Some pre-shot routines not so routine

Ask any serious golfer and he's sure to tell you, "Yep, golfers are pretty much freaks."

Why this candid response? While golfers may look the model of collectedness on the outside, what is going on in their heads can be chaotic.

To counter this, golfers will often distract themselves from their thoughts with an established pre-shot routine that can border on the obsessive.

A pre-shot routine can consist of many things, from the silent repetition of a trigger phrase to a physical ritual like re-gripping the club eight times in a row.

Whatever the quirk, the goal is the same: to get into a state of open-loop control, or what is commonly known as "the zone."

Thinking about swing mechanics or the width of one's stance can be extremely detrimental to a golfer's game. Compare it to driving a car. You don't think of how many rotations of the steering wheel are necessary to make a 90-degree turn or how much pressure to apply to the brakes. You get in the car and respond to your environment, but you get to your destination without thinking about the mechanics.

According to standard practice — and sophomore Juan Pablo Candela of the men's golf team — there are three steps to a golfer's routine for each shot: preparation, execution and evaluation. That is, noting the lie of the ball and the target, actually making the swing and analyzing the hit. During all of these stages, a golfer must think about hitting the shot, not controlling the swing.

Junior co-captain Drew Maliniak admits that he doesn't have a pre-shot routine that is set in stone, but he does unconsciously catch himself doing the same thing every time according to those same three steps.

"I have written something down before," Maliniak said, "but I usually look at a tree down the fairway and try not to think about anything except for that tree. If I'm swinging really badly, then I say this phrase over and over in my head that I made up when I was 12 years old. That phrase has been working for eight years."

While this routine goes on in his head, there are many golfers that perform physical gestures before every shot that act as a trigger for their swing. This helps them mentally prepare for the shot so that they don't worry about the mechanics.

"The guys at St. John's University tap their chest a certain number of times with their index finger," junior co-captain Max Schechter said. "It's pretty strange, but it worked for them; they won a bunch of events last spring."

Maliniak isn't the only golfer with an ever-changing pre-shot routine, though every golfer shares the same goal of being completely ready before hitting the ball. Whether that means taking four practice swings or just addressing the ball after picking a target, it varies each time.

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Sophomore Jake Skinner prefers this type of preparation to a prescribed ritual.

"I try to not think about golf in general," Skinner said, "[because] it really throws my game off. It causes a problem if I think about my swing, so I try to be as mindless as possible. If I get really excited, I walk slower to the next shot to calm down."

Skinner's routine parallels golf great Jack Nicklaus's. Nicklaus never repeats the same pre-shot routine but instead does whatever is necessary to prepare for the shot at hand.

"Even though I don't have a specific pre-shot routine, I still do some things people would classify as weird," Skinner said.

"If I am putting in for eagle, I will mark my ball on the green with an old-school quarter, not the state ones, with the eagle side facing up. And I never choose the quarter; I have my coach give it to me because I think the quarter should choose you."

These superstitious tendencies can play out in many areas of golf, not just the pre-shot routine. For example, some players will only play with a ball with the number four on it on Thursdays, or some will count down from 100 while they are walking to their next shot. Golfers have a lot of time to think out there on the course, which gives them time to develop certain tendencies.

Once you get golfers talking about pre-shot routines, it seems as if they have endless stories about the annoying golf partners they've been stuck with for 18 holes.

The worst, they admit, is a slow golfer.

Even if a golfer has an eccentric routine, it doesn't matter as long as it is completed in 20 seconds. Anything over that — one more practice swing, one more re-grip — can frustrate the other player.

"The worst thing is slow players," Schechter said. "Some are just very deliberate players, checking everything. Golf wasn't made to be played slowly. The extra time is not going to improve their shot that much."

But it will give their opponents a little extra time to think. Or, rather, avoid it.