Six weeks before your first proper round
Movement, then the short game, then distances and the bag. And why winter rounds on mats tell you almost nothing.
Most golfers begin the season with the round that should have been the warm-up. Six weeks of unglamorous work before the first tee time turns March into a head start rather than a month of discovering what stopped working over the winter.
Weeks one and two: movement before speed
The first sessions are about getting the body turning again, not about ball flight. Short irons, half swings, twenty balls at a time, and stop before it hurts. Golfers who spend February hitting drivers off a wet mat produce the classic early-season 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 lay-off, so a fortnight there arrives on the course as scoring. A putting mat at home and twenty low running chips a week is enough.
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 shiny, a wedge with finished grooves, and the gap under the pitching wedge you meant to fill last year. All three cost less in March than in June.
The equipment jobs before the first round
- Regrip anything shiny. A few pounds a club, the cheapest improvement in golf.
- Replace the spikes if the tips have rounded off.
- Empty the bag completely. Everybody finds three balls, a hardened glove and a rules card from four seasons ago.
- Have the loft and lie checked on irons played for several seasons.
Book the lesson now, not in June
A swing change needs two to three weeks to stop feeling wrong, and doing that in April costs nothing because you are not scoring yet. Doing it in July costs the summer. Teaching diaries are also emptier in early spring.
The first round is not a test
Play it from a tee forward of your usual one, in a fourball you enjoy, without a card. The point is to walk round a golf course for four hours, not to discover whether the handicap survived. Everybody who treats the first round as an examination shoots eight over their average.
Winter courses lie to you
Rounds played on mats and temporary greens tell you almost nothing about where your game is. If you have been playing through the winter, treat March as the start of the season anyway: the ball flight off a mat and the pace of a proper green are different sports.
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 two shots ahead.
