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Are routines a cheat code to better golf?

I might argue that routines are a cheat code to a better life… but certainly to better golf.

Routines are monotonous, boring, unexciting by definition. They happen all the time… powered by our subconscious without us even knowing about it… but thats what makes them so powerful. Think about all the complicated things you do on a day to day basis that are ‘routine’.

Let’s start with an easy one… I bet you took a shower this morning. Did you think about how to dry yourself off with a towel? You probably didn’t, but you probably do it almost the exact same way every day. It’s routine, you don’t even have to think about it.

What about your commute to work? All the complexities of driving a car. Paying attention to other drivers, to street signs, road conditions, turn signals… and yet you likely drive that same route to work every day virtually on auto pilot. You don’t have to think about it.

Unless there is an accident or issue that pulls you out of that routine, your brain offloads the task of driving to the parts of the brain that handle repetitive tasks. You have basically hardwired a part of your brain to handle driving, which frees up the rest to contemplate the meaning of life or all the millions of things you have to do the rest of the day….

Routine is powerful. You rarely ‘mess up’ drying yourself off. You’re not going to ‘shank’ your commute into the woods. You’re on auto pilot. Your brain knows how to do those tasks, so get out of its way.

The same is true of your golf swing. Your brain knows how to swing a golf club. You’ve made thousands, maybe millions of golf swings. Ever wonder why your range game is so good versus on the course? Routine. Auto Pilot. If you’re sitting on a driving range raking ball after ball, you aren’t thinking. You’re letting your brain go into auto-pilot. Thats the power of routine.

So how do we access the auto-pilot of our brain in golf? It all starts with building routines, recognizing when the routine is interrupted, and sticking to it.

The night before a round routine

It can start long before you step onto the first tee box. How do you get ready for a round of golf. If it’s a new course, it helps to get familiar with the track. I like to use the Explore Mode in the TANGENT Golf app to scope out the holes, think about strategy using the AI Caddie, and make a general plan for what clubs I’ll use off the tee the day before a big round.

The great thing about Explore Mode is that you can also see how the community has played the golf course and whether it makes sense to favor one side of the course or the other on tougher holes.

Thinking about a game plan before a round makes you much more likely to stick to it and make good decisions when you are on the golf course. Particularly when adversity starts.

Pre Round Routine

Showtime. The day of the big round, how do we use routine to get started right?

To me, it all starts with when you show up to the golf course. Show up early.

I like to get to the golf course 45-60 minutes before my tee time. This gives me ample time to check in, hit 15-30 balls to warm up my body, hit a few greenside shots to see how soft the greens are, roll a few putts, and get to the first tee with plenty of time.

Feeling rushed is a quick ticket to anxiety and poor swings as I made abundantly clear in this recent tips video, where showing up late and skipping the putting green cost me dearly.

Just getting to the course early is not enough. Make sure you build the proper warmup into that routine. I often see my higher handicap buddies rush to the range to smash a handful of drivers. Spend way too much time trying to fix whatever swing ailment they have that day, only to get to the first tee without having so much as seen the putting green.

A better strategy for your pre-round routine is to start your range session with wedges or shorter swings. Build up your way through your bag to get to driver. It allows the muscles in your body to wake up and ease into the warm up, so by the time you make it to driver you are firing on all cylinders.

Another pro tip… Don’t overly focus on the quality of the warm up or the golf shots. Your goal in this routine is to warm up the body not to test that new swing tip or figure out that slice. Get an idea of where the ball is going, but often times that changes once you get to the course. The goal of the warm up is to do exactly that… warm up.

In fact, Justin Thomas shot one of his best rounds after the worst warm up of his life. The ball striking on the warm up does not impact what happens on the course.

You don’t need to hit a ton of balls, but you need to make sure you leave time to see the putting green. I’ve made this mistake myself and I see it all the time with my buddies. Spend too much time hitting balls, skip the practice green, and three putt the first couple holes when you have no idea for the pace or break.

It doesn’t take long, but spend 10 minutes on the green before a round hitting some lag putts, adjusting to the pace of the greens. Then roll 5-10 putts in a circle from 5-10 feet to get an idea of the break. Thats all it takes and you’re good to go.

Get to the tee just a few minutes early and you’ll feel ready, relaxed, and confident to give this round your best shot.

Pre Shot Routine

Do you breath in or out before you hit a golf shot?

Maybe the quickest way to get in somebody’s head is to make them think about what they do before hitting a shot. Thats because thinking is the enemy. The power of routine is that it minimizes thinking. It offloads the golf swing to the part of the brain that knows how to move the body.

If I handed you a crumpled piece of paper and asked you to toss it into the trash can, I can almost guarantee that you would not be thinking about elbow angles and release mechanics. Do you supinate or pronate? You’d see the target and let your natural athleticism toss the trash… And you’ll make it more often than not. You weren’t bogged down by what happens if you miss, thats the power of routine.

So how do we unlock the power of routine in an individual shot? By building a routine and sticking to it.

There are three critical components of a great golf shot:

1. Target

2. Commitment

3. Execution

And routine helps with ensuring all three of these are as good as they can be.

First… Choose a target. This part of the routine is important, but it is also less rigid and often skipped. Sometimes, the target will be obvious. You have a wide fairway, the hole fits your eye, you’ve played it a million times and you know if you hit it at THAT tree with your baby draw it’ll be great. Just make sure you focus on a specific target. I can’t count how many times I’ve missed wide fairways from lack of picking a target.

Other times, you’ve never played this hole… the wind is blowing, there’s water left, a bunker right and you need more thought. These are times I like to pull out the TANGENT Golf app and use the AI Caddie for help choosing a good target. A glance on the phone or watch gives a club and target suggestion that is optimized for scoring based on my distance and dispersions with each club. If I don’t like the suggestion, or I want to know more, I can quickly change to see a target selection for another club or I can drag around the map to collect the information to select a specific target.

The key is to leave this phase of the routine with a specific target that you can confidently commit to. If you’re second guessing club choice or have any doubt on whether you can hit to the selected target… then you’re not ready for step two, which is…

Commitment. You are now leaving the ‘Think Box’ and entering the ‘Play Box’. This is where routine should get a little more rigid.

The way you walk up to the ball, the way you align your club, the number of waggles or practice swings, the number of times and way you glance up at the target should all start to be more similar than different from shot to shot.

Tiger is famous for saying that there are times where he felt like he ‘blacked out’ over a shot. He was so stuck on auto-pilot that he doesn’t remember hitting the ball. Thats the power of routine.

I like to be very target focused at this point. I’m thinking about where I WANT the ball to go. I’m visualizing the shot shape.

If at any time you are pulled out of routine, start over.

If at any point I think a ‘don’t’ thought… Don’t go left… Don’t go in the water… I start over.

Your brain doesn’t process ‘dont’s’ very well. Think about what you DO want to do.

If you are pulled out of your thought process by catching the turf on your practice swing, knocking the ball off the tee, noticing a golf cart drive by, or something as simple as catching your eyes quickly get drawn to that lake you have to carry.

The second your attention gets pulled out of your routine, you open the door for disaster. You won’t always hit a bad shot, but the probabilities increase as soon as you leave the cocoon of your routine.

Once you’ve selected a target, committed to it, performed your routine over the ball… you’ve given yourself the best chance to execute. You’ll still hit bad shots, but less often and less bad. You have given your brain a chance to use auto pilot and that is where your best golf lives.

Post Shot Routine

The shot is over, but your job is not done. Whether the shot was great, average, or awful… a good post shot routine gives you the best chance to learn from it and improve moving forward.

A Post Shot routine should be very simple. I like to ask myself these questions, particularly on any shot with a less than desirable outcome:

1. How was the strike?

2. How was the target?

3. How was my commitment?

4. How was the lie?

Identifying trends in poor strikes, whether it be low point control (fat versus thin) or horizontal control (toe versus heel) is useful in practice to know what to work on and to keep an eye on the basics of alignment and ball position and its real easy to do in TANGENT Golf right from your Apple Watch.

How was your commitment? Did you do your pre-shot routine properly and set yourself up for success? If not, you might want to mark a negative mental scorecard in TANGENT.

You can even go so far as to mark your lie details in TANGENT whether the ball was above your feet, below your feet, on a downslope, or in a divot. Just noticing these details will help you spot trends in shots that give you difficulty and logging them quickly in TANGENT means you don’t have to remember. You can actually stack up what shots give you the most trouble later to practice with a drill in TANGENT.

Post Round Routine

All the dust has settled. You’ve shot the course record or you never want to play golf again… or somewhere in between. If you want to improve faster, you need a good post round routine. A way to evaluate how you performed and learn where to focus your attention in practice or in the next round. The TANGENT Round Report is the perfect spot to do that and rather than writing a bunch of words, watch this video where I go through one and show you how I use TANGENT to learn from every round.

Get the most out of your morning routines with our partner this week Morning Brew.

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