#156 Web TV: How to Play Your Driver First Shot on the First Tee

How to Play Your Driver First Shot on the First Tee

You know when you are standing on the first tee and it’s a bit nerve racking? You’re feeling a little bit unsure, you’re feeling that you should go hard and fast with your golf swing and really boom the drive down the fairway and if the drive works, yes, that’s good. But if it doesn’t work it wrecks your confidence and you feel like you have written yourself off already and, you have only played one shot?

I’m going to show you a way in which you can deal with that and start off confidently so that you are not putting any pressure on yourself and you feel much happier in the beginning of your game, rather than feeling really stressed out.

You know how you are standing on the first tee and you are about to start your comp round, it’s a little bit nerve racking and you do want to perform well? You haven’t even warmed up your swing or anything like that, you feel like you have rushed down to the tee, it usually happens to quite a lot of people I know, rushing down the tee and then bang, hit a ball, it hasn’t worked that well, then you feel that this is how you will play for the rest of the day and it’s only been one shot! One shot!

How about you start in a different way. I’m going to show you a way in which you can start the game. A very simple way. Change the way that you approach you actual first shot so that it will set you up for better success for your round.

Here we are, on the first tee and we are about to play our shot, we have not done a warm up, we have been a little stressed this morning because we have been running a little late, we want to start well because we know that today is the day that all our golf is going to come together but we’re not sure how to make it happen.

I’ll show you what usually happens to people when they first tee off. This could be you. They get flustered and do a big, hard swing and crunch, the ball has gone all over the place.

I wonder why that happens, there have been no practice swings, not even into the nets for a practice, you’re quite stressed and worked up about the morning and you haven’t even started to play your golf yet. You are going to carry that onto the golf course with you and you haven’t allowed yourself to actually settle down.

You are going to start of aggressively, stressed out and you are going to think that the shot didn’t work and then you think that is it for me today, that’s going to dictate my day. It’s only the one shot, the first shot.

Now, we’re going to approach it a different way. We’re going to start off much slower. It usually takes about three to four holes for people to warm up, that might be you, as well, it’s quite common to start getting the feel the first three or four holes but the problem is that you have already wasted those. We don’t want them to be wasted, we want to make sure that we start off strong.

All I want you to do is a nice, easy practice swing. Slow. What you want is a nice slow rhythm to begin with because that’s how you want to start from the tee. It’s going to feel a little strange because if you are hard and fast from the word go, it’s going to feel really different for you. But, how you approach your golf game is to start off slow, take it easy, get the feel of the stroke, start to find your rhythm. You have no rhythm when you come onto the first tee, it doesn’t exist. You need to create it. What you want to do is to play at this pace all the way down the fairway.
Once you have established this nice, easy pace, then you keep doing it. You don’t change anything, you maintain it. It’s probably very different from how you are starting.

Just do a nice, little, easy practice swing and then all you want to do is when setting up for where we want the ball to go, obviously straight down the centre, get set, work on that nice easy rhythm we want to create, having the same feeling that we had in the practice swing, we go back and then we go through. Nice and easy, not trying to force the ball away, just trying to create the feeling of how we want to start off for the round. I hope that makes sense.

If you are getting quite stressed about your game, start off slower, do everything so much slower and then build it from there.

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Have an absolutely awesome day, take care, and remember; Tee it high and Let it fly.