Knowing how to prepare for a golf tournament is important to any golfer, regardless of your level. After all, whether it’s a week-long stay at Augusta or a local, one-day charity fundraiser, you want to perform well no matter what—and as the old adage goes; fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

Golf coach Duncan McCarthy has worked with winners on all the main tours, and an important part of his job is to make sure that his stable of players perform at their best when it really matters. A big part of knowing how to prepare for a golf tournament is time management and ensuring you have the right level of mental and physical energy out on the course.

There are many decisions to make during the week leading up to a golf tournament, and making smarter ones can really help improve your scoring.

In this article, Duncan speaks to us about all the things golfers need to consider to get the most out of a week away on tour.

How to prepare for a golf tournament

Mondays

I would highly advise a rest day if you’ve had a tournament the previous week. So, if you are coming from a previous tournament, I would always advise a player to try and take Monday off or at least half a day. You’re often travelling anyway, but I think it’s always important to have rest time. And if you’re doing two tournaments, that’s likely 14 straight days, so you’ll need some time off. 

Seeing a course for the first time

Sometimes, players spend too much time on the range and don’t learn enough about the course. If you have a caddy, they will often walk the course and confirm lines off tees and carries, but the player should also see everything beforehand and hit the odd tee shot a couple of times to test a few clubs.

You need to know where you can miss it and where the no-go area is. Even if you win a tournament, you’ll not hit every green, so you’ll need to chip and putt a lot—you have to be comfortable on the greens, both with the pace and your course strategy.  If you achieve those things, it’s a sign that you have had some good prep days.

The pre-tournament days

Let’s say the tournament is on the weekend. I like to get my players a touch more competitive on perhaps the Tuesday and Wednesday, so it sharpens them a little bit in advance.

So, if we’re doing nine holes, I might say to them, ‘Right, you have got 45 foot total, so all of your chips have to be within 45 feet over the nine holes.’

If they finish on 44 feet, I will owe them a fiver and vice versa. Or they might do an up-and-down challenge for nine holes, where I’ll say, ‘Seven out of nine up-and-downs—you win, six is a half, and five is a loss.’

Amateurs can learn so much from the pro’s short games. Around 60-70 per cent of the game is played on and around the green, so you should always pay attention to this area. A shift in that attitude towards where you are prepping or practising is very useful for amateurs.

When on the range, have a purpose or goal and know what you want to do—whether it’s a number of balls or time allocation. You should then try and succeed and achieve that goal, rather than just going on and on aimlessly. You might hit three balls working on a swing move, then two to a target with your routine—do that 10 times, and you’ve hit 50 balls. This is a great way of doing it because you’ve got a nice mix between running your performance routine and working on your swing development. That’s a nice balance, and you’re not just ball-bashing all the time.

The warm-up

I had one player recently who would get to the 1st tee 15 minutes early, which is not advisable. You want to get to the tee four or five minutes before. You don’t want to get on the tee when the group in front are still on there; arrive when it’s empty instead.

Most golfers normally spend around 20-25 minutes on the range when warming up, then about 10-15 minutes on the chipping green, and another 10 minutes on the putting green. When you add that up, minus the walks in between to get from one area to another, you’re probably looking at about 45-50 minutes in total, which is more than enough, even for the top pros.

The early tee time

As a coach, you’ll want to be looking at what a player is doing before they go to bed before a tournament. Are they winding down, or are they actually winding up without realising it?

Unfortunately, the last thing most of us do at night before sleep is look at our phones. This gives a false sense of stimulation to the eyes and the body, making it hard to shut down. It would be more beneficial to partake in some form of meditation instead, or write a journal entry to sooth the mind. By doing this, you’re subconsciously telling yourself that you’re ready to go to bed.

The late tee time

If a golfer has a later tee time, I’d normally look at this and say, ‘What would you like to do?’  

Let’s say you have a 2pm tee time. You might get to the club for 11.30am and have some lunch first. Then, you might go to the gym or the physio truck and into your normal warm-up routine.

So, realistically, it’s just a lie-in, and you might just want to chill on the sofa and watch a bit of golf first.  

The pre-round chat

Some golfers like to have some form of a pep talk before starting, while others are in their own bubble. Working out which category you fall into here is a good step towards learning how to prepare for a golf tournament.

If I’m giving a pep talk, I’ll only go over things we’ve already spoken about anyway to reaffirm them. I wouldn’t introduce new things or ideas at that stage. I might, though, say things like, ‘You’re going to have a challenge out there,’ or ‘There’ll be part of that round today where you’ll face a challenge or an obstacle,’ and we’ll chat about how best to deal with it.

Every golfer will have negative thoughts, and they’ll probably never completely go away, but we can learn to build better relationships with them. As a golfer working towards a big tournament, you’re naturally going to focus on the worst-case scenarios and outcomes, and that’s fine—but don’t forget about the best-case outcomes, too. At least give yourself a chance to walk off the 18th green and say, ‘You know what, I was proud of what I did today.’

And if you can say that most of the time, you’ve done alright.

The evenings

It’s important to mix with the right people when overnight stays are involved. I’d always rather sit by myself and order room service than go out with people who are going to drain me. But when I do go out for dinner, I make sure I’m with good people.

On the PGA Tour in the US, many golfers stay in host houses or Airbnbs because there’s more normality involved, and you can do things similar to what you would at home. You have to be switched on and make sure what you’re eating and drinking will benefit you rather than hinder your performance or sleep.

Ultimately, you want to go back to your hotel room after dinner thinking, ‘I really enjoyed that. Those were good people, and that was a good conversation.’

Golden rule: Don’t talk about missed putts or waste energy complaining about this or that over dinner, and then go to sleep on those thoughts later on because you’ll only reinforce them further in your subconsciousness while you’re asleep.

The article below was written by Jack Backhouse of National Club Golfer.

In lessons, golfers always say that they just want to hit the ball straight, but are they going about this all wrong? In the video below, PGA Professional Jack Backhouse explains why you never want to hit the ball straight.

The straight shot is the hardest shot in golf

Contrary to what most amateur golfers believe, the straight shot is the hardest one to play because of just how many things you have to do perfectly!

To execute a straight golf shot, you have to have a 0-degree club face, and strike the ball exactly out of the sweet spot of your club. This is obviously extremely difficult to do, and if you are attempting to do this on the golf course, then you are setting yourself up for failure, as when you get this wrong, the ball is always curving away from the intended target.

Build some shapes into your shots

If you want to stop slicing driver and start lowering your scores, you need to build a predictable shape into your golf shots.

It is my preference that mid-handicap players work on hitting a draw as there are benefits to playing with that shape but hitting a draw or a fade is fine as long as you have picked one.

The reason this is better for golfers is that it builds some margin for error into your golf shots. In fact, the more curve you play with the more margin for error you actually have!

For example, if a golfer wants to play a moderate draw, their swing path should be roughly 5 degrees from the inside. For the ball to finish somewhere near the target, the club face can be anywhere between 1 degree and 4 degrees, giving us a 3-degree margin for error.

This is an awful lot more than the 0-degree margin for error when trying to play a straight shot, and if a golfer wanted to play a bigger draw, they would actually have a bigger margin for error.

The higher your handicap the bigger the shape you need

The more inside or outside the swing path, the less accurately you need to control the club face, making a bigger shape more appropriate for lower-skilled players.

The better the player, the more control they have over the club face in the golf swing, the smaller the curve they can play, or even manipulate the ball flight in both directions.

What golfers have to understand is that they need to control the clubface to make sure that the ball always starts on the side of the target it is curving away from (draw starts right to curve left).

The common slicer therefore is not that far away from having a predictable ball flight, they just need to learn how to start the ball left enough to make the curving golf ball finish near the target, not way right of it.

Drills

This might be a significant change of concept for you, but hopefully, you understand that you might not need a full-swing rebuild to start getting your shots to target more often. Going to the driving range and having a play around with some swing thoughts to either close the face more or open the face will make a world of difference to your game.

I like to practice with an alignment stick in the ground on my target line in front of me and work on hitting shapes around it to enhance my clubface control awareness which always leads to me hitting better shots out on the golf course!

Ask any group of golfers to list their biggest pet peeves, and you’re likely to hear ‘slow play’ mentioned a handful of times at least.

There’s no doubt that knowing how to avoid slow play in golf will likely win you more friends out on the course. In fact, the R&A actually has a Pace of Play Manual, which cites results from a 2015 survey showing that 60% of golfers would enjoy the sport more if it took less time.

The 56,000 survey respondents played golf on average twice a week, demonstrating that even those who play fairly regularly have a desire to play in less time—and it would be fair to assume that golfers who play less than this face even longer rounds. 

We’ve been hearing about slow play in golf for decades and, were it not for what is happening in the professional game these days, we’d be hearing a lot more. Headlines back in 2020 suggested the Tours were clamping down on golfers guilty of slow play, but since then, we’ve had a pandemic and a huge split in the game thanks to the emergence of LIV. 

Although there’s no concrete definition of what constitutes as slow play, we can all do our bit to avoid it at club level. The ‘common-sense’ measures below, again, have been around since the beginning of time, but a large chunk of golfers could do with a timely (pun intended) reminder.

So, what can club golfers and weekend players do to ensure that everyone gets round in a decent time?

How to avoid slow play in golf

1. Play ‘ready golf’

We’ve been familiar with this phrase for a number of years, but many of us could perhaps put it to better use.

This occurs in stroke play to help speed up the game. If it is safe to do so, you can play your shot even if you’re nearer the hole than your playing partners. One player might be waiting for a par-5 green to clear, and this is the perfect opportunity for those who can’t reach to play up the fairway.

You often see players on the tee deliberating who had the lowest score on the previous hole and then playing in order. We all have different routines, but it’s much better for the overall pace of play to have the quickest player teeing off first and setting a good example.

Another good example to set is to hit your shot before looking for another player’s ball, particularly if that player already has some help. Use your common sense—if a playing partner has bladed a shot over the green, they could probably do with a breather.

Related: What is ready golf and does it help pace of play?

2. Pay attention

How many fourballs have you played in where one player in the group is brilliant at spotting balls and another is appalling?

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be watching your playing partners’ tee shots and, to a lesser extent, their approach shots, too. To help the pace of play, everyone needs to be aware of what is happening in their group.

3. Play the right tees

Obvious it may sound, but this is another familiar point when talking about how to avoid slow play in golf. Playing a longer course will mean a longer round. You’re walking back to tees, hitting longer clubs in, taking more shots and probably not enjoying it as much.

There’s so much to be said for playing a shorter course on occasion and seeing your home club through a different lens.

Don’t let vanity get in the way of enjoying your round. Likewise, playing the right format will also help matters. Most of the time, we get to choose how we play the game, so steer clear of fourballs and stroke play and entertain a format that means you can pick your ball up if you’re not in the hole. Also, where possible, play at a time of day when there might be less traffic. 

4. Let players through

Single golfers present an easy way to get people around the course. If you’re a fourball and you have a singleton behind you, let them through immediately.

It’s very easy to see how your group is faring in relation to the rest of the course, so if you’ve lost a hole on the group in front, speed up or let others through.

5. Play a provisional

There’s arguably nothing worse than trudging back to the tee or divot in the fairway having not found your tee or approach shot.

This whole charade can add 10 minutes or so to a round, but a simple provisional will take a fraction of that time. It’s not the most comfortable position to be in, having to hit another, but see it as a chance to play an extra shot and find a more positive feel, and encourage playing partners to do the same.

Amazingly, the better the player, the more often they will hit a provisional.

6. Don’t mark your card on the green

Well, you can—but it’s more about being aware of the group behind. You can expect a few hands on hips from the fourball on the fairway if you finish the hole by noting down your scores.

Do it on the next tee, or you risk being that unpopular group everyone moans about.

7. Pick up

If you have nobody behind you, then feel free to do what you want, within reason, of course. If you have a group behind you and they’re all standing there with their hands on their hips, and there’s no need to putt out, don’t.

We’re all familiar with the golfer who has just made an eight, and they continue to play out the hole. For the sake of any card, marking it doesn’t make any difference, and you’re potentially getting in the way by playing on. One of the biggest crimes here is to ‘hockey’ the ball around the hole once you’re out of it or your putt has been conceded.

8. Walk quicker

This point rarely gets mentioned when looking at how to avoid slow play, but pushing yourself to get to your ball that bit faster can make all the difference.

Get your heart rate and speed up, and if you’re playing in a fourball, walk in twos and mix the chat up. Be ready to leave the tee once the final player has hit and get moving.

Ultimately, eighteen holes will take a relatively long time compared to other sports, but we can all do our bit to improve the pace of play and the enjoyment of our fellow golfers.