Joe Ferguson from Golf Monthly shares 7 common mistakes people make before a round of golf.
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00:00I think it would be fair to say golf is a tough enough sport without ruining your round before
00:04you've even gotten started. So let's head out to Madeira. I'm going to show you some of the
00:07most 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
00:20writer, someone who deals with equipment all the time, preparing your equipment badly is the
00:25cardinal sin for me. Now, first up on that would be just not cleaning your clubs. Having your
00:29grooves full of mud will affect not only your spin and your launch conditions, but it'll have an
00:34effect on your distance and consistency. So make sure you turn up with clean clubs, and at very least,
00:40have a towel so you can do it at the course. Second equipment error I see all the time when playing
00:45them, which is turning up with not enough equipment. And the equipment I'm talking about here is things
00:49like tees, pencils, pitch mark repairers, balls, and even a nice fresh glove. You see a lot of people
00:56turning up with gloves that very much look like they're on their last legs, with big holes all over
01:01them, so at least get a fresh glove so you feel good starting the rounds. And finally, the final
01:06thing I see in equipment all the time is people turning up with low batteries on their lasers.
01:11The amount of times I see someone on the 15th or 16th hole clicking away, desperately trying to get a
01:16yardage, but their battery's gone, make sure you've got a spare one in the bag. And if you're a GPS guy,
01:21make 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
01:37range, we're going to loosen up to hit some balls, but I see people just put their balls down, grab a
01:42club, and start hitting away. And not only is that going to affect your performance, your body's not
01:46ready to move in that way. You've got a real danger of injury there. You're coming out cold, your muscles
01:51aren't ready to make the twisting motion that's involved in golf, so it's important to do a few
01:55little stretches, dynamic stretches as well, just to get your body moving and ready to do what is
02:01quite a complex movement. Now, I'm not going to bother showing you any stretches here because I'm
02:05not a professional, so I'd recommend doing some research online, even watching a YouTube of Miguel
02:10Angel Jimenez's warm-up, something like that, or consult a professional and have a proper physical
02:16screening to see what you need to warm up specifically. But it's absolutely critical
02:20for 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.
02:31If people visit the putting green at all, I often see mindlessly hitting mid-range putts and not really
02:36getting the information they need. So in terms of putting warm-up for me, I like to split it into two
02:40categories. Number one, I want to start building some confidence. I want to see that ball go in,
02:44and if you're just hitting 15 and 20-foot putts at various targets, you're getting a little something
02:50from it, but 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,
02:58grab a little T-peg, and that measures me at about three feet. Then I'll just simply spend some time
03:05hitting some putts from that three-foot range and just knocking them towards the hole, seeing the ball go in,
03:14and 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. I want to start feeding my
03:30computer and my brain with some knowledge of the pace of these greens. So I take my three balls,
03:36I find a long putt, and I just aim for the fringe. It 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
03:50and 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, so now I know
04:01I need to take a little bit off. That's just more gently approaching the fringe,
04:09a couple of inches short, but you get the idea. I've got a really good idea of speed now. Now,
04:15what I would do is turn around and go from that fringe to this fringe because it's a little bit
04:18more downhill, and I've got some really good information I can take with me for the day and
04:22I'm better prepared to hold putts. Another big mistake I see about preparing for a round of golf is
04:28ignoring the short game. Those who do warm up at all tend to go and hit some longer shots and might
04:33chuck a couple of balls down on the putting green, but these shots, your pitches, your chip shots,
04:38they're the ones that require some real finesse and ignoring warming up those kind of smaller
04:43muscles that control the real precision elements of your game, I think is fatal, so it's always for
04:49me important. If you've got the facility, I mean, I've got a great chipping facility here at Santa
04:53Dasera, don't get me wrong. Some people don't have that benefit, but you can always find a little
04:58area off the course, just a piece of grass, say half a dozen chip shots, get the feeling of the
05:03ball on the club base, seeing some flights, seeing how far they're going over 20, 30 yards. It's really
05:08important to warm your feels up. I would just come to the chipping green. I would just hit a few little
05:15pitches to various targets and just start to get a feel of how it's reacting on the green, if the green's
05:22good. Go to that white one now. Hit some different length shots, some vary the trajectory, get it
05:29rolling out a little bit more, and you can really start to refine your feel over these shots.
05:36When you get out on the golf course, you're not going to have any big surprises of a chip shooting
05:42out of your hands because you've warmed up those refined muscles. Don't ignore the short game, get your
05:47scores lower. Another part of poor preparation that I see is a bit of a mental mistake. Those of
05:53us who are diligent enough to come to the driving range to warm up and hit some shots, I can often
05:58see a lot of panic taking place on driving range before the rounds. If you're hitting bad shots,
06:03that can often put people off. What you've got to remember is this is not a practice session,
06:08this is a warm-up. What does a warm-up mean? We want to warm our muscles up and get loose for the round
06:13of golf. We're just going to simply hit a few shots away and we're just observing what's coming out.
06:21It's more of a physical exercise. We're not practicing certain shots. We've done our practice,
06:26or we should have done, before we arrived to warm up for that particular day. If you hit a load of bad
06:30shots during practice, don't worry. Some of my best round of golf have come after a really bad warm-up.
06:37Sometimes it's handy. It can lower your expectations and you just go and play. Conversely, some of my worst
06:42round of golfs have come with a great warm-up. In my experience, there's not a great correlation
06:47between the two. If you're warming up, just warm up. Don't practice. If you're hitting some bad shots,
06:52don't panic. Be honest. How often have you been in this situation? You get around to the 13th,
06:5814th, 15th hole, you're a bit hungry and you reach into your bag and you've got no food, or even worse,
07:06you're thirsty and you haven't got any water. It's not just your mood that's going to suffer,
07:10it's your thought process. We need to be fuelled so we make good decisions, so your brain's working
07:15optimally. If you haven't got that food in your body and you haven't got the energy, your thought
07:19process will suffer and your scores will suffer over the last few holes. Number one, it's really
07:23important to be fuelled before the round. I'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. In terms of
07:33preparation for the round, make sure you've got plenty of water in your bags, fruits, things like trail mix,
07:40and nuts and beef jerky are really, really good sources of energy that will keep you hydrated,
07:45keep you fuelled for the round and keep that brain working well and make you finish your round strong.
07:50Prepare well. Okay, so there's a few things you can do to prevent poor performance and poor
07:56preparation from a strategy standpoint. Even if you're playing your home golf course and you think
08:01you know like the back of your hand, a lot of courses, the entrances, you might drive through some
08:06of the holes on the course. So it can be really useful to have a look around and take some information
08:11in, particularly pin positions. You can call upon that information later on in the round and that
08:15might help inform your decision around club selection. Another little tip I always like to use,
08:21particularly if I'm playing on a tree-lined golf course, it can be really difficult to pick out the
08:25wind because the trees can block it. So I like to find a course map. You can get these quite often on the
08:30back of the cards or on a stroke saver and either get to a high point of course, find out what the
08:36wind is doing and then mark that direction on the course map. You can also use one of the weather apps
08:42to do that. It'll tell you the exact direction the wind is coming from. Get that prepared on your course
08:47planner or your card and you can refer back to that using the orientation of the hole and the direction
08:51of the wind if you're stuck out on the course and that can really help you save shots. It's part of avoiding
08:57poor preparation.