The six weeks before your first round
Movement first, then the short game, then distances and the bag. Book the lesson in March, when a change has time to settle.
Most golfers start the season with the round they should have used to warm up. Six weeks of unglamorous work before the first tee time turns March into a head start instead of a month of finding out 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 into a net produce the classic early-season back complaint and lose the first month.
Weeks three and four: the short game nobody practices
This is the part of the season plan that pays and the part everyone skips. Chipping and putting hold up better than the full swing over a lay-off, so a fortnight spent there arrives on the course as scoring rather than as a swing that needs another month. 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 one hour on a launch monitor, produces a carry chart. Then check the bag: grips that have gone slick, a wedge whose grooves are finished, and the gap under the pitching wedge you meant to fill last year. All three are cheaper to fix now than in June.
The equipment jobs to do before the first round
- Regrip anything that has gone shiny. It is the cheapest improvement in golf.
- Replace the spikes if the tips have rounded off.
- Empty the bag completely. Everyone finds three balls, a glove that has hardened and a rules card from four seasons ago.
- Check the loft and lie on irons you have played for several seasons; both move.
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 you nothing because you are not scoring yet. Doing it in July costs you the summer. Teaching diaries are also emptier in early spring, which means better times and often better rates.
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 move around a golf course for four hours, not to find out your handicap is intact. Everybody who treats the first round as an examination shoots eight over their average and spends a week annoyed about it.
The six-week plan, in one list
- 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 boring, which is precisely why the golfers who do it start the season two shots ahead of the ones who do not.
