Researchers stood and watched 1,040 amateur golfers before their rounds. Forty six percent did no warm-up at all. Of the ones who did, nine in ten only made a few practice swings on the first tee (Fradkin, Finch and Sherman, 2001). At a resort where golfers were asked instead of watched, 18 percent did at least two of the three things a warm-up is meant to have (Fradkin and colleagues, 304 golfers).
I understand why. Most warm-ups are trying to do the wrong job. They are trying to fix something, and you cannot fix anything in ten minutes. So people skip it.
This is my routine, cut down to ten minutes. It has two jobs, and the second one is the one almost everyone skips.
Two Job Warm-up
Job one: get loose and find today's miss. Not fix it. Find it. You learned in lesson 5 that the second decision on every approach is to aim away from the trouble, and the level above that is to aim for your miss. The warm-up is where you find out which way it is going today.
Job two: learn the speed of the greens. In lesson 4, a three putt turned into a double or worse almost half the time. Five minutes on green speed is the cheapest insurance in golf, and it is the part people leave out because it does not feel like golf.
Never fix anything. A warm-up is a bridge to the first tee. Practice is for after the round, and the plan for it comes from your log, not from the range at 7:50.
The 10 minute card
| Minutes | What | What not |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Get loose. Moving, not held. Arm circles, hip turns, a band if you carry one. | No long held stretches. In one test, 20 minutes of held stretching cost 15 competitive golfers about 4 percent of their clubhead speed and 6 percent of their distance (Gergley, 2009). Nobody has shown a ten second stretch does the same, but there is no reason to find out. |
| 3 | Swings. Wedge, mid iron, driver. Two or three balls each, or air swings if there is no range. No targets. Notice which way it is going today. | Nothing to fix. No new thought. No video. |
| 5 | Putting. Long putts first, 30 feet and out, until you have the speed. Then a few short ones with a full read, start to finish, like the first hole. | No chips inside the ten. The ten minutes do not have room, and the putting is where your strokes go. Chips are a nice to have: if you have two more minutes, hit three to five for feel, and that is all. |
The numbers on the card are mine. No study sets a ball count or a club order, and I will not pretend one does.
My own routine
Before a tournament, mine is about 45 minutes, and more than half of it is putting. Bands to get loose, moving, not held. Short putts through a gate. Five to ten minutes of putts from over 30 feet. Twenty to twenty five minutes on the range with no set routine, just finding the day's miss. Then putts inside 8 feet with a full read, and more long ones.
That is the ten minutes with the range stretched out. The shape is the same, and the shape is the point. Half of it is putting, and none of it is fixing.
What the warm-up is not
It is not where your speed comes from. The launch monitor studies since 2009 put a warm-up at about 1 to 5 percent of clubhead speed, in small groups of good golfers hitting in a bay. Nobody has measured first tee scores. So the case for the ten minutes is not the speed. It is job two. You walk onto the first green knowing how hard to hit it, and most of the group does not.
One more thing people ask about
Caffeine. Two small studies found a difference. Twelve golfers between a 3 and a 10 handicap shot 76.9 with caffeine and 79.4 without, over 36 holes (Mumford and colleagues, 2016). Twenty golfers at about a 15 handicap putted better on a drink with caffeine and carbohydrate in it, in a lab (Stevenson and colleagues, 2009). A third study, of 11 golfers, found no difference over 18 holes (reported in O'Donnell and colleagues, 2024). Three tiny studies, so I will not tell you what to do. I almost always have an energy drink before I play. That is a personal choice, not a finding.
Your one action this week
Run the ten minutes before your next round. Not playing until spring? Run it before your next indoor session, and do the putting half at home or in the office: long putts to the far wall for speed, then a few short ones with a full routine. Green speed waits for spring. The habit does not.
Start my 10
Run it at the course, or at home before an indoor session. Keep the screen on.
The app has scored lag putting drills for the five minutes on the green, so job two has a number. And logging the round starts on the first tee, which is where you were headed anyway.
30 days free at app.playready.golf. Code COURSE20 takes $20 off the annual plan, every year. Start free.
That is the course
Seven lessons and five extras. You have your ranking and you know how far to trust it. You have a budget for doubles, two decisions for every approach, a test for every tee shot, and a log that picks your practice. Then the winter, the bag, the aids, the ball, and now the first tee.
Go play. Log it. Don't judge it.