Joe Ferguson from Golf Monthly shares 7 common mistakes people make before a round of golf.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00I think it would be fair to say golf is a tough enough sport without ruining your round before you've even gotten started.
00:05So let's head out to Madeira,
00:06I'm going to show you some of the most common pre-round mistakes that I see and how to fix them.
00:15Okay, so the first part of poor preparation for golf is a particular bugbear in mind. As a gear writer, someone who deals with equipment all
00:22the time,
00:23preparing your equipment badly is the cardinal sin for me.
00:26The first up on that would be just not cleaning your clubs. Having your
00:30grooves full of mud will affect not only your spin and your launch conditions,
00:34but it'll have an effect on your distance and consistency.
00:36So make sure you turn up with clean clubs and at very least have a towel so you can do it at the course.
00:43Second equipment error I see all the time when playing them, which is turning up with not enough equipment. And the equipment
00:48I'm talking about here is things like tees,
00:51pencils, pitchmark repairers, balls, and even a nice fresh glove.
00:55See a lot of people turn it up with
00:57gloves that very much look like they're on their last legs, with big holes all over them.
01:01So at least get a fresh glove so you feel good starting the rounds.
01:04And finally, the final thing I see in equipment all the time is people turning up with low batteries on their lasers.
01:12The amount of times I see someone on the 15th or 16th hole clicking away, desperately trying to get a yardage,
01:17but their battery's gone, make sure you've got a spare one in the bag.
01:21And if you're a GPS guy, make sure that GPS is charged up before you play.
01:32Okay, so another mistake I see in preparation happens exactly now. We've come to the driving range,
01:37we're going to loosen up to hit some balls,
01:39but I see people just put their balls down, grab a club, and start hitting away.
01:44And not only is that going to affect your performance, your body's not ready to move in that way.
01:47You've got a real danger of injury there. You're coming out cold, your muscles aren't ready to make the twisting motion
01:53that's involved in golf, so it's important to do a few little stretches,
01:57dynamic stretches as well, just to get your body moving and ready to do what is quite a complex movement.
02:03Now, I'm not going to bother showing you any stretches here because I'm not a professional,
02:06so I'd recommend doing some research online,
02:08even watching a YouTube of Miguel Angel Jimenez's warm-up, something like that, or consult a professional
02:14and have a proper physical screening to see what you need to warm up specifically.
02:18But it's absolutely critical for injury and performance to make sure you do some stretches before you start hitting shots.
02:26Okay, so another bit of poor preparation that I see a lot comes on the putting green.
02:30If people visit the putting green at all, I often see
02:34mindlessly hitting mid-range putts and not really getting the information they need.
02:38So in terms of putting warm-up for me, I like to split it into two categories.
02:41Number one, I want to start building some confidence.
02:43I want to see that ball go in, and if you're just hitting 15 and 20 foot putts at various targets,
02:48you're getting a little something from it,
02:50but you're not going to see the ball go in an awful lot, and we want to build that confidence.
02:54So I like to set up a little drill. I use my putter, put that in the hole,
02:57grab a little T-peg, and that measures me at about three feet.
03:03Then I'll just simply spend some time
03:05hitting some putts from that three-foot range and just knocking them towards the hole,
03:11seeing the ball go in,
03:15and building confidence from there. The more you see that ball go in, the more you're hearing that sound,
03:19you're feeding your computer with good vibes, and that's great for your confidence during the day.
03:25Second part of this, again, I'm not even going to use a hole for this bit.
03:29I want to start feeding my computer and my brain with some knowledge of the pace of these greens.
03:34So I'll take my three balls, I'll find a long putt,
03:39and I just aim for the fringe.
03:42It can be from 40 feet, 50 feet, 60 feet,
03:45but I'm just going to keep repeating and trying to get the ball stopping just on the fringe line and take it from there.
03:54Just pretty much on the fringe cut.
03:58Pretty good, so probably just run into the fringe cut a little bit there,
04:01so now I know I need to take a little bit off.
04:05So that's just more gently approaching the fringe, a couple of inches short, but you get the idea.
04:12So I've got a really good idea of speed now.
04:14Now what I would do is turn around, go from that fringe to this fringe because it's a little bit more downhill,
04:19and I've got some really good information I can take with me for the day, and I'm better prepared to hold putts.
04:24So another big mistake I see about preparing for a round of golf is ignoring the short game.
04:29Those who do warm up at all tend to go and hit some longer shots and might chuck a couple of balls down on the putting green,
04:36but these shots, your pitches, your chip shots,
04:39they're the ones that require some real finesse, and ignoring warming up those kind of smaller muscles that control the real
04:45precision elements of your game, I think is fatal. So it's always for me important, if you've got the facility,
04:51I mean, I've got a great chipping facility here at Santa De Sara, don't get me wrong,
04:54some people don't have that benefit,
04:56but you can always find a little area off the course, just a piece of grass,
05:00sit half a dozen chip shots, get the feeling of the ball on the club face, seeing some flights,
05:05seeing how far they're going over 20-30 yards, it's really important to warm your feels up.
05:11So I would just come to the chipping green, I would just hit a few little pitches
05:16to various targets, just start to get a feel of how it's reacting on the green, if the green's good,
05:22go to that white one now,
05:25hit some different length shots, some various trajectories, get it rolling out a little bit more,
05:31and you can really start to refine your feel over these shots.
05:36So when you get out on the golf course,
05:39you're not going to have any big surprises of a chip shooting out of your hands because you've warmed up those refined muscles.
05:45Don't ignore the short game, get your scores lower.
05:48So another part of poor preparation that I see is a bit of a mental mistake.
05:52Those of us who are diligent enough to come to the driving range to warm up and hit some shots,
05:57I can often see a lot of panic taking place on driving range before the rounds.
06:01If you're hitting bad shots, that can often put people off.
06:04But what you've got to remember is this is not a practice session,
06:08this is a warm-up. And what does a warm-up mean?
06:10We want to warm our muscles up and get loose for the round of goal.
06:13So we're just going to simply hit a few shots away,
06:17and we're just observing what's coming out. And it's more of a physical exercise.
06:21We're not practicing certain shots.
06:22We've done our practice, or we should have done, before we arrived to warm up for that particular day.
06:27And if you hit a load of bad shots during practice, don't worry.
06:30Some of my best round of golf have come after a really bad warm-up.
06:34Sometimes it's handy, it can lower your expectations and you just go and play.
06:38Conversely, some of my worst round of golf have come with a great warm-up.
06:41So in my experience, there's never been a bad warm-up.
06:44In my experience, there's not a great correlation between the two.
06:48So if you're warming up, just warm up.
06:50Don't practice. And if you're hitting some bad shots, don't panic.
06:54Okay, now be honest. How often have you been in this situation?
06:57You get round to the 13th, 14th, 15th hole, you're a bit hungry,
07:02and you reach into your bag and you've got no food.
07:05Or even worse, you're thirsty and you haven't got any water.
07:08It's not just your mood that's going to suffer, it's your thought process.
07:11We need to be fuelled so we make good decisions, so your brain's working optimally.
07:15If you haven't got that food in your body and you haven't got that energy,
07:18your thought process will suffer and your scores will suffer over the last few holes.
07:23So number one, it's really important to be fuelled before the round.
07:25I'm not talking a big, greasy, full English breakfast.
07:28Some good, healthy, slow-release carbohydrates will set you up well for a good round.
07:33But in terms of preparation for the round, make sure you've got plenty of water in your bags,
07:37fruits, things like trail mix and nuts and beef jerky are really, really good sources of energy
07:44that will keep you hydrated, keep you fuelled for the round,
07:47keep that brain working well and make you finish your round strong.
07:50Prepare well.
07:52Okay, so there's a few things you can do to prevent poor performance and poor preparation
07:57from a strategy standpoint.
07:59Even if you're playing your home golf course and you think you know the back of your hand,
08:03a lot of courses, the entrances, you might drive through some of the holes on the course.
08:07So it can be really useful to have a look around and take some information in,
08:11particularly pin positions.
08:13You can call upon that information later on in the round
08:15and that might help inform your decision around club selection.
08:19Another little tip I always like to use, particularly if I'm playing on a tree-lined golf course,
08:23it can be really difficult to pick out the wind because the trees can block it.
08:27So I like to find a course map.
08:29You can get these quite often on the back of the cards or on a stroke saver
08:33and either get to a high point of the course, find out what the wind is doing
08:37and then mark that direction on the course map.
08:40You can also use one of the weather apps to do that.
08:42It'll tell you the exact direction the wind is coming from.
08:45Get that prepared on your course plan or your card
08:48and you can refer back to that using the orientation of the hole
08:51and the direction of the wind if you're stuck out in the course.
08:54And that can really help you save shots as part of avoiding poor preparation.