the analytical chain of your routine.

Now it’s time to off the analysis and become creative, whatever triggers your pre swing routine should always trigger it. Jack Nicholas describes the beginning of his pre swing routine as the point at which he steps off his yardage.

I have heard sports. Psychologists say that your routine should be changed weekly, or it will get to learn. That’s like saying you should change the triggers for dressing, grooming, eating, and so on. Why should you not change? You will feel uncomfortable and out of sync, if you keep changing habits become ingrained and are easy to repeat. Once they are learned through repetition like Jack Nicholas, keep the same trigger to start your routine.

The creative links of the swing routine include quieting the nervous system through movement, focus and breathing, removing a club from your bag, recalling a similar shot. You have hit well in the past describing to yourself, the shot you are going to hit and maintaining a present target focus. And these are the strategies for quieting. The nervous system they’re covered in the chapter titled fine tuning your nervous system.

The analytical and creative are the two distinctly separate, but connected chains of the mental pre swing routine. It is important that you complete each link in the chains in sequence learning occurs in patterns.

The completion of one link triggers the beginning of the next link. If you are going to pause between links and two chains, the best time to pause is between the analytical and creative segments.

Once you have considered your lie, the wind and so on and decide what club you’re going to hit. This is a good resting place in your routine.

For example, let’s assume you were playing in a group where you’re waiting for others to hit. After you arrive at your ball, you check your lie in the wind. You find a target, decide on the type of shots you want to hit and choose a club. Now wait, before you remove your club from the bag, as you were waiting, stay focused on your target. The behavior of removing your club from your bag should trigger a movement and focus on sensations that are totally in the present and related to your shot and target. Pulling a club from your bags should be the trigger to move from abroad to a narrow concentration focus. If you pull the club before it is time to hit your shot, you will introduce behavior links of thinking and action that are not part of the creative behavior chain of hitting the shot. And your performance will deteriorate accordingly.

Watch tour players as they walk onto a tee or as they hit shots from the fairway or around the green, they pull the club from their bag only when it is their turn to play.

The only time you will see tour players take a club before it is their turn to play is when they hit a shot onto the green. They will almost always take their putter from their caddy. Once their ball is on the green and walk to the green Putter in hand.

The routine for the tour began several yards from the green. They look at the contour of the green before they walk onto it and survey their life. They began to read the green from both sides of the ball as they repair their ball, mark and mark their ball. The majority of you aren’t tour players and you don’t have caddies. However, pulling your club at the right time will help you stay focused in the present and on your target to build a solid routine. You’ll need to build discreet events that trigger your routine chain.

Let’s consider the conditions of the average course and discuss some good habits to establish starting points in the creative links of your routine.

• If you were walking to an elevated tee from a riding cart, and you know, you’re going to be using driver, leave the head, cover on your driver. If you’re hitting first, follow the movement, focus and breathing strategies, you’ll be learning as you remove the head cover, drop the head cover between you and the card on the path. You will take back to the cart, make this a habit, and you won’t have intrusive thoughts during your routine. Such as I have to remember my head cover.

• If you walk onto that same tee and it isn’t your turn to play, lean your club against a bench, a tree or something else close to the tee ground. Pick up your club only when it is your turn to play, taking your club in hand and removing the head cover initiate the beginning of your routine for that shot.

• If you walk onto an elevated tee of a par three, take three or four clubs with you again, rest your clubs against some object until it is your turn to play. Do your course management of checking the wind yardage and pen position and decide on the type of shots you want to hit. When it is your turn to play, pick up all of your clubs, walk to an area, just off the team ground on the path, you will take back to your cart and lay down the clubs you aren’t going to use. Your routine starts as you take the club, you are going to use and walk onto the tee.

How many times have you gotten to your ball decided you didn’t have the right club and hit the shot. Anyway, if you were riding in a cart that must stay on the cart path, get in a habit of taking three or four clubs with you to your ball. If you hit a ball that you aren’t sure is on the green take every possible club you might use from the edge of the green, your routine begins. Once you pick up the club, you’re going to use don’t waste a stroke using the wrong club, simply because you don’t want to hold up play while you walk back to your bag.

I have one final note on the mental pre swing routine. I was talking with a young mini tour player recently. He said he had read about the importance of a routine, but found that it disrupted his concentration. He said, I think, look at the target waggle, look at the target and waggle again. And all that thinking messes me up. I laughed and said, you thinking, instead of doing, you should not have to narrate your routine to yourself. As you go through it, practice your routine on the range with every shot you hit with repeated practice on the range. It will soon become automatic. There is no single ideal routine. Your routine should include good course management steps and it should be positive with a 100% present. Focus the mind under par series routine guided practice and developing consistent performance has audio instructions of routines for Tee and fairway shots for shots, 100 yards in and chipping and putting, listening to this tape often and prior to each round, prepares you for practice and play and builds a consistent repeating routine for each shot.

Please continue with: Mechanical Pre Swing Routine