How To Prepare For A Golf Tournament
How To Prepare For A Golf Tournament
Preparing for a golf tournament, as golf instruction explains, is one of the keys to playing your best golf. If you play in golf tournaments, develop a pre-tournament routine that prepares you for the day ahead.
One challenge when preparing for a tournament is time. You might not have much before teeing off, so make sure you get to the course early as possible. A pre-tournament routine gets the most of the time you have and lets you work on a lot of things in a short amount of time. Structure in practice is something that golf lessons preach anyway.
Many routines start with stretching. It warms you up. It helps prevent injuries. And it loosens the muscles. Many golf tips describe stretches you can incorporate into a sound stretching sequence.
Include stretches that focus on those muscles receiving the greatest stress during your swing. Target areas are your trunk, thighs, arms, shoulders, neck, and back. The sitting trunk rotation stretch and the shoulder-and-thigh stretch are two good stretches to include in your routine. These stretches may not lower your golf handicap, but they will help you avoid some common injuries as you get older.
A pre-tournament routine also includes time on a practice tee. Before hitting, take two or three clubs from your bag and swing them a few times, just as many golf tips suggest. This exercise warms you up and prepares your muscles before hitting a ball. Next, start hitting balls. Begin with a wedge to get a feel for your swing, then move to a mid-iron. Work on swing technique while you hit the wedge and mid-iron. Concentrate on your swing trigger, if you have one. Approach it the same way you would your golf lessons.
After a few minutes of working on your swing, start hitting the ball. Imagine yourself out on the course and in a specific situation. Use your pre-shot routine. Visualize each shot. And hit it as if the shot counted. Note the distances you hit each shot that day. Knowing how well you?re hitting a club helps during the tournament when it?s time to choose a club.
Select specific targets and try to hit them. It?s important to play target golf, even on the practice tee. In fact, play target golf whenever you hit a golf ball, unless you?re working on a specific swing fault. It helps you get the most out of each practice session, as many golf lessons explain.
Work on those shots that you might encounter during the tournament ?punch shots, fades, and draws. Practice any type of shot that you think might help during the tournament. Hit a few of each. Use the same techniques emphasized in golf instruction manuals.
Finally, a good pre-tournament routine includes putting. The star drill helps you get the most out of your time on the tee. Find a hole on the practice green that has a slight slope to it. Then take five balls and spread them in a star pattern around the hole about 3 feet away. Practice putting from this distance. Them move the balls out to 4 feet, always keeping them in the star pattern.
By spreading the balls out in a star pattern, you get the most common putts you?ll face on the course. Pick out a target line. Visualize the ball going in before putting. Then putt the ball. Do it just the way golf lessons recommend. Also, try lagging a few long putts, just to get the feel for it. Spend about 15 or 20 minutes putting, if you have time. There are other drills you can use in place of the star drill. The key is finding one that works for you.
Golf lessons tell you to keep your head down when putting. Use your pre-tournament routine to work on keeping your head down on putts 5 feet or less. The earlier you look up on short putts, the more likely it is you?ll miss. Many professional golfers, including Nick Faldo, wait until they hear the sound of the ball hitting the bottom of the cup or know the ball has definitely missed the cup before looking up. It?s a good way to force yourself to keep your head down.
Another challenge when playing in a tournament is that you might be playing a course for the first time. If that?s the case, find someone who has played the course and ask him or her how it plays. Find out as much information about the course as you can. That knowledge will help you during the tournament. Actually, this is good advice anytime you play a new course. Good course management can help you lower your golf handicap.
Playing in golf tournaments is fun. It?s a chance to play different formats and different courses, ones you might not play otherwise. It?s also a chance to play against golfers with a variety of golf handicaps. To play your best golf, develop a pre-tournament routine and follow it the day of the event.
About the Author:
Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book ?How To Break 80 And Shoot Like The Pros.? He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicap immediately.
The Grandest Slam The Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia
"That's Tiger's ball!" a man shouts as the little white orb shoots past me and skids to a halt some fifty feet off the fairway, perched atop needles that have settled under the high pines of the ninth hole. (Opening photo: The scoreboard below the club house, right of the first fairway.)
"That's Tiger's ball!" a man shouts as the little white orb shoots past me and skids to a halt some fifty feet off the fairway, perched atop needles that have settled under the high pines of the ninth hole. (Opening photo: The scoreboard below the club house, right of the first fairway.)
As usual, he has out-driven the players in his threesome, but this time the shot is somewhat off course. We move quickly, gathering around the ball leaving Tiger just enough room for his back swing and a clear angle through the woods to the ninth green. He crouches to inspect the trajectory his ball must travel under the low-hanging branches and up the slope toward the yellow flag that marks the hole.
He confers briefly with his caddy and without hesitation pulls an iron from his golf bag, lines up the shot and, WHOOSH! He takes what has become one of the most recognizable and enviable swings in the game. The ball stays low for some 40 feet slipping under the trees before coming into the clear and climbing the hill in a perfect loft to reach the green and land inside 25 feet from the pin. The patrons, as spectators are known at this event, erupt in cheers sprinkled with expressions of "Get in the hole!" and "You're the man!"
Halfway through the second day of the 2004 contest, we've just seen one more display of precision shot making by Tiger Woods, the game's best-known young player and its Number One icon worldwide.
We're here at the Augusta National Country Club in Augusta, Georgia, home of The Masters - golf's greatest competition. And we're here as part of this grand gathering due in large part to a young man who, nearly three-quarters of a century ago, had a magnificent idea for a golf course and a national tournament. Following his retirement from championship golf in 1930 at age twenty eight, Bobby Jones, winner of 13 major championships in the seven years prior and the game's first Grand Slam Champion (then completed by winning the U.S Amateur and U.S. Open and the British Amateur and British Open in the same year) was poised to pursue his idea of building a new kind of golf course.
He got together with Clifford Roberts, a friend of Jones since the mid- 1920s, and in 1931 the two looked to Augusta with its Georgia Pines, soft hills, and temperate climate as the place to realize their dream. They purchased the 365-acre property called Fruitland Nurseries and retained Dr. Alister Mackenzie as architect for what would become Augusta National.
Jones' vision was for a course that would utilize the natural advantages of the property using mounds rather than too many bunkers to create challenges for the players. In our days at Augusta we will walk the 18 holes, sprinting over fairways and through tall pines to chase players, skirting past water hazards and sand traps, climbing over Jones' mounds and up and down the abundant hills. And more than once I will think to myself, "Man, is there any level ground on this course?"
The Augusta National Golf Club had its formal opening in January of 1933 with the first National Invitation Tournament a year later in 1934. In 1937, club members began to wear the signature green jackets during the tournament so that patrons could easily identify a reliable source of information. Just two years later, in 1939, the competition officially became known as The Masters and in 1949 the first green jacket "trophy" was awarded to Sam Snead, that year's Masters Champion.
Over the half century Fruitland Nurseries had been in business its owners had imported trees and plants from around the globe. While the nursery had ceased operation more than a decade before the tandem of Jones and Roberts arrived, there were still a wide variety of flowering plants and trees on the property. This variety included a row of magnolias, which was planted before the Civil War and another plant, popularized by the former owners, called the Azalea. Today, visitors to Augusta National enter through the main gate and drive 330 yards between the 61 Magnolia trees that line the legendary Magnolia Lane before arriving at the Founders Circle in front of the clubhouse, a building that dates back 150 years to a man named Dennis Redmond, owner of what was then an indigo plantation. In the Founders Circle are two plaques, one dedicated to Bobby Jones and the other to Clifford Roberts.
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By Jim Hollister Jetsetters Magazine Correspondent. Read Jetsetters Magazine at www.jetsettersmagazine.com
