I've never really had a proper pre-shot routine. I've tried a few times: look at the green three times, take a deep breath, let the club bob loosely in my hand. Every time, I'd forget it again after three holes at the latest because something else came up. A comment from a fellow player, a bird flying in a strange way, my own impatience.
What really interests me isn’t so much the routine itself, but why it actually makes a difference if you stick with it. After all, there’s nothing magical about it. From a purely physical standpoint, three waggles with the club don’t change a thing about the swing that follows. Nevertheless, a European Tour study of nearly 23,000 swings found that the sheer consistency of time spent over the ball correlates with better results—not how long, but how reliably consistent the duration is, shot after shot.
That makes more sense to me now that I’ve been trying to “THE BUNKER” instead of just playing. A golfer who digs his feet into the sand before even starting his swing—that’s basically the same movement as the waggle at the tee. No technical benefit. Just a transition. The body apparently needs a signal that the serious part is about to begin; otherwise, it slips directly from the tension of waiting into the swing, without a moment in between to gather itself.
I started taking this more seriously after I noticed that my worst shots were almost always the ones where I skipped this intermediate step—quickly set up, quickly swung, because people were already waiting behind me or I was still annoyed from the last hole. Not because the swing itself was worse. It’s because I’d never really settled in before I let it go.
I still don’t have a real routine because of that. But I’ve come to notice when it’s missing, and that’s probably half the battle.
If you want to look at this with actual numbers: Practical Golf on the European Tour study about time spent over the ball. And if you want to see what that one intermediate step feels like, right before the actual movement begins: THE BUNKER.
— Ralf List
