It's time for a new episode of faith and fairways with the founder Brad Thorberg, who after more than 16,000 lessons taught to over 2000 golfers has discovered the most forgotten and overlooked part of your golf game. That is keeping you from playing your most consistent and confident golf ever. Now here is your host Brad Thorberg.
00:23 What is up my golfing friends, Brad here for another week of faith and fairway. Super excited this week to be talking to you about something I feel will truly unlock your potential the next time you go out onto the golf. Of course, you know, to get you on that first tee box this week and just oozing confidence. That's our goal. How to stand on the first tee and just ooze confidence. We're gonna get into that this week. What I have found over the last over 15 years of teaching this is learning how to prepare yourself for that first tee box and beyond is crucial and most amateurs do it completely wrong. Completely wrong is what I have found over the years is they, you're pretty much just setting yourself up with a mental time bomb with how you warm up before your round. And why are lacking confidence on the very first tee before even start your round.
01:16 So we're gonna get into it. We're going to talk about just confidence where it comes from, where does it come from, how to build confidence. That's what we're diving into today. So, so buckle up because this is going to change the way you approached your next round of golf for the better. Like you will play the most stress free, confident round of golf you've ever played. I've seen it done over and over with the few thousand clients I've taught over the years. This is going to be big for you. So let's get into it. Let's get into the meat and potatoes. So confidence, how are, how are we going to ooze confidence there on the first tier. So confidence, which you need to know for his confidence comes from two separate things. There are two very different things, but you need them to have confidence. The first thing you need to have is a belief within your skillset.
02:07 So you have to have this belief that your skills are getting better. And then number two, you have to have a plan. And we'll talk about those two things separately. So you have to have belief in your skillset. You have to have belief in your playing confidence. If you, if you put too much credit into confidence coming from, you know, because you've done it before and you're gonna really struggle over breaking through the plateau you're struggling with right now. And then becoming a more consistent golfer. Cause confidence doesn't come from the fact that you haven't done something yet. Now once you do it, it just becomes so much more relaxing. You're less stressed, there's less self doubt, there's less of hitting a bad golf shot and, and just spiraling out of control cause you're thinking, here we go again. No falling apart. Yeah. So confidence doesn't come from the fact that you haven't it yet.
03:00 Now once you're able to do it, I mean you're just going to shatter through your plateau and be, be looking at shooting 10 shouts better already. But we got to have the confidence first before we do it. And that's the tough [inaudible]. You know, I think of 'em Roger Bannister and breaking the mile record there. No one, no one thought they could do it. No one thought they could do it. And then when he did it, I think the stat, yeah, I'd have to look it up. So don't quote me, I don't have it written down here, but I believe like in the next month or three months, 12 people went on to break that same barrier and running the mile. Like it was unheard of. No one. But that was because they saw someone else do it. So they believed it can be done, but they hadn't done it.
03:41 But it took someone else to lead the way. Now you already see your friends, your buddies, family members playing better golf. So you've already seen it. So you should have that belief. So don't tie your confidence to the fact that you haven't done it yet. You need to tie your confidence to the belief within your skills and the belief in your plan. Now, most of you don't even have a plan. So we'll get into that later. Well first, how do you get a belief within your skills? Would you need to know [inaudible] that they are getting better? They're better than they were the last time you played because you've been practicing. You know when we talked a couple weeks ago, if you need to go back to episode 10 we talked about practice and how it's ruining your golf game. Because if you practice correctly [inaudible] both mechanically and hitting golf shots and practicing a lot more on short game, you're going to have more confidence because now you know, Hey, I'm better today than I was yesterday and I know when I play golf next week I'll be even better because I'll get in more practice.
04:37 So the first half of your confidence comes from the fact that you're practicing and you believe your skillsets getting better. You believe you're getting better at speed control and you're putting your you, you know you're better at chipping the ball closer to the hole. You know you're better as stringing together more consistent solid shots. So you have that belief within yourself from practicing the proper way, which we talked a lot back in episode 10 so if you miss that episode you forgot definitely you know, go back episode 10 I believe we called it, why your golf practice is ruining your golf game. You definitely want to listen to that because that'll help you with how to practice the right way, what you need to be doing. Cause that's setting you up with confidence. Now a lot of you are doing that or you're doing some sort of practice to build confidence and if your practice is still built around mechanical thoughts and the moment you hit a bad shot, you started thinking of new things then and that's definitely not going to be the case.
05:34 But if you practice the way I talked about in episode 10 you're already doing half of it. The problem is is the second half. This is the most crucial part of all of this, of all of it. If you don't have, I mean think of this, if you don't have a plan, how confident are you? Right? Like as I'm recording this, it's football season and I live in Colorado so we think Denver Broncos, but I'm a huge, huge Nebraska football fan. Huge. Grew up in Nebraska. I'm a Cornhusker for life. I remember watching them in the 90s when they dominated everybody. So I'm sitting there thinking, how confident are those players to go out onto the field with no plan, no game plan, no scripted. First 10 15 plays on offense. No game plan of what to be looking for and how we're going to attack things on defense to zero game plan.
06:23 We just, I took the whole week off, played video games or whatever and then we can showed up for the game. I said, all right boys, get out there, go get them. Go get them tiger. How confident is the team with no plan? How confident know are the players in there coach, if there's no practice plan, which we talked about in the practice episode and episode 10 so you've got to have the plan in place to be oozing confidence. So what does that look like? Where does the plan come from for your round of golf? With the plan comes from your pre-round warm up. And this is the number one thing I see everybody doing wrong, not warming up correctly. Okay? And you know, this is what it looks like. This, you know, does this sound familiar? Going out to the range showing up, probably 50% of you listening show up, Ken is for your tee time and you're just rushing to the first tee [inaudible] through your clubs on a cart check-in, grabbing a hot dog, soda, beer, whatever.
07:21 And you're running to the first tee box. The other half of you do show up maybe 20 minutes early, maybe 30 minutes early. You get a bucket of balls, [inaudible] pound a bunch of drivers, you hit a few good ones and all of a sudden you hit a bad one. So then you're like, Oh, let me try this. Then you hit another, you know, a good one, but then you hit another bad one that goes a different direction. So then you try something else and the next thing you know you're 2030 minutes of practice goes by, you hit no chips, no putts, and your whole warm up created five or six swing thoughts and now you're just a basket case not knowing what thought to think of before we go to the first tee, and we've covered this in the practice episode of [inaudible] if that's how you're practicing, that's how you're training your mind on the course, but it's also how you're training your mind when you warm up and you're just creating, does basket case in your mind of of all these different thoughts.
08:11 Now as you go to the first tee, so now you're going to the first tee lacking confidence because you're like, gosh, I hit it three different directions with five different thoughts. I don't know what thought to have here on the first tee and that is the absolute wrong way to warm up. You should now be trying to hit the ball straight and figure out how to make it go straight. When you're warming up, you know, 15 minutes before a round of golf, but you need to be doing is finding out what your tendencies are so you can create a plan of attack
08:41 To take it out onto the golf course. Even though Brad has cracked the code to consistently breaking 90 there are still three major mistakes he's found from working with over 2000 clients that will sabotage your round before you get to the first tee. Head to.my golf code.com now to receive your free guide where he outlines all three poles and provides you with some easy action steps to start playing more consistent golf today.
09:08 So what a good pre-round warm up looks like. To give you a plan to go attack the golf course to go take the test. Know I have a program, I call it me and my cheat sheet warmup. Basically doing a tour player level warm up in 30 or less minutes. This is huge. I've seen, I've taken a handful of clients through this just in the last couple months and they all went on to shoot Carrillo rounds. I kid you not w it was incredible to see because instead of wasting time on the driving range trying to fix their golf swing, we just simply said, Hey, this is where it's going. You know, we hit five or six drivers. We hit five or six, five irons or hybrids. We hit five or six, seven iron, some wedges, we'd do some pitching and we figured out, all right, you know the drivers just out of control so we're not going to hit it unless it's a wide open hole with no OB or penalty, you know, but we can keep this club in place.
10:02 So we're going to use that and manage the course accordingly. Most of you don't even think of not using your driver. You want to use it. I get that. But if it's going completely out of control, why on earth would you use it if your goal is to score well? So we go through this warmup to figure out, all right, you know, your hybrid is going an average of 200 yards and it's going either straight or 40 yards, right? So now we know, Hey, I can aim at that tree off the tee box as 220 yards away cause I can't get there and have to hit it straight on. Perfect. And I have to cut or slice it all the way across, you know, from the left back to the right, you know, to get into trouble. And I know it's on average between straight to 40 yards, right?
10:45 So now I just [inaudible] play angles and I've managed the course with what I have. So you go through this pre-round warm up, you get your cheat sheet actually have these cheat sheet cards where you go through and you, you check the box, you kind of go, all right, this was roughly 15 yards, right? Of Verizon and this was roughly 30 yards, right? Roz aim. And you kind of get the average. So then you can go play angles, right? If you're a mid irons, if you warmed up and hit five or six, seven irons and they're going anywhere from five right to 30 right now, you know, all right, I'm going to aim at the left edge of the green. You know, if there's trouble, right? I'm going to aim 10 yards off the left side of the green so I don't go into trouble.
11:23 So you're playing to your tendency, you don't aim at flag six, you don't aim at middle of greens, you don't aim down the middle of the fairway, teeing it up in the middle, hoping this one thought's gonna make it go straight. You warm up creating a plan of tendencies and then you learn how to manage the course by looking at the whole backwards going, all right, Oh, I need to hit this far off the tee to have a [inaudible] seven eight or nine iron in. This is where I'm going to aim, cause my misses this way. If you up and you hit a bunch of fat [inaudible] then shots. Right? Well, now I know every chance I get on a par three tee box, I better be teeing that thing up. Maybe even a little extra, maybe even a half inch. I mean come on guys. The best players in the world all use a T on a par three tee box.
12:08 We should be too. And if you're having poor contact, some fans in shots, then tee that thing up a little bit more. Give yourself the advantage of TLS. Well you're learning that in your warm up. You're learning not how to fix the fatter than shag you're learning. That's my tendency. One in five is fat or thin. So I need to make sure I'm teeing it up. Cause like we've talked about, you know, in our opening series of the code to breaking 90 year old Lee making 35 to 40 full swings. Right. You know, so if a fifth of those are going to be a slight junker thin, you know, we want to definitely be using that to our advantage of teeing it up. You know, if we know our tendency as the clubs get longer, go a little more to the right. We aim a little more left, but we've picked targets that aren't reachable.
12:55 Are we clubbed down so we don't get into trouble and we play with what we have, not with what we want to have, but it takes a proper pre-round warm up. So what that looks like is know for sure. You know my, my cheat sheet while I'm up, we started a few wedge shots where we pick out some random targets. We don't know how far they are building it off of feel. We're trying to feel the distance and hit it. So now we're getting a sense of all right, when you look at that target and you feel you're coming up just shorter, just long. So now you can pick your landing spots different, you know accordingly to what you saw. So if you're tending to hit everything over what you're trying to hit too, that means you're going to pick your landing spot when you're pitching, you know, inside 50 yards shorter.
13:37 Then we hit some wedges. All right. Are we kind of pulling them or are we pushing them? Yeah, with a full swing. So now we know, all right, we need to aim a little more left or right then we do five or six with the mid iron, five or six with a long iron hybrid, five or six with the driver. And it's just giving you that tendency to create a plan of how to aim and manage your misses versus trying to fix it. And if you do that and you stick to the plan, you'll be shocked as to how much easier it is to go play good golf and hit good golf shots. Cause now you're confident. You have a plan, you trust where your skillset is today. Now we're it used to be now where it's going with where it is today, you trust it, you trust a consistent pattern.
14:16 When you're relaxed, you trust your plan and you'd go out and play. Now the biggest thing with that warm up is hitting those five shots with the driver. You know the hybrid, the mid iron, the wedge. So what does that 20 shots and wedge shots or you're sitting 25 30 balls is all you need. That shouldn't take more than in 10 15 minutes and then you go spend the next 10 15 minutes on the putting green. You hit a couple of chip shots with your, your eight iron, maybe a sandwich to get a sense of how far it's flying versus rolling when you make a good contact. So you kind of know right on these greens on a fairly lie, my eight irons flying a quarter of the way enrolling three-quarters my sand wedge is flying one half rolling one half. That gives you a sense of where to pick your landing spots and adjust based on slope for the day.
15:03 Then most important piece is putting, you're going to start by hitting some lag putts and you're going to spend, you know, the majority of the time hitting some long lag putts from the middle of that practice screen to the edge, hitting them to the fringe, trying to get them to die out and just barely trickle up to the fringe. That's going to give you a feel of that pace and now once you hit four or five in a row, you know he'll downhill side Hill. When you start to get four or five in a row that are just dying out and stopping right next to that fringe. Now you're like, all right, I got the speed. Speed is King. We've talked about that in previous episodes, so speed is King. Now those last couple minutes, you're just going to hit some three footers and just drill them right into the cup.
15:45 The only part you should hit before you're around are three foot putts cause you're not going to make every putt outside five feet, so don't do that in Jack up your mind. You think you can't make anything. You work on speed hitting 2030 footers across the green. Get a feel for that last couple of minutes. Make five or six, three footers. See that ball going into the cup here at going to the cup. [inaudible] Strapped to that first tee with confidence knowing you have a plan, you have belief within your skillset. Go manage the course with what you have now that you just warmed up in sod. Don't try to fix things. Just try to understand what the tendencies are and then go play with them and manage the course. Manage the angles. Pick the right clubs that keep you out of trouble. Trust what you felt with your speed.
16:32 Drain the three footers, or you're going to make a lot of pars, a lot of bogeys. You're going to avoid the big blowup holes and you're going to play some of the best golf you've ever played. Most relaxing golf you've ever played, cause you're less stressed. You're not sitting there over every shot trying to think of a swing thought to fix it cause you're trying to hit every shot straight. [inaudible] Said you're just playing with what you have, knowing it'll be better tomorrow than it is today. But it's better today than it was yesterday if you're practicing the right way. So that right there is how you head to the first tee. Oozing confidence. So remember, confidence comes from belief in your skills. Belief in your plan. It does not come from the fact that you haven't done it yet, so you gotta get out of that fact.
17:14 That's going to help you with the with blowing up mentally. Now if you want more help with the mental side, definitely check out my three biggest mistakes, sabotaging your round and did my golf code.com that's going to help you tremendously. And be on the lookout for my cheat sheet. I'm putting that program together, my cheat sheet warm up. That should be available here in the next month to really help you go through the proper way to warm up. It'll be a, you'll actually get some cheat sheet cards and a video series on the exact way and I want you to warm up so hopefully that helps you guys. I know it's helped every client I've taken through this. It just makes golf easier when you're on the course because you're not trying to fix things. You're trying to manage with what you have. Stay tuned. Next week we're going to get into why you blow up on the back nine. This happens all the time. Clients have a good round going through the front night and then they just blow up on the back nine. How does the back man get away from you? That's what we're going to get into next week, so stay tuned until then. Remember to swing easy and we'll talk to y'all soon.
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