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Titleist Tips: Consistency in the Prelude to the Hit

From Justin Parsons On March 24, 2020

Watch a professional golf tournament and you’ll quickly notice that players settle into shots and pull the trigger in a wide variety of ways. Yet, despite the different waggles and shirt tugs between... players, they are all remarkably consistent when it comes to their own individual routines. In fact, as he shares in this video, Titleist Staff Instructor Justin Parsons has timed many of the world’s best and he’s found that tour player pre-shot routines are consistent down to the mili-second.

Why are elite players so precise in their pre-shot choreography? Because once they commit and take that first step forward in hitting a shot, they are on auto-pilot, in a mental state that gives them the best possible chance of hitting great shots consistently.

The good news is that getting into this state of relaxed focus is a trainable skill. It takes no special athletic ability to build an effective pre-shot routine. It just takes some experimentation with what works best for you, followed by many committed repetitions of the segment of the pre-shot routine that Justin calls the “prelude to the hit”.

To practice effectively, Justin suggests timing your prelude. Go through your pre-shot routine the next time you hit balls and use the stopwatch on your smart phone to monitor the time it takes from your first prelude step forward to when your club strikes the ball. Work on matching that time from shot to shot and soon, you’ll have a routine that gets you in the same rhythm and mental state every time - a big time secret to hitting consistent golf shots.

Watch a professional golf tournament and you’ll quickly notice that players ... settle into shots and pull the trigger in a wide variety of ways. Yet, despite the different waggles and shirt tugs between players, they are all remarkably consistent when it comes to their own individual routines. In fact, as he shares in this video, Titleist Staff Instructor Justin Parsons has timed many of the world’s best and he’s found that tour player pre-shot routines are consistent down to the mili-second.

Why are elite players so precise in their pre-shot choreography? Because once they commit and take that first step forward in hitting a shot, they are on auto-pilot, in a mental state that gives them the best possible chance of hitting great shots consistently.

The good news is that getting into this state of relaxed focus is a trainable skill. It takes no special athletic ability to build an effective pre-shot routine. It just takes some experimentation with what works best for you, followed by many committed repetitions of the segment of the pre-shot routine that Justin calls the “prelude to the hit”.

To practice effectively, Justin suggests timing your prelude. Go through your pre-shot routine the next time you hit balls and use the stopwatch on your smart phone to monitor the time it takes from your first prelude step forward to when your club strikes the ball. Work on matching that time from shot to shot and soon, you’ll have a routine that gets you in the same rhythm and mental state every time - a big time secret to hitting consistent golf shots.