Golf Shot Routines

Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto illustrates the power of a checklist. Dr. Gawande set out to reduce the number of human errors that occur during medical surgeries. By creating and using a checklist he was able to ensure that critical steps were not omitted by the surgery team. That’s right, trained professionals, working as a group, routinely make mistakes executing familiar processes. Not shocking. But, just having a checklist and holding everyone accountable to that list dramatically improves performance. Isn’t that something that might benefit our training?

The golf specific book to help you define and customize your routines is Be a Player: A Breakthrough Approach to Playing Better ON the Golf Course by Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott. It includes exercises so that you can figure out what actually works for you. The main thing is that you need to consistently use your routine for every single shot. I almost feel like a hypocrite highlighting this, knowing that I struggled to get my practice chipping to match my game chipping because I did not treat chips like full shots for longer than I care to admit. I took less rigor for those chips and did not understand why the results weren’t closer to what I practiced. Stick to your routine!

Be a Player does a great job of establishing a simple framework and guides you through filling in the details to create a process that will for you. The book also gives you a set of candidate drills to help you figure out what actually works best for you. There are ‘On-course explorations’ included such as:

• “On one hole, give yourself bad lies on each shot, and see how well you can manage yourself.”
• “On one hole, listen for the sound of impact or hum a song.”
• “On one hole, use your strongest or most confident voice to state your decision out loud before stepping into your Play Box.”

Some of these feel silly or even counter-productive–but that’s part of the process: you need to figure out what works for you. I generally do not care for music on the golf course (being more honest, I hate it). While it does not help me focus, playing one slow round by myself, I put in headphones and was amazed that it helped me to not get dragged down by the pace and I was able to switch back to focus mode for each shot. After doing that exercise, I am better about hearing music as just another distraction–like talking–to tune out. If I’m distracted, it’s my fault for not focusing.

Think Box: Pre-Shot Routine

This is where we are allowed to think so that we can 100% commit to a shot. Consider what the shot requires–lie, distance, wind, hazards, target. Select your shot. Then we select a sensory state–a feel such as grip pressure or visualizing the target. The feel is what we will focus on throughout our swing, so the pre-shot routine needs to do all the considering and set us up for being able to focus on one thing.

The goal is commitment so that we can quiet the mind–not completely turn it off, the swing takes effort–but get it focused so that distractions don’t happen.

Our minds are stupid and tricky so this is the hard part of the game. The stupid part is that the brain’s primary purpose is to stay alive. This is managed largely by the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for detecting threat and triggering our fight-or-flight response. The smart part of our brain is the neocortex, where abstract thinking and decision-making happen. The problem is that the amygdala can hijack the neocortex, and it’s faster.

If we perceive a bad shot as undesirable, it registers as a threat. The amygdala doesn’t perceive a difference between an angry grizzly and a threatening greenside bunker. As we repeat exposure to this threat, the response gets wired in to save time: see bunker, heart rate spikes, get ready to run. Obviously counterproductive to a smooth swing.

So the tricky part is using the neocortex to calm the amygdala down, while also programming the basal ganglia—the part of the brain responsible for habit formation and motor movement—to make good swings automatic. Two helpful strategies are a mindfulness practice, and learning to reframe (you’re not nervous, you’re excited).

In the think box, we want to creating the habit of staying positive to quiet our minds and facilitate being able to focus. Pay attention to how you assess your shots. We’re not trying to stay positive in a Pollyanna-no-bad-thoughts sort of way, we want to word things around our desired outcomes. For instance, if your last thought before you address the ball is, “don’t slice it into that lake,” you are about to be focused on the lake. Instead, a more positive approach is to think, “Because of the water on the right, I need to land my shot to the left” This sets you up for thinking about the target, not the non-target. When we process a linguistic negative, it is a two-step simulation, the first step being to process the concept before the negation. So thinking, “don’t hook it” is a great way to hook the ball.

Once all factors are distilled down to a club in hand and a feel, as you are stepping into your play box take a deep controlled breath. This tells our reptile brain to calm down.

Play Box: Shot Routine

Be a Player: “Accessing a “feel” state helps you shift into that right side of the brain. “Our data shows that the two variables that help this process are feel and target,” Debbie says. “ ‘Feel’ is a product of the right brain, whether it’s sensing a low center of gravity in your body or feeling the state of getting to your left side in your finish. ‘Target’ is also right brain; your focus is on a visual image, maybe the flag or your aiming point in the fairway.”

You should have a set of feels that work best for you. Technical swing feels need to match what you’re feeling and how you’re swinging, because that changes every day. This takes experience to figure out and will be specific to your swing and how your mind works.

Once you step into the play box to address your ball, you should be in a focused state. We want to be focused on our sensory feel through our entire swing. The feel should replace your swing thoughts; they are the right-brain equivalent of them. Focused mind, ball addressed, swing freely.

Memory Box: Post-shot Routine

Be a Player: “two things that are useful to evaluate after every shot: your process (how you executed your Think Box and Play Box) and your outcome (the quality of the shot and where the ball landed).”

Our post-shot routine is about preserving our ideal mindset for playing great golf. We’re not using it to change our game or do mid-round coaching–we do that in our post-round review. Keeping the coaching off the course is one of the rules in Self-coaching; the round is for playing, not for rebuilding.

If the outcome was not good, remain objective–stick to the facts–and then dismiss it. Try to feel what went wrong. We don’t need to change anything, we’re just making a note. There’s no emotion here, just an observation of why the plan and execution deviated.

If the outcome was good, have that happy emotion. Set that fist pump free, smile, internalize something positive.

Post-round Review

Use those great shots as visualization fodder. Reinforce them so that they show up more.

Use your bad shots, and your objective reviews, to determine if you need to work on certain aspects of your game. Don’t let one round hijack your entire training plan. As with all things, we want to iterate–small meaningful changes.

Part of this review should include journaling the round. Our strengths, feels, and faults change over time. Having these things logged can be just as helpful to figuring your game out as is quantified data.

Summary

The TLDR here, is to buy Be a Player: A Breakthrough Approach to Playing Better ON the Golf Course by Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott and do the work. The book contains a wealth of information that can only make your shot routines better.

Bonus points if you practice like you play. There’s a time for block practice (repeating the same shot over and over) but a portion of your practice should have the same level of attention as your game play. This is the transfer problem from Smart Practice Sessions–reps that never leave the range have a habit of staying there. This means go through your entire shot process–pre and post shot routines. Practicing your shot process not only reinforces the habit, but it also promotes transferability of the skill.