The twenty-minute warm-up that saves the first three holes
Move before you swing, start short, find today's ball flight, and get the sunscreen and water in before the first tee.
Arrive ten minutes before the tee time, hit six drivers, set off: that is how most rounds begin. The first three holes then serve as the warm-up, and the card has gone before it started. Twenty minutes changes that.
Move before you swing
Cold muscles produce a short, hurried swing. Five minutes of movement — arm circles, gentle trunk rotations with a club across the shoulders, a few lunges — restore the range. This is not a workout, it is a start.
If something hurts, stop and get it looked at; none of this is medical advice.
Short before long
Begin with the wedge, half swings, feet together. That stance forces balance and centres the strike. Ten balls. Then three-quarter swings with a mid-iron, ten balls. The driver last, five balls at most.
The range before a round is not for fixing the swing. It is for discovering today’s ball flight and accepting it.
Find today’s shot
Some days the ball goes left, some days right. The player who spends the round fighting the shape gives away five shots. The one who identifies it and aims accordingly plays to handicap. Ten balls with the same club, around 130 metres, show the shape for today.
What almost everybody skips
Ten minutes on the putting green, and not on one-metre putts. Roll long putts to calibrate pace, the only piece of information that genuinely changes from course to course and day to day. On couch greens in summer the pace changes through the morning as well. Then a few chips from the fringe.
If you only have ten minutes
- Three minutes of movement, no club.
- Two minutes of half wedges.
- Five minutes of long putts.
Skip the driver: you will hit it on the first tee anyway, and a warm body and calibrated putting pace matter more.
Early tee times, and heat
Half the country plays at first light through summer, which means warming up at 5.30am on a body that has just got out of bed. That is the case for lengthening the movement section, not shortening it. It also means sunscreen and a full water bottle before the first tee, not at the turn — by the ninth it is already late.
Winter mornings down south
In Melbourne, Adelaide and Tasmania the first tee in July is close to five degrees. The ball flies shorter: one club more on the opening holes is the rule, not the exception.
After the round
Two minutes of easy stretching does more for tomorrow than anything else.
