Transcripts - Episode 26: How to Start Your Golf Season the Right Way

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Now, here's your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

Welcome to episode 26 Birdie Board podcast.

This is an exciting episode, I think, because a lot of us are finally getting to the golf

season.

It's mid-March now, so starting to see some warmer days definitely been a couple weekends

around here in the Northeast, where we probably could have gotten out in golf.

I haven't had a chance to go out in golf yet, but I'm definitely excited too.

I did join a golf league that starts in May that I'm super excited about.

I've been in a golf league once.

In that golf league, it was a handicap golf league, and I really enjoyed it.

A lot of the rules that I know today are because I played in that golf league.

I tell people all the time that if they want to learn the rules of golf, then play in

a golf league because you're not going to be able to cut corners unless of you literally

cheat.

Then, a lot of times, you're going to have other people watching you who, in my case,

actually helped me play by the rules a lot in a good, positive way.

It wasn't nitpicking.

Every once in a while, you get that one person you get paired up with that's kind of a stickler

on the rules.

That happened to me one time where I was hitting out of a bunker, and the guy was calling me

out because I didn't even notice it.

I honestly didn't.

I grounded my club in the bunker, which, if you know, is a penalty in the rules of PGA.

I was like, fine, I'll take the penalty.

I don't care that much.

I think what was bothersome to me about that wasn't so much being caught out on the

rule breakage.

I want to follow the rules, but more so, I was a par-5, and I was already hitting eight

out of the bunker, so it wasn't really going to change anything for that particular hole.

I wasn't coming back from it.

At the time, I was playing at a 32 or 33 handicap, so I was just trying to survive.

I didn't need someone to tell me to take an extra stroke out of a bunker, but those

are the rules that was fine with me.

It was a good learning opportunity for me because I don't know if I realized at that

point that you kind of ground your club.

I think just learning the rules of golf, it helps a lot when you play in a league.

I look forward to that being in a league again because I think it's going to help reinforce

those rules.

It's been a couple years since I've been in one.

The last league I played in was an 18 hole golf league.

It played once every weekend, and it traveled two different courses.

The reason I couldn't really keep up with it is a lot of times the courses were like

an hour away from me.

I have a normal job.

I have a family.

I can't just drive an hour and play golf every single weekend currently in my life.

I wasn't able to stay in that league very long, but this new league that I joined is just

a nine hole golf league.

I've been doing this for a long time.

I'm going to be doing it on Mondays.

It's at a course that's just 30 minutes away.

I always know I'm going to the same course.

I'm really excited about that.

I'll share updates.

I'm hoping that it really helps me with my golf game in general this season.

I think playing competitive golf, as I've talked about on this podcast, is a really big

differentiating factor that can help improve someone's golf game.

With that being said, like I mentioned, it's been March, kind of near the end of March.

For a lot of the country, we're finally getting into golf season.

The question is, what can you do today to help you best set up for this upcoming golf

season?

There's a lot of things you can do.

The first thing is just managing your expectation versus reality.

The thing you do not want to do is just go out and expect that you're just going to be

firing on all cylinders.

You're going to play the best golf you've ever played.

It's just not going to happen.

I think the thing that people just expect is their consistency will roll over from last

season.

That's just not true.

There's going to be parts of your game that will stay consistent in parts that are not.

It could feel like this.

Depending on your game, I think this is probably what's going to be most common for people.

Even a lot of your long irons and drives and longer clubs that have more error, especially

left to right error, are not going to be dialed in.

What this means is you're probably going to struggle more than normal off the tee box.

You're going to struggle more than normal off of your long irons.

As you get closer to the green, you might get a little bit more fine-tuned.

Then, I think once you get on the putting service, you're actually going to see it

regress a little bit again.

Depending on the type of putter you are.

If you're all about feel, then you're going to struggle a lot probably at the beginning

of the golf season because you don't have that feel dialed in.

If you're more of a mechanical putter, then you might be able to pick up right where you

left off just because you're relying on your mechanics.

One isn't better than the other.

Personally for me, I'm more of a feel putter.

I know just my nature in general is more mechanical and more analytical, surprisingly

I'm more of a feel putter.

It takes me a couple rounds to get my putting dialed in.

I can help offset that though, and I have in previous seasons.

It's very easy to practice putting in your house, especially for a feel putter.

You just get one of those putting mats and just constantly be putting inside your house.

Very easy way to make sure you can hit the ground running at the beginning of the season,

especially for your putting.

You're going to have really good shots.

It's just the nature and I think there's a psychological reason for that.

Sometimes at the beginning of a golf season, you don't have as many swing thoughts going

through your mind depending on how much you've practiced prior to the season.

You might be able to go into the golf game really refresh, which means you're probably

going to have some really good shots.

Another thing you need to remember though, as part of that process, if you're working

on a new swing, you're going to end up regressing to your natural tendencies, which might not

be what you want.

It's not necessarily something to be aware of.

You don't really want to try to think about your swing while you're playing, but as you're

practicing and preparing for this season, just know that if you tend to always slice

it off the tee box, if you don't think that's fixed yet, the chances are you're probably

going to slice it off the tee box.

Just be ready and expecting that.

That's just all about expectations versus reality.

We did talk about a lot of the early mistakes that golfers make in a golf season.

One of those is just going into the course with incorrect expectations, thinking that

they're just going to hit the ground running too much.

Another thing is focusing too much on your swing in those first few rounds.

A lot of people, and you've probably heard of it, they're like, oh, I'm just getting

my swing back.

I'm getting used to things again.

I've said that sort of things before.

I don't think that's the best mentality, because we need to get into the mindset of how are

we going to shoot our best rounds?

Our best rounds isn't going to play playing around, thinking about our swing the whole

time through.

I think that's what the driving range is for.

If you are going to play around and you're thinking about your swing, I would recommend

not keeping score so you're not tempted to cross those lines in your mind.

You really want to start training your mind where when you're playing around for a score,

let that round be for the score.

Don't try to be a practice round.

If it's going to be a practice round, let it be a practice round.

Don't try to play for a score.

I think the easiest way to dictate that's something that a practice round is doing redo

shots so that you aren't even able to keep score.

Of course, pace of play is important, so be cognizant of that.

If you're able to play practice round, especially early on in the season, and just play without

keeping score.

I think that's one of the best ways to get back into it a little bit and give yourself

a lot of practice.

If you hit a ball and you lose it, no big deal, just hit it or retie it, hit it again.

You miss a long putt, no big deal, drop a ball from your pocket, try it again.

I think I would actually recommend trying to do this sort of play early in the season.

In the more I talk about, I think it's going to be something I even try at least one weekend

where I just get out there, bring a bucket of balls, try to go out at a non-peak time,

which is easier to kind of time at the beginning of the season.

Sometimes you don't have as many golfers, and just do a practice round and take redo

shots and really try to hone in skills.

Maybe if you hit your ball in the bunker, take a couple shots out of the bunker, things

like that.

It really helps with the good practice.

Another thing to think about for like biggest early season mistakes is how do people usually

react to bad holes?

In general, I just want you guys to expect that to happen early in the season.

At any point, really, you're going to have bad holes, but you're going to have more

of them at the beginning of the golf season just because you're trying to get back into

the game a bit and get used to things.

That's okay.

Don't sweat it.

It's going to happen.

Another thing is don't play too aggressive early.

You're not as fine-tuned to recover from bad shots.

Mid-season form, you can easily chip at 25 yards, 50 yards back into the fairway if you

had a wild drive.

You might not have that sort of precision in the first couple of games of the season.

If you try to do a big drive in it, it's really off to the right in a red-stake area.

It might be significantly harder for you to chip it back onto the fairway than it would

be in mid-season form.

Keep those things in mind that could help you as you're beginning and making sure you

don't have some of those early season mistakes.

There are some areas that you should focus on in the beginning of the season.

I think one of the things I mentioned that matters more than your swing right now is

differentiating when you're practicing your swing versus practicing and getting your mind

set right for a round of golf.

I think that's one area you should focus another is like get out to the range.

I would say more often than not.

At the beginning of the season, you're trying to refine your swing.

You're trying to get back into that season form.

A lot of us, I think all of us are still trying to improve our swings.

We don't want to spend the first few rounds improving our swings unless if you have dedicated

them to be practice rounds.

Otherwise you want to get out to the range and practice your new skills because you don't

want to get out on the course and have a bad shot, feel embarrassed about it, and then

revert back to your old tendencies because at least with your old tendencies you have

a little bit more control.

But you're never going to reach your potential.

You need to let yourself make those mistakes.

That's something that's a really easy thing to make a mistake on early in the season.

Where your focus should be is like what can I do to reinforce these new skills that I'm

trying to learn?

For example, with myself, I have been really practicing just getting more swing speed,

getting a better club path, just like a lot of us.

I have a technique right now that I use during a simulator session during the winter where

the feeling that I have while I'm swinging the club is more mechanical like throwing

a baseball or throwing a football.

By having that swing thought in my mind, it actually gets the club into the correct path.

This person or to me, that might work for you and might not, but my point is I don't

want to go into the season and try that out for a whole or two and then abandon it and

work back to my old tendencies.

Why?

Because that swing thought and that swing pattern is going to take a few rounds to enforce

in my mind.

I'm going to have a lot of bad shots because what I'm doing right now with that swing pattern

is to compensate for the out to end swing path, I had to close my club face and I could

control it and get it going straight with that sort of pattern.

It's not the best pattern, but it ended up working for me the last few seasons.

What I've done is I've gotten that in the out club path with this new swing thought,

but the problem is my club face is still closed.

What happens is you get really severe hooks with that sort of combination.

If I played the first couple holes with it, you could imagine I'd be like, well, I'm

embarrassed, I keep going far left, I keep losing balls.

I can't keep playing like this, I'm going to go back to my old swing.

Even subconsciously, I've done it a hundred times before I have a nice new swing thought,

things are seeming to progress.

I get out to the course, I feel self-conscious because of how I'm playing.

I revert back to what I have some control over.

I think that's where those practice rounds can really come in and really help mitigate

that because if I have a really bad hook off the tee box, forget about that ball, play

a junk ball.

I'll hit another one until I get a nice shot that I'm looking for while still maintaining

that mechanics.

You do that throughout a whole round.

I bet you you're going to see some really good progress, definitely something I'm going

to do early this season and something I'm really going to focus on early this season.

So a good round for you early in the season could just be establishing your new mechanics

that you're looking for.

It could be let's just get a complete round played while following the rules.

Can we get a complete round while trying to focus on things other than swing thoughts?

Things like that, you're not probably shooting your best round of the season early on.

Maybe you've had a great off season of practice, but I think most of us were just trying

to get back into it.

So don't have those expectations.

Don't look for a certain score.

Just try to get into that good rhythm.

So I think there's a few things that can really make a big difference early on.

I've alluded to a bunch of them.

I've probably talked to a bunch of them, but I think trying to establish new habits can

be another good thing that people can do.

This is something just simple that you can do as well.

Last season, what I started to do before I every round is I would try to get to the

course that gave me enough.

I tried to get to the course early enough where it gave me enough time to warm up.

What a warm up for me was quick stretch and a small bucket of golf balls.

And then I usually just stoned on the practice screen and putted until the rest of my friends

got there or my tea time arrived.

Establishing that early in the season can really help you be consistent throughout the

whole season.

So it's just kind of that habit building idea is like getting it established early is going

to play dividends throughout the season.

So I think just that warming up is really important.

You obviously see pros do that all the time.

It doesn't take much extra time.

Like I said, you could get most of it done in like 45, 30 minutes before a round.

I know it's not always possible and it doesn't mean you always have to do it every single

round.

But if you can try to do it most of your rounds, I think you're going to really benefit from

that.

Also playing with friends early in the season, I think that would be amazing for everyone.

I love playing with friends.

It's kind of a huge motivation behind birdie board in general.

When you're playing with friends though, don't let yourself get self-conscious about your

play.

Your early golf season play is not going to be great.

And just go into it with that mentality is going to help you as you play with your friends

and it's going to help you have more fun.

If you do want to play a competition with your friends early on the season, I encourage

you to.

I think that would be a lot of fun.

Choose a game mode though that is a little bit more forgiving.

A popular one is like stable forward where if you don't know, stable forward is a point-based

way to play.

So you get a number of points based off of the score you get.

So if you get a double bogey or worse, you get zero points.

If you get a bogey, you get one.

If you get par, you get two points.

If you get birdie, you get three.

Goes up from there.

But what's nice about this mode, especially early in the season, is very forgiving to

bad holes.

So the worst you can get is zero points.

So if you get a double bogey, triple bogey, quadruple bogey, plus five, all of those

are zero points.

So it's really forgiving and really good for early season play.

And a great way you can still be competitive early in your season.

Another way you could play is like a match play approach.

This is good because then like if you it's also a forgiving way where you if you have

a blow up hole, it's okay.

It's also relative to your friends, which is nice because like maybe you have a blow up

hole and hole one, but they might have a blow up hole on a whole three and it kind of evens

out in the end.

So that's another way in the really the motivation behind it in the beginning of the season is

maybe just try to stay away from typical stroke play for round or two competition golf.

Just to help you ease back into it, take the pressure off of shooting low score because

that's not the best mindset to have on early in the season and getting just a competitive

mindset like how am I going to play my game and beat my my friend.

It's harder to keep things fair when everyone's rusty, but playing different game modes can

help with that.

So I would say your first three to five rounds expects some sort of growth, you know, roughly

the first month of your playing back, throwing a couple practice rounds, throwing some competition

rounds and slowly work back to more traditional play of stroke play or something like that.

You should measure your progress early on just by getting back into the rhythm.

Try to have that feel for how things are going as you're getting back into the season.

Are you playing competitive golf?

Well, are your practice rounds going well?

Things like that.

Just a lot of feel, just a lot of self reflection.

I like this a lot.

I like how it's how it's framed.

I love the idea of having practice rounds early on.

So something you should keep in mind too is your handicaps probably not going to be accurate

at the beginning of the season anymore.

Most likely it would be a lot lower than where you are starting off at the beginning of season.

So you could use the first few rounds that you play, maybe like the first two or three

rounds.

Just don't really worry about your handicap.

Don't record your scores.

Just get out there, practice.

Maybe do a stable for match or just match play, something like that.

But put the scores in your handicap in the back of your mind for now while you're kind

of getting established again.

And then maybe the latter half of, let's say, your warm up period, let's say it's like a

month or five rounds or whatever you want to say.

Use the last couple rounds to establish your handicap.

Start seeing where you are at the season.

Are you near your handicap or you little before or a little bit behind it?

Just see kind of how you compare to how you left off last season.

It doesn't really say too much other when just kind of gauge like, okay, where's my starting

point for this season?

How far am I away from the handicap last year?

Best case scenario, you know, you're better.

That requires a lot of off season practice.

I think the common case would be you're probably a few strokes off of your handicap.

I think a lucky case or just a consistent case would be you're pretty close to what

your handicap was last season.

And I think from season to season, you can kind of just gauge it of like, how can I make

that gap smaller between where I'm starting and where my handicap finished last season?

Obviously, some of the best ways you can help improve that gap is with off season practice.

But that's not something that everyone can consistently do like a pro for obvious reasons,

depending on both like where you are in the country, your schedule.

Some people just simply need a break from golf in the off season and that's okay.

So a lot of things to think about there, but just reframe those first few rounds, have

your right expectations and move forward.

So close it all together.

Just have the right mindset going into this upcoming season.

Have a lot of fun.

Use the beginning of the golf season, just kind of get back in your form.

Set it up though for success.

Don't just go into round saying, hey, I'm going to keep track of my strokes and this will

be more of a practice round for me.

Don't say that.

Actually go into and say, hey, I'm playing stable for today or I'm doing this as a practice

round.

I'm not keeping any score and I'm going to take redo shots where possible.

Structure it so that when you're going into the round, it encourages it more than not because

otherwise you're just going to find yourself right back into it where you're compensating

your form and reverting to old habits and you don't want that.

You want to start the golf season off strong.

I hope you really enjoyed this episode of Birdie Board.

Just talking about it my episode of the Birdie Board podcast.

Just talking about it myself, I really enjoyed it.

It's given me a lot of ideas so hopefully it's given you ideas as well.

Thanks for listening.

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