The Warm-Up Routine
Your pre-round warm-up could be one of the most important things you do to play well. As you get older, your muscles and joints take longer to get going. If you can make the time, the first thing you should do is dynamic stretching. These exercises will help give you a better range of motion, lengthen the muscles in a safe way, and get your blood pumping through your body. Ideally you should do these until you have a little sweat and increase your heart rate before hitting any balls.
The next important aspect of the warm-up is to get your feel. Every day you grab a golf club, it seems the swing feels a little different, or the club may feel different in your hands. I would suggest gaining some confidence early in the warm-up by hitting chip shots and short pitches, making sure you are achieving perfect contact. Build up the distance of these shots as you go until you are hitting full wedges. I generally will start with a sand wedge as a go through this progression. After hitting full shots with your wedge, move to an 8 iron, then 5 iron, Hybrid/5 wood, and then driver. The goal is to not hit perfect, but to get your body loose enough to hit these shots, and feel 100% mobile with your body.
After moving through your bag, you should go back to a few wedges to regain the feel of hitting a smaller club. This regains any confidence you may have lost hitting longer clubs and will put a picture in your mind of a straighter ball flight. The very last shot is going to replicate the first tee shot. Put yourself in the mind frame of that first tee shot. Envision yourself on the tee box, picking your target, going through your routine. If the shot did what you wanted, move on and go putt. If you need to hit another one, go ahead. The last shot you hit is the one you want to be thinking about on that first tee box. If you have just done it, you will remember that and feel more confident on the tee box to start your round.
Lastly, head to the putting green. Green speeds, green softness/firmness, and grass length can all change from day to day. Even the time you are playing in a day will affect how the ball is rolling. Start with putts from 15 feet, going to the same cup from all directions. This allows you to gain a feel for the speed of downhill, uphill, and see the break on sidehill putts. Then head back to 30-40 feet and hit some lag putts. If you still have time, finish with a couple of tap-in putts to see the ball go in the hole and head to the first tee.
This whole process on the range can take anywhere from 20-30 minutes once you get the routine down. Dynamic stretching before you hit balls might take an extra 5 minutes.