One of the most important aspects of tournament/competitive golf is that you develop a sound and consistent pre-shot routine.  Without this, you simply cannot perform under pressure.  By developing a good pre-shot routine, not only will you play better golf, you will also be able to put most of your golf shots under “automatic pilot”. Over on my golf blog, I have detailed examples and steps on exactly how to develop this pre-shot routine.  So all golfers who don’t have one, go read! If you look at the top golfers in this world, virtually every one of them have developed a pre-shot routine that’s consistent down to the amount of time.  For example, you might notice that Tiger Woods takes 40 seconds to hit a golf tee shot from teeing up the ball to actually hitting the shot, it will never vary by more than couple seconds in the same round.