Six weeks before the season you actually care about
Movement, then the short game, then distances and the bag. And plan the season around the heat rather than against it.
Australian golf has no closed season, but it has a rhythm: the southern courses come good in spring, the northern ones become bearable in autumn, and most club calendars build towards summer. Six weeks of unglamorous work before the season you care about turns September into a head start.
Weeks one and two: movement before speed
The first sessions are about getting the body turning again after a winter of fewer rounds, not about ball flight. Short irons, half swings, twenty balls at a time, and stop before it hurts. Golfers who go straight to drivers produce the classic early-spring back complaint.
Weeks three and four: the short game nobody works on
This is the part that pays and the part everybody skips. Chipping and putting hold up better than the full swing over a quiet period, so a fortnight there arrives on the course as scoring. Twenty low running chips a week is enough, and on firm couch turf the low runner is the shot you will use most anyway.
Weeks five and six: distances and the bag
Two range sessions with your own balls and a rangefinder, or an hour on a launch monitor, produces a carry chart. Then audit the bag: grips gone slick after a summer of heat, a wedge with grooves finished by sandbelt bunkers, and the gap under the pitching wedge you meant to fill last year.
The equipment jobs before the season
- Regrip anything shiny. Heat and sunscreen destroy grips faster here than anywhere.
- Replace the spikes if the tips have rounded off.
- Empty the bag completely and check the sunscreen has not leaked over everything.
- Have the loft and lie checked on irons played for several seasons.
Book the lesson now, not in December
A swing change needs two to three weeks to stop feeling wrong, and doing that in early spring costs nothing because the club calendar has not started. Doing it in December costs the summer. Teaching diaries are also emptier before the season.
Plan the season around the heat, not against it
In the southern states the best golf is October to April; in Queensland and the Top End it is the dry season. Booking your important competitions and your golf trip for the right months does more for your scores than any amount of range work, and it means the six weeks of preparation land where they are useful.
The six-week plan
- Weeks 1 to 2: mobility and half swings, short irons only.
- Weeks 3 to 4: chipping and putting, three short sessions a week.
- Weeks 5 to 6: carry distances, bag audit, regrips.
- Any week: book a block of lessons while the diary is open.
None of it is difficult and all of it is dull, which is exactly why the golfers who do it start the season two shots ahead.
