Tip #21: Countdown To Takeoff

The proper "countdown" involves both mental and physical steps, and for me it begins about 10 feet behind the ball.

Club selection comes after inspecting the lie and deciding what shot you want to play.

1. Having inspected my lie, decided on the shot I want to play, and selected my club, I stand back and have a good look at what's ahead of me. At this moment, I visualize the precise shot I want to play. I see the ball leaving my clubface, arching into the sky, and coming down next to the target.

If it's a tee-shot, I may see the ball rolling after impact; if it's an iron, I may see it checking up or spinning back, depending on the nature of my lie. But quite frankly, these final frames of my mental movie are comparatively unimportant. Contrary to what most people do-visualize the ball coming to rest near their ultimate target-I prefer to focus on the apex of the shot in flight.

I prefer this method for a couple of reasons. First, except on two-foot putts, I don't actually hit the ball straight to the target. I'm always playing the break, or allowing for the wind, or expecting some fade or draw or bounce or roll. If my mind is on the target, I'm not giving proper attention to those factors.

Indeed, if I become target-fixated, I might tend to start my shot straight at the flag, only to see it blow or drift off course. What I want to do is make my ball reach the very height of its ideal flight, or in the case of a draw or fade, the farthest right or left point of its curve. This after all is as much as I can do -- I can't bring it to earth.

If I hit the shot with the proper trajectory and shape, gravity and ballistics will do the rest. So I try to get a vivid picture of the spot in the sky where the ball will ultimately reach. I do this even on putts. I "see" the ball at the very crest of its break; then I try to hit it there.

2. With the ideal picture in mind, I walk to the ball and, holding the club with my right hand only, I set the clubhead down on the ground behind the ball. This is where I take careful aim. Standing well open so that I can see the route to the target clearly, I adjust the orientation of the clubface until I've got it set straight toward where I want the shot to go.

3. Now that my aim is set, I begin to align my body and take my grip. I do this by moving my left foot into position, simultaneously setting my left-hand grip on the club. For the next couple of seconds, I get comfortable, shifting my feet and hands until I know my grip is square and secure and my body alignment is in sync with the clubface.

At this point also, I lift the clubhead off the ground, and I keep it off the ground through the rest of my address. You've probably noticed that Jack Nicklaus does the same thing. In fact, it was by reading his book that I adopted this technique.

It has a couple of benefits over the alternative, grounding the club. First, it establishes the proper grip pressure. The weight of the clubhead forces you to hold the club with a certain amount of tension. It also makes you arch your wrists slightly, a nice way of guarding against letting your hands take over the swing.

Second, when you keep the club off the ground there is no chance that you'll get it caught in heavy grass as you swing it away from the ball. You guarantee yourself a smooth, unbroken takeaway.

Finally, you lessen the risk of accidentally moving the ball, or of grounding your club in a hazard. Either of these Rules violations would cost you a one-stroke penalty.

4. Once my grip and stance are set, I could immediately swing, but each of us needs a certain amount of time to get comfortable. It's at this point that I take a couple of waggles, quick back-and-forth flexes of the club, to get loose, get the feel of the clubhead and hone in one last time on the type of shot I want to play. At some point during the waggling I'll take one last look at the target. Then I'm ready to go.

5. Of course, each of us needs some way in which to pull the trigger. For Gary Player, it's a forward kicking-in of his right knee. For Jack Nicklaus it's the swiveling of his head to the right. It's their way of igniting the swing.

My method is unique; at least I've never seen anyone else use it. Throughout the final stages of the address sequence, I hover the club just inside the ball. In a sense, I address the ball only with the toe of the clubhead.

Many people know that this is the way I address my putts, but the fact is I use the same method on every other shot as well. Just before I begin my swing, however, I slide the clubhead away from me slightly so that it's squarely behind the ball. Fuzzy Zoeller makes the same move, only he starts the club outside the ball and slides it toward him.

Each player has a different swing trigger. Indeed, everyone has a different address countdown suited to the pace with which they do things. Fast players such as Tom Watson and Lanny Wadkins take very little time in playing their shots. A more deliberate player such as Nicklaus will spend more time over the ball.

Personally, I'm a firm believer in making the address countdown as brief as possible. For one thing, it's good etiquette and moves the game along a bit faster. But more important, a brisk pace helps breed confidence.

One fault many players get into is the incessant fiddling and fidgeting during the address. It seems to me that they're second-guessing themselves at a time when they should be absolutely confident and ready to swing.

U.S. Open and PGA Champion Hubert Green went through a period when he pumped his grip up to 20 times before finally taking the club back-and that was when he played some of his worst golf. After he cut his address routine in half, he doubled his productivity as a player. It doesn't take long to get comfortably aligned. Lee Trevino, one of the game's most accurate players, is also one of the game's fastest players.

No matter what the duration of your pre-swing routine, the most important point is that you stick with that routine and use it on every shot. Don't let outside interferences interrupt your countdown either.

If a car horn honks while you're setting your stance, step back. Step all the way back. On occasion, I've gone as far as to put the club back into the bag and then take it out again-the same club -- just so I could "take it from the top" and regain my rhythm and confidence.

After you've developed your routine, you'll be surprised at how dependent on it you'll become. I'll never forget the strange feeling I had during the third round of the British Open at Turnberry. A howling rainstorm hit when I was in the middle of the 17th fairway. I mean, that rain was coming horizontally!

The difficulty, however, was not so much in swinging in this rain as it was in getting ready to swing. I simply couldn't use my normal routine. I'd get out there, holding the club in my right hand only and trying to align the face, and the rain would soak the grip, so that by the time I tried to grip the club, the leather was too slippery to hold.

After trying two or three times to keep the routine, I gave up and improvised, taking my grip under my umbrella, then walking to the ball, waggling a couple of times, and hitting. Fortunately, I got through the storm relatively unscathed. But it was the discomfort of being without my routine that bothered me more than the rain.

Thank goodness, such conditions are rare. So learn these basics and put them all together in a brisk, efficient countdown, and you'll have the solid foundation to play your aggressive best.

- Greg Norman