Episode 27: The Right Way To Warm Up For Golf

Most golfers think the round starts on the first tee, but in reality, it starts well before that.

Before you even hit a shot, you’re making decisions. What kind of round are you playing? Are you keeping score? Are you playing a match? How competitive is this going to be? And for a lot of golfers, this is where things already start to feel a little off.

In this episode of the Birdie Board Podcast, Corey walks through a real early-season round where he tried something different: a true practice round with no scorekeeping. Instead of playing the course as-is, he focused on intentionally practicing different types of shots, from repositioning in the fairway to changing tee boxes for better yardages.

What came out of that experience was a bigger realization. The way you approach the beginning of your round, both mentally and physically, has a huge impact on how the entire day plays out.

This episode breaks down two key areas that most golfers overlook. First, the challenge of setting up a round that actually feels right for your group. Whether you're playing casually with friends or trying to keep things fair with different skill levels, that initial setup matters more than people think.

Second, Corey shares a simple and practical pre-round routine that helps you feel ready without overthinking your swing. From quick stretching to a structured range warmup and putting routine, the goal isn’t perfection. It’s getting your body loose, your mind in the right place, and your expectations set for the round.

If you’ve ever felt rushed, unprepared, or slightly off before the first hole, this episode will help you rethink how you start your rounds so everything feels smoother from the beginning.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Birdie Board Podcast is brought to you by the Birdie Board app, the easiest way to track matches, scores, and handicaps with friends. Now, here's your host, Corey, with another episode of the Birdie Board Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to episode 27 of the Birdie Board Podcast. My name's Corey. If you haven't listened to an episode yet, I've been doing this for over half a year now, so I'm pretty excited about that. Last weekend, I played my first round of the 2026 golf season. I've done a couple rounds in the simulator, but I haven't actually gotten out and played until last weekend. In the last episode, we talked about practice rounds. And if you remember, we tried to define what a good practice round would be. And one of the common themes would be to not keep your score and just go out and practice. So I tried that last weekend, and I gotta say, it was a really, really good kickoff to the season. So what I did is exactly that. I didn't keep score, but I tried to purposefully practice a lot of different types of shots. What's nice is that since I wasn't keeping score, I didn't feel like the pressure to play the shot wherever my ball ended up. For example, there was a par five. I took uh my drive off the T-box, it went okay. Um, I found that I was hooking the ball just a little bit, but I was starting to get straightened out. So it was kind of up the left-hand side, and this this particular hole had tree lines on each side. The tree lines weren't dense though. You could easily chip it out from underneath. They were very sporadic, and that's what that would be the typical play. However, when I hit it to the tree line, I decided, oh, you know what? I've already practiced this sort of shot a couple times this round. I've practiced a shorter chip shot from trouble like that. So what I decided instead is I picked up my ball and I went over to the fairway and I said, okay, I'm gonna give myself a practice of a three-wood. I took a three-wood and um had a great shot up the right hand side. I did get a generous bounce um off of the card path and it bounced kind of back into the fairway. But it was exactly what I think the practice round really represents, and that was a moment that I had where I was like, wow, this really is a good way to start the season. Because if I didn't make that decision to grab my three wood and practice that, I would have gone the whole first round without practicing my three wood at all. And that sparked an idea for me on the very next hole. I was like, well, let's continue this trend of prac purposely practicing different types of shots. So I ended up taking that same three wood again, but this time off the T-box. So got to tee it up a little bit and practice that. That's the sort of practice that I was able to get in this first round that I typically wouldn't get in a in a round where I was keeping score. So it worked out really well. Another example when I use this a little bit is a par three. So I've talked about tea boxes, right? And a big thing about tea boxes is they're usually age-based or sometimes gender-based. And I really like the idea of tea boxes being based off of your handicap. So with that, I was actually playing the forward tees as uh especially early in the season, right around a 20 handicap. And what I did was on a par three though, of the forward T was really close, it was like 100 yards. And there was a par three earlier in the day that was about the same distance. So I was like, well, let's go play one T box back, give me like a 140 shot in. If I was playing traditional stroke play golf, I wouldn't have done that, I would have stayed on my T-box, but it gave me a different yardage practice on that par three. Um, and I had a pin high shot up to the left, it wasn't on the green, but it was good practice for me. And then I had I took a second shot just real quick, dropped the ball, and I was about the direction of the pin, but probably about 15 yards short. So then I just get up to the green and I pick up my ball from the left, I drop it over uh near my ball short, and I just was able to practice two nice chip shots up onto the green. I will say at the beginning of the day, I probably bladed at least three or four of my chip shots, but I was really intentional as the day went on to take more practice with my chip shots. Uh, especially near the end of the day, the the course pace started slowing down a little bit. So uh if I could see the next T-box and I saw people were still teeing off, I would actually just hang out on the green and do some practice chips. I was able to do this because no one was behind me. I would say if there's someone behind me, I would get off the green and let them play. Um, but it was really intentional with that. It was nice to be able to get some extra chips in, get some extra putts in, things like that. One thing that came to mind as I was playing was pace of play. Uh, we were I was playing with my father-in-law, and we were paired up with someone random that we didn't know. His name was Connor. Um, Connor was a really chill guy, which helped, and I was pretty upfront with him from the beginning saying, hey, I'm gonna play practice round, I'm not keeping score. You might see me redo some shots, I'll do my best to um keep a good pace of play, and he was totally fine with that. Um, but it was in the back of my head that like I don't want to be inconsiderate to Connor, and like if he's about to go, I don't want him to wait for me to play like two shots or something like that. So I keep that in mind and I try to just be considerate as I'm playing it. It doesn't necessarily change my behavior, but it might change like if he's waiting for me to do a shot, I'll do my shot, and then he does his shot, and then maybe I take my redo shot. So I wouldn't like do my redo shot twice back to back or something like that, because that could throw him off while playing. Another thing I did a lot to help with pace of play is I would let my father-in-law just take the cart, and then I would grab a couple clubs, a couple balls, and um walk a big portion of the hole. This was nice because I could easily take a redo shot and not really slow slow anyone up. Um, or if I had a really bad shot, which definitely happened yesterday, as it's kind of meant to be with a practice round. Um I was playing junk balls, so I just kind of didn't even go and get that particular ball and just played uh the next one that I would hit. Uh so overall, definitely would recommend trying that out, a pure practice round for your golf season. Um I'm thinking whether or not I'm gonna do it again. I it's Easter weekend. I probably will play golf, uh, but I don't know if I will be in quite the situation where I could play purely like a practice round. I I was thinking I was going back and forth. Well, maybe I just do a shorter T-box to help alleviate the pressure a little bit. Um, or maybe I just do it on the front nine, or maybe I just try my best to play an actual round, but I give myself unlimited mulligans. I'm not sure I'm gonna think about it a little bit more, but I think having a lot more relaxed round at the beginning of the season is really beneficial. So I would definitely would recommend it if you um are just getting out, play a practice round where you're not keeping score and give yourself the ability to take redo shots, but also um pick up your ball and put your ball in positions to give yourself purposeful practice while playing. So on this episode of Birdie Board, besides the update of the practice round, I wanted to kind of talk about it. It was in my mind of like what is a good pre-round routine. And I think it's a probably a little bit different for everyone, but I found some things that work really well for me. If your course has a range, the obviously the obvious thing is to go on the range before the round starts. The goal is not to fix your swing, and it's gonna be really important for you to not let those swing thoughts into your mind. Uh look at it as like a physical activity, like you're playing about to go play basketball or something, that will help you get your mind right because instead of thinking about it, oh, I need to refine my swing, you're like, I'm just warming up. I'm getting my muscles loose, I'm getting the blood flowing. A big thing in sports is injury prevention, and and with injury prevention, that one of the biggest things you can do is having a proper warm-up. So, a routine that I have learned about that I really like is this you get to the course and you spend five to ten minutes with purposeful stretching. Now, it doesn't have to be much, just loosen up your back, especially do like um toe touches. You could do active stretching or passive stretching. So, passive stretching is like you just go down and reach your toes and you hold it. Active stretching is like you reach down to your toes, or maybe you reach down to your right toe and then stand up, reach down to your left toe, and it's almost like a rep count. I I like doing maybe like one or two passive stretches if I'm really tight, just to kind of like get the blood flowing a little bit, but I'll pretty quickly move to active stretching. And the reason being is the golf swing is obviously very active, so doing a little bit more active stretch stretching is a little bit more aligned with what you're about to do in your physical sport. Um, focus on your legs. Uh, if you do like a toe touch, that's gonna really help your with loosen up your hamstrings, but it's also gonna help loosen up your lower back, which is really important in a golf swing. Um, rotations, uh just kind of like swinging your elbows back and forth and twisting your torso is obviously really good for loosening up your back. If you do like a side bend, that's gonna help loosen up your obliques. Um, I also like personally doing a lot of hip exercises. So if you look up like a hip opener, it's more of an active stretch. I really like doing that. It kind of gets my hips loose and really um ensures that I'm ready to fire my hips through a golf swing. Nowadays I can get through this routine in literally like five minutes, maybe ten if I spend some extra time on certain stretches if I'm feeling tight. But I always feel better during the round when I get time to properly stretch. If I only had to choose between like the drive range, putting and stretching, I would probably choose stretching just because it can really activate your muscles and make sure you're ready to go for the round. Otherwise, the first one or two holes is gonna be your body just stretching out and warming up. Plus, it's a great way to help prevent injury. So on the range, I really like the way Tiger Woods warms up. So he starts with his lowest club, uh, so typically a wedge and moves up from there to your driver. And the frequency and the amount of shots you take at each club will decrease as you go toward your driver. And then the reason you end with your driver is to try to mimic what you're gonna do on the first hole. So typically, a lot of courses will be a driver off the first hole, but if you're playing a course that's not a driveable first hole, you might want to go to your driver and then end with a different club. And the idea is to try to mimic what is that first T shot gonna be. Um, and you're moving from more of a practice mindset to like, okay, let's compete. So as you're working through, you might take your 56, maybe like five or ten shots, do 50 degree, maybe eight shots, pitching wedge, maybe seven, six shots, um, moving all the way up to your your driver where you maybe take three or four shots off your driver. So approach it like a practice, so and not in the sense of like you're thinking about your swing, but more so in the sense of um maybe the first two drivers are just like, okay, I'm just gonna tee it up and hit it. But you do want to move your mind and get your mental mindset into the right state so that you can uh mimic what you're about to do on the course. So I would say for at least two of your drives, line it up like you're about to be on the teebox. Imagine you're on the first T or some T on the course and you're about to do a drive. Get your mindset in that. Something that I even like to do is try to almost build up a little bit of anxiety just so I can help handle it a little bit. So I'm like, okay, I'm Corey, you're about to tee off. Everyone's watching you. Um, this is the first tee, you have extra people watching you. Like, almost try to build up that anxiety purposefully a little bit just so that you can practice handling that. And then it will be less jarring on the first T box if it happened, and most likely it's gonna be happened than how you happened differently than how you imagined it to be. That's been really helpful to me to kind of just practice that mindset, and it's a great way to practice the control of your mental state too, and warm that up a little bit in the beginning. So I mentioned trying to mimic like the first club you're gonna take. Uh, driver is the most common. You can do the same with the seven iron, or maybe it's a weird like first part three, something like that, and you're starting with a pitching wedge. So you can decide what you want to play and what you want to do right off the start. Um, it's pretty easy to just look at a scorecard and see what you're gonna be starting with to make that decision. So once you go ahead and do uh your warm-up routine on the driving range, you might want to go ahead and go to the putting green. Uh, I think at least half of your practice should be probably putting green warming up. And if you think about that, well, typically like half of our score, maybe maybe a little less, is putting, depending on how good you are. I think the better you are, the the more important putting is from a scoring perspective. So if you think about it just like if someone averages two putts a hole, that's 36 putts. An amateur is probably doing like 40 putts. If they're also an amateur, they're probably doing out a hundred shots in a round, maybe give or take. So that's 60 shots at our wedge or further, and then 40 putts. So if you try to take that math, that's 40% putting, 60% full swings or or wedges. That's the ratio you might want to try to uh tackle with how you're warming up. Spend 50 to 60% of your time maybe on the the range, and then 30 to 40% of your time on the putting green. Um, it can be kind of up to you. Try to mimic it based off of your own game to kind of practice that. Uh, but I think it's it can't be an understatement to emphasize how important putting is to the game. At this point, you're all warmed up, though. You've you've stretched, you have a decent decent range session, and then you've done putting green and you're ready to go. A lot of times, uh I would like personally to do like putting green first and then range session, but usually courses aren't set up to be conducive to that. Usually you do the range first and then when you're waiting for your tea time, which you're you're putting, which is typically near the first tea. Um, or or maybe the starter standing near the tea box just waiting to call you, or it's sorry, the green waiting to call you, things like that. So a lot of things you can consider with that. Um, I I have been able to go through this routine almost every time I go off. I think I can get through it probably at the fastest, maybe a half hour, um, depending on the course, and then sometimes it slows down to like 45 minutes or so. I just try to get to the course maybe 45 minutes early. Uh and it's not always the case. It's like some days I have early tea time and I'm not gonna hit the range. Like it's not like a hard rule that you have to follow, but if you really want to practice getting better, um having a good warm-up routine is gonna be really beneficial. So I hope you found this uh episode of the Birdie Board Podcast valuable. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Thanks for tuning in to the Birdie Board Podcast. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and share it with a friend who loves golf as much as you do. And before your next round, grab the Birdie Board app, free on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and let it handle the scoring while you enjoy the game.