English Major Golfer

After a proper stretch, it’s time to warm up your swing.

I use this routine every time I play a round, tournament or just practice at the range.

First things first! What are distances to the flags on the range? Before I touch a club, I want to know the distance and don’t trust the board or sign or plague. Get out the range finder and measure each one.

My warm up club is my 8 iron. It makes zero sense to me why most golfer start with their sand wedge or some other lower wedge to warm up. If you were to catalog the ‘most used’ club in a single round by an amateur, it would HAVE to be an 8 or 7 iron.

Why or how the conventional wisdom is to use one of your most ‘unused’ (and difficult to hit from the fairway) clubs in the bag in a round to warm up, befuddles me.

Start with what you’re going to use! Warm up with your most used club and the one you need to rely on under pressure.

I begin with 8 iron chip shots. Literally, chipping the ball 10, 20, 30 yards to start. Each shot, I add distance.

What I am doing is calibrating my brain to the ball to the club face; easing into adding distance by add length to my swing. This is important for several reasons:

• First, I am tuning my mind and body to make contact with the ball on the club face. Kind of like tuning an instrument.
• Second, I am practicing an important shot! The 8 iron chip, pinch and punch. This shot, practiced every time to hit the range will lower your handicap several strokes by saving you around the green, hitting the green from under a tree, and in general getting you out of a bad spot and back into the fairway. You will feel confident in a tough spot because you have hit this shot MANY times.

I then repeat this process with the 5 iron, GW, and my 19H (which is my 5 wood). And yes, I chip, pitch and punch all of these clubs. Several times, my 5 iron low punch shot from under a tree to the green has SAVED an entire round. I am so confident in these shots because I do them every time.

I am tuning my mind and body to make contact with the ball on the club face

With each club above, I hit only a few full shots. Remember, you are still warming up.

Lastly, I finish my range warm up with 3W, DR, 54 degree. All other clubs simply fall in the gaps of these main clubs. And these are generally full swings.

My last three shots are whatever club I am using on the first tee. And yes, I know before my round every club I plan to use in the round. I will leave that for another blog 😉.