255: FundaMENTALS – Pre-Shot Routine: Four Steps for a Solid Process

Podcast Transcript

Every good golf shot starts with a good pre-shot routine. But we’re not talking about the amount of waggles you take or looks at the target you take or putting your routine on a stopwatch and making it exactly 17 seconds. What we’re actually talking about here is a mental pre-shot routine. The steps you take to put yourself in the best mentality before you take the club back.

On this episode, we’re going to go through the four pillars of any great pre-shot routine. And as a bonus, I want to give you a dead simple scientifically proven breathing exercise that you can do during your pre-shot routine that will help you relax and slow your heart rate down.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Mental Golf Show. As always, I am your host, Josh Nichols. I’ve been a mental golf coach for over six years and I’ve been playing competitive amateur golf for over 20 years, during which I have played in six USGA events and I made it to the finals of the US mid-amateur.

And this is episode two of our new series called FundaMENTALS where we are working through the 18 most important features of any great player’s mental game. Yes, there are at least 18 different ways to improve your mental game. Who’d have thought?

So let’s go ahead and dive into building a solid pre-shot routine.

Step one of any great pre-shot routine is picking a good target. A lot of us don’t really know where we’re trying to hit when we step up to hit a golf shot. We kind of say, let’s just aim at the fairway or let’s just aim towards the flag.

These are just obvious things that we’re supposed to aim at or don’t hit it out of bounds. Don’t hit it left. Don’t miss it in the bunker. Don’t come up short. Don’t chunk it. Don’t hit it too far by whatever. All of these things are not picking a good target. Picking a good target is much more specific and data informed than this. So it all starts with kind of knowing your shot dispersion. So on a tee shot, the typical PGA Tour player has a left to right total dispersion with their driver.

of about 60 yards. And now they’re the best players in the world and they’re hitting at about 300 yards. So you, depending on how far you hit it and how accurately you hit it, will have a different dispersion. You know, with an eight iron, you have a certain range of shots that you can hit. You can hit some long, short, left or right. So within that circle, that’s your shot dispersion. So in order to pick a good target, you have to first know your shot dispersion. And good thing for us, we are surrounded by

Josh Nichols (02:21.506) golf apps, GPS apps, stat tracking apps, almost all of these can do some sort of shot dispersion tracking or shot tendency sort of tracking. There’s really no excuse anymore to not know where you actually hit the ball. But once you have that information, then you can use that information to actually pick a data informed target. So on T-shots, instead of just aiming down the middle where your shot dispersion includes being in the trees or potentially even being out of bounds,

you can shift your target and you might even be aiming towards a bunker or the left rough or something. But all of the potential outcomes that are included in that cone of dispersion are way better than when you were aimed in the middle of fairway. And same goes for an approach shot. If you look at the GPS view over a green and you take the circle of your total dispersion pattern and you put it right over the hole, you will almost always be including some short-sighted bunkers or

potentially water hazards or just not great places to be. So if you shift your circle of dispersion pattern away from the hole towards the middle of the green, you’re going to only include good outcomes for that approach shot. And then there’s like the picking the actual yardage or distance of the approach shot. A lot of us just laser the flag or look at our GPS watch and say,

Okay, it’s 153 to the hole. So I’m gonna grab my 153 club and just try to hit it as good as possible. But you’re probably ignoring like seven different factors like lie, condition, temperature, slope, wind, elevation, all of these things will affect how far the ball will actually fly. So you start with that 153 number, but then you gotta take your shot dispersion.

and move it away from the flag to where you actually want to hit it might add three or four yards just by moving that circle to be more like 157. And then you got to add three yards for elevation slope, whatever. And it’s into the wind. So you got to add another five, but the ground is firm. So you got to subtract. Yes, this math can get kind of complicated, but you can simplify it to where you have a simple step-by-step math progression that you do of, okay, it’s uphill three. It’s end of the wind five.

Josh Nichols (04:37.592) So here’s my final number that I’m trying to hit it. So that’s a very detailed math oriented version of picking an approach shot target. Another one would be kind of allowing yourself a range of yardages that you could hit. So if you put your shot dispersion circle, let’s say in the middle of the green, then you can say, okay, anywhere from 145 to 165, I’m good anywhere in there. So I’m gonna pick a club that will ideally land in the middle of that. But if I hit it a little short, it’s okay.

If I hit a little long, it’s okay. It kind of frees you up because you say, I can hit it anywhere in this circle and I’ll be okay. So that’s, you know, picking approach shot targets on putting and chipping. It really involves more of a feel-based thing. So you can walk around the hole, look at the putt or the chip from all angles. Look at the slope. Is it uphill downhill? Walk all the way around to the other side of the hole. Get a better idea of the read. Maybe you do something like aim point, but the point here is

you are not just standing behind the ball and just whacking it towards the hole and hoping for the best. You are actually picking a good target based on some sort of decision-making process. That’s probably better than 80 % of golfers. So that’s step one of any great pre-shot routine, which is picking a good target, which naturally leads into step two of any great pre-shot routine is committing to your target. I think we all have a pretty good idea of what commitment doesn’t feel like. It’s that feeling over the ball of second guessing, doubting,

Maybe you’re even changing your strategy or wishing you were hitting a different club while you’re over the actual golf ball. That truly does not feel good and you almost always make a bad swing or a bad putt because of it. So what does commitment actually feel like? Something I like to say is commitment is knowing what you’re trying to do on this shot and liking what you’re trying to do on this shot. So the knowing what you’re trying to do comes from that first step, which is picking a good target. I know based on this decision-making process that

this is what I’m trying to do with this golf shot. And then liking what you’re trying to do on this golf shot is more of a, can see myself being able to do this. I believe in my ability to do this. A good way to like what you’re trying to do on the shot is to ask yourself, can I hit this shot eight out of 10 times successfully? If you answer that question and say, this is more like a four out of 10, then it’s probably going to be really hard to commit to that target. You’ll be too busy second guessing the decision in the first place. So you have to

Josh Nichols (07:00.12) change your decision to something you can do eight out of 10 times. But that’s why you pick a good target because you know based on actual data, this is where I should be aiming. So naturally I will know what I’m trying to do on the shot because of that. And then I will like it because I know it’s actually based on my own golf data. So then the feeling of commitment is more like a clarity and a finality. You come to this final decision that you can actually choose to go with.

before you even step into the ball. And as you’re committing to your target, you’re also sort of simultaneously doing step three of any good pre-shot routine, which is pre-accepting the result. And if you remember, you will know that we talked about this in episode one of Fundamentals, so if you haven’t seen that, go check it out. But to hit pre-acceptance briefly here, the opposite of pre-acceptance is fear. When you are afraid of a potential outcome, that outcome is unacceptable to you. When an outcome is unacceptable to you,

you will naturally fear the result. But why does pre-acceptance free you up from that fear? Because when you can genuinely say, this shot can go anywhere and I will be okay, then there is no longer anything to be afraid of. And when there’s nothing to be afraid of, there’s no reason to swing scared. And because we’ve picked a good target and we’ve committed to that target, we have made pre-acceptance much easier because we’ve taken into account all of the potential outcomes and chosen our target based on that. So we can see, okay,

the mistakes that I make are acceptable because I’ve chosen a good target that includes acceptable mistakes. And all of this leads to that pre-acceptance. And if you have pre-accepted the outcome, then fear has no teeth. And as a by-product of doing all of these three steps really well, you by nature get step four of the pre-shot routine, which is letting it rip with freedom. If you haven’t done step one of picking a good target very well,

then you’ve got nothing to commit to. So then you’re not doing step two of committing to your target very well, which will lead to that underlying doubt. And if there’s doubt in the back of your mind, this potential bad outcome, then there’s no pre-acceptance. So you’re not doing step one, two or three very well. And then if there’s not pre-acceptance, then there’s no freedom. Freedom comes from doing the first three steps well. The first three steps of any good pre-shot routine earn you the right to swing freely. Freedom over the golf ball is a symptom.

Josh Nichols (09:24.204) You can’t force it. You can’t make yourself free up over the golf ball. You can’t make yourself swing freely. It’s just like you can’t make yourself fall asleep. You have to let yourself fall asleep. You have to create the conditions for good sleep. And then sleep is a byproduct. So if you’re trying to score yourself on how well you did your routine, freedom can be your metric. If you weren’t very freed up on the golf shot, then something else was off within your routine. But if you’re freed up,

and you swing freely, then you have nailed the routine. So I promised you a bonus breathing exercise to do during your pre-shot routine. And my favorite is what’s called the physiological sigh. Basically the physiological sigh is taking a full deep breath in and then a full exhale out. Not really sure why it has that fancy name, but it’s basically full deep breath in, full deep breath out. The best time to do this is after you’ve done the first three steps of the pre-shot routine and you’re standing behind the ball.

You’re about to step into it. But before you step into it, you do the physiological side. You stand there, you take your full deep breath in, let your full deep breath out, and then you step into the ball. But you can’t step into the ball until you complete the breath. What this does is it slows you down. The first few times you do this, it’s going to feel like an eternity. You’re going to feel like you’re standing there, everyone watching you. Why isn’t he stepping into the ball? Why isn’t she stepping into the ball? But the slowing down is an essential part of telling your brain

that things are okay, that there’s nothing to be afraid of, which as we know leads to freedom. So we’ve got these four steps of a good pre-shot routine plus the breathing exercise, but it’s more than just knowing it. It’s more than just listening to me talk about it right here. You have to practice it. The way to practice it, the way that I did it, the way that I’ve seen other people do it is to go through your pre-shot routine as many times as possible across the board of all of your golf. So that’s in practice. That’s on the putting green. That’s in casual rounds.

That’s in warmups, that’s in tournament rounds, going through your pre-shot routine as much as possible is how we shift it from this conscious checklist process to this subconscious thing that you just do that always puts you into that freed up mentality. And I think a really good way to make sure that you’re staying accountable to this would be a post-round journal. After your round, you can ask yourself, how well did I stick to my pre-shot routine today? Did I abandon it after some bad shots or did I stick with it through the bad shot?

Josh Nichols (11:51.82) Or you could ask yourself how freed up was I? You could score yourself. How many shots was I freed up? This is something that I’ve been doing lately. I will score myself on how committed I am or how freed up I am and I’ll get a percentage of total shots. And that percentage, that kind of mental score is way more important to me than the actual physical score that I end up with. Because I know that’s what I can actually control. I can’t control where the ball goes or what I shoot. I can control going through my pre-shot routine on every golf shot.

So believe it or not, I have actually gone deeper on the pre-shot routine than this. I just released a digital course called the perfect pre-shot routine. We get into the science behind the pre-shot routine. We go through a systematic step-by-step process. I break down how to choose targets using shot pattern, my favorite GPS app, based on my dispersion pattern. We go through some practical exercises for you to take what you’re learning in the course onto the practice facility or onto the golf course.

There’s downloadables, exercises, step-by-step things, checklists and whatnot. There’s lots of cool stuff in there. I think that will take your knowledge and turn it more into action. So that’s the four steps of our pre-shot routine. Pick a good target, commit to your target, pre-accept the results, and let it rip with freedom. If you’re doing all four of those well, then you are nailing the controllables.

If you enjoyed this episode, you’ll probably love my weekly newsletter, The Mental Re-Grip. Every Wednesday I share personal stories and lessons I’m learning about the mental game of golf — things I don’t always get to on the podcast. You can sign up at joshnicholsgolf.com/newsletter.

All right, everyone, thanks for stopping by for another episode of The Mental Golf Show. I’m Josh Nichols, and I will catch you guys next time.