If you think that having a more effective Pre-Shot routine would help your game we have some good news. Golfshake and Pre-Shot will soon be working together to help you monitor your routines and shoot lower scores. Get your FREE Pre-Shot e-book here www.pre-shot.co.uk or e-mail us at [email protected]

If you watch the 2013 Masters closely you will notice that every golfer has a physical routine that they go through before, during and after they hit a golf ball. For example, a golfer might do something like the following:

1. Put their bag down
2. Walk up to the ball to see how it is sitting on the ground
3. Select a club and line the ball up
4. Have a practice swing
5. Set-up to the ball
6. Hit the ball
7. Put their club back in their bag, pick their bag up and walk away

What most golfers don’t have is a consistent mental routine. Golfers tend to chop and change what they are thinking depending on how confident they feel about the shot they are going to hit. For example on the first tee of the final 18 in the 2011 US Masters Rory McIlroy’s physical routine was very similar to what he had been doing on the tee box during the first three rounds. He:

1. Go the his drive from his caddy
2. Teed his ball up
3. Lined the shot up
4. Had a practice swing
5. Set-up to the ball
6. Hit the ball
7. Gave his club to his caddy and walked towards the fairway

However what his was thinking on the 1st tee of the final round at the Masters – his mental routine – was very different to what he had been thinking during the first three rounds. According to McIlroy, when he had been driving well during the first three rounds he was thinking like this:

When his game began to collapse during the final round he started to think like this: 

Rory learnt very quickly that day that he needed to match his consistent physical routine with a consistent mental routine.

However this is not as simple as it sounds as affective mental routines are more complicated than the golf swing! Pre-Shot are world leaders in Cognitive Science, and experts in helping golfers to build mental routines that help them to play their best golf all of the time.

At Pre-Shot we have spent 10 years refining the Pre-Shot Training Programme. This is designed to help golfers to build bespoke routines that help them to think correctly, and play their best golf all of the time. Here is an example of how we would begin to help golfers to build a solid routine.

We always begin by getting helping to golfers to plan what they are going to think as they step up to the ball:

Next we help golfers to plan what they are thinking about as they strike the ball:

Next we help golfers to plan what they are thinking about as they finish their routine:

This is just the beginning of the Pre-Shot Process. We then help golfers to refine these steps, control their Activation Levels, Concentrate, Build Confidence, and do all of this under pressure on the golf course.