Welcome to Dynamic Golf.
Hey Sean, what's your pre-shot routine for golf?
I think it's one that needs to be, you know, everyone needs one.
Let's put it that way.
I think again, kind of the baseball player, the free throw shooter, some of those sports that are repetitive,
where you're doing the same thing, you've got to have a pre-shot routine.
Basketball? Yeah, free throw.
So I think rather than necessarily what I do, it's probably more importantly that the listener does something.
And figure out what theirs is.
So it's very important to have a pre-shot routine, right?
So one of the ways it's been described to me is basically you do all your homework from behind the ball.
So when you're behind the ball, when you're looking down the line from the golf ball to the target,
that's all your homework. And this goes for putting, chipping, seven iron, driver, right?
All that's your, hey, there's wind coming in from the left.
I've got to hit it 158 and I've got a seven iron.
I normally hit that 155, so I've got to step on that a little bit.
You know, those types of things got to come through your head.
It's the last hole of the match and I've got to make sure that I get it on the green.
I don't need to necessarily hit it close.
You know, some of those things are pre-shot routine oriented too.
Gotcha. So it kind of keeps you in the moment, keeps you calm a little bit instead of worrying about the results and stuff like that.
And then what you hear from the tour player too is the visualize, right? Visualize your shot.
You hear that a lot. You see Jason Day has a really interesting one in kind of how he closes his eyelids.
Oh yes, I've seen that. Yes, that's a good one right there.
And he's basically, he's really trying to breathe, a lot of breathing.
I used to see Tiger do that a little bit too, you know, like take those deep breaths.
Well, he works quite closely with Tiger, doesn't he? A little bit, yeah.
So anything to calm your mind, calm your body, which is essentially, again, the free throw shooter guy.
You know, you go from 60 miles an hour on the basketball court and then all of a sudden you stop the game.
Did Dad stop?
And you've got to make the most important two free throws to win the game type of thing.
So to have that consistent, which is one of those words that we like and don't like,
to have that consistent pre-shot routine is pretty important.
And figure out what yours is. So for, you know, for most of the homework side, you're doing it from behind the ball.
But once you get into the batter's box, which is essentially coming alongside the ball.
I've heard that before, yeah.
You know, that's when you've got to get back into your, get out of mechanical and get into your automated routine,
which means putting the club face down, you know, behind the golf ball, placing the left hand on the club,
putting the right hand on the club, separating your feet, a little bit of knee flex, bend over from the waist.
Okay.
Look down at the target and go.
Okay.
You know, whatever that combination is.
Do you do, where do you do a practice swing? Do you do a practice swing? Let's go with that.
No, I don't. I don't. I typically do a waggle.
Okay.
So my pre-shot routine is I'm going to look straight down the line at the ball.
I try to find an intermediate target that lines me up to the target or whatever target it is.
And what I try to do is I take a couple waggles back behind the ball.
I step on in with my feet together.
Yeah.
I separate that.
And then, you know, I probably make a few more waggles.
And then I really try to focus on a target or a window in the sky or a box.
Okay.
And my whole idea is just to get, you know, shoot through that box right there.
You know, I love cloudy days because I find little spots in the clouds and I shoot towards those.
I find that if I'm looking at something past the hole in the sky, I have more release, I guess, or less fear of it.
And that's part of my pre-shot routine is when I'm back there,
I'm looking for something in the sky or in the air that I can hit through that window box.
So that's kind of my routine when I go through.
Yeah.
It's funny as I watch you talk about your pre-shot routine, right?
It's something that's so in bed in what you do.
You're trying to think as you talk through it.
Yeah.
Because if I just gave you a golf club and said, show me your pre-shot routine, you wouldn't have a problem.
Yeah.
But when you try to explain it to people or, you know, it's such a different thing because then it becomes mechanical.
Yeah.
Whereas, again, golf club in your hand, ball, target, it's just a very natural, normal thing that we've done.
Mm-hmm.
And I think on the range, pre-shot routine gets lost.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
Break and hit.
Exactly, right?
Right.
We get those guys who just are trying to power through the large bucket.
And, like, I think you said before on this podcast, if you go to a tour event,
Bay Hill, Innisforock, Augusta, wherever you're able to go watch a tour player,
they hit a golf ball, they look at it, they're kind of posing, they're kind of seeing the result of it.
Yeah.
They check the numbers quite a bit, usually now.
Yeah.
They go back and talk to their coach, grab another ball, maybe take a drink of water, maybe wipe their face.
And then they go do another one.
Yeah, I think I heard Tiger say it's 20 balls for 20 minutes.
There you go.
So, you know, I would dare any of our students to do that.
I guarantee it.
They would be itching after 10 seconds to hit another ball.
Yep. So you also mentioned something.
So when you say waggle, what is the purpose of why are you waggled?
There's a few things.
For me, it's kind of a feel, the feel that I want to have in my hands when I'm waggling that club.
The other is it kind of, for me, it feels like a little mini swing.
Okay.
You know, I kind of feel where the face is, what the path is,
and it just kind of gets me mentally prepared for where impact's going to be and what I want the impact to feel like.
Okay. Yeah.
So you don't need the practice swing to do that.
You're just kind of doing a mini practice swing, mini pre-shot.
Correct.
And Beyonce says I'm getting a little older, you know, taking two or three practice swings.
It gets a little tiresome.
So the routine shortened up quite a bit as I've gotten older.
So now it's just waggles and no practice swings.
Do you do that for chipping too or do you take a couple of practice swings when you chip?
I don't, and I really should because I'll be honest, if when I do do that, I get much better results.
But, you know, there again, that's one of those things that I've got to get back there and practice that routine a little bit more.
Yeah. And then the other thing when you mentioned too, intermediate target.
So give me your definition of intermediate target.
Like what are you looking at or where you are?
You know, I'm usually looking at something, if I'm looking at for a driver,
I'm looking at something probably about two or three feet in front of me,
not something I need too far out in front because I want to make sure that it's easy to line up.
You know, the other thing that I'm looking at, maybe a piece of grass, a leaf, something kind of small.
So, you know, I kind of like the old idea that Ernie L said, aim small, miss small.
So I try to, you know, narrow those things down to very small things and line those things up
and make sure that my body lines are parallel to that intermediate target.
I think that's really important.
I go with the bowling analogy where you got the arrows about a third of the way down the lane.
But yeah, you want to find something a foot to, like you said, a foot to two feet where for me,
I don't want to move my head laterally to the left.
I don't want to have to look down the line maybe 100 yards because then my shoulders will become open
and I don't normally get back to the same spot.
So line in the club face up, through the golf ball, and then on the putting green,
either you use the text of the ball or your line or something, you know, to put the putter and you do the same thing.
You got to pick out a spot, play a lot of scrambles during the summer,
and people are always telling me, you know, hey, how much is this break?
I think it's two cups outside the left edge.
I don't know what that means.
I guess a cup is four inches.
That means it's eight inches.
Four and a quarter or something.
I'm not really sure.
I'm trying to visualize eight inches from 30 feet.
And that just doesn't help.
I really want to start something, again, ball over the intermediate target.
Maybe that's something a little bit further down, but not more than halfway down the line.
And get the white line of my putter face or my putter through the black text of the golf ball,
and get through that intermediate target and then ideally, hopefully swing on that.
So is that your pre-shot routine?
I mean, what would you kind of, you know, as you walk through it, as you imagine it, is there, what do you kind of do?
Yeah.
So talk to me.
I am a little anal.
I've got my pre-shot routine from between 16.9 and 17.1 seconds.
OK.
And I'm literally, and if I go too fast, it's off.
The swing doesn't feel good because maybe there's a group behind me and I'm trying to hurry up or whatever that is.
Yeah.
Or if I go too slow because I think that this shot is somehow more important than the previous shot,
playing for $5 or something and all of a sudden you slow down, you know, which happens a lot on putting green too.
Yeah.
You got to be consistent.
So for me, it is the, I take the practice swing alongside the ball so I can feel the terrain of the grass.
OK.
If it's uphill, downhill, side, hill, whatever, you know, irons, that matters quite a bit, obviously.
And then I walk back two and a half steps.
Like it's again, literally, I know it's not three steps.
I know it's not two steps.
It's two and a half steps to the nine-foot ball.
Like you're talking about.
Do everything you're talking about.
Line up with something.
I try to pick out, like you said, I try to pick out a door on a house.
I don't try to pick out the house.
OK.
You know, I try to pick out a branch of a tree, not the entire tree.
Gotcha.
And then as I'm going to come up alongside the ball, now I'm going to place for me, I might change this because I did have a lesson this week.
And I'm probably going to change my pre-shot routine after 25 years because I don't like the way the club face is positioned with my current pre-shot routine.
Gotcha.
My right hand takes the club and puts the club face down.
Then I separate my feet like you did.
You know, always come in.
I think that's important, too.
Don't gloss over that.
Always come in with your feet together.
Yes.
People that come in, what we see on the range or whatever is that they come in with their hands on the club already.
Yeah.
And they come in with their feet separated already.
Yep.
And then they put the club down with their hands on it already.
And then they shuffle their feet.
Yep.
You know.
They move their shoulders or whatever.
Right.
So they're not building from the ground up, which is I think what you really do see on tour.
You'll see a lot of, I mean, almost everybody, girls, boys, doesn't matter.
I see the LPGA does that a lot.
Routinely, all the time the ladies do that routine.
And that's where I copied it from.
Yeah.
And it's much more, you know, you can almost like, you can understand their swings better because they are swinging slower.
I think the average amateur would definitely benefit from watching a lot more LPGA golf than they would PGA golf.
Yep.
That's more where we're going to be at.
Yep.
And, you know, just, you know.
Very specific, too, like you said.
And culturally, the Asians.
Yeah.
Do it more specifically than the Americans.
Absolutely.
And that's why they're so.
They have a fine science to it.
Yeah.
And that's what we're doing here now.
Yep.
So once I come over, set the club face down, set my feet down, I'll bend my knees slightly, I'll bend over from the waist.
And then I try to put my hands on the club for less than three seconds.
That's kind of my goal.
OK.
Is out of that 16.9 to 17.1 seconds.
I don't have both hands on the club for any more than three seconds because that last three seconds is where I'm holding the club, getting ready to turn, rotate, make the golf swing.
And just hit to the target, which is what you kind of said with the, you know, the window.
That's a good thing to think of it.
Again, maybe you and I are not concerned about making sure we make contact, which a lot of our golfers are.
Yeah.
You know, hey, I just that's all well and good.
That sounds great.
But how do I not top it?
How do I how do I not shank it?
It's a different podcast.
Yes, that's a different podcast.
And we'll definitely give you some more hints and drills for that, for sure.
But I think you brought up a really good point with the idea of your routine about the timing.
You know, I think a lot of people overlook that part is that when you look at people like Tiger and other ones, you could put a stopwatch to their putting routine to their, you know, iron, you know, player or driving.
They are set to a timer.
And I guarantee you if that is off by two tenths of a second, the results are completely different than what you're expecting.
Rory, John Rom, Justin Thomas, Jordan Speets is kind of fast.
He's kind of fast, which guy?
He's got a lot of stuff.
Twitchy.
Yeah.
And then you got Ernie Ells or Adam Scott, who look really smooth.
But find find what works for you.
So this is again kind of a maybe lesser known analogy.
Pace yourself, figure out how long it takes you to walk 10 paces.
Meaning, you know, if you're a fast Twitch guy, you're going to walk quickly if you're a hurry person, if you're always in a, you know, an emotional move and whatever.
Or if you're kind of like, I wouldn't say like me, but I'm a little bit more laid back most of the time.
More A and B personalities, I would say, you know, who's a little bit more aggressive, who's a little bit more laid back.
I think that determines your pace and your inner, you know.
You would never, you would never have Nick Saldo try to resemble Ernie Ells.
No.
And you never have Freddie Couples try to resemble Nick Price.
Yeah.
Trevino, you know, just different players.
So you got to figure out what is your pace in life realistically.
And then kind of coordinate your pre-shot routine to that.
Yeah.
That's great stuff, man.
Great stuff.
Well, I think we helped out some golfers today.
Absolutely.
I think we helped them with their pre-shot routine, gave them a little understanding what to do.
And thank you for listening.
Go practice.
Thank you.