Padraig Harrington displayed an element of Tour golf which may become more prevalent when he won the Portugal Open last week. The sponsorship scene on Tour has taken a huge side-step over the last few weeks and it appears the days of multi-brand huge contracts are over for the tour stars. TaylorMade is still up for sale (we'd heard a group of private investors had bought it but apparently not), Titleist opened on the New York Stock Exchange this week for less than anticipated and Nike have stopped making golf clubs.

In recent times a player may be required to use a brands clubs, putter, clothing, ball and shoes from the same parent company but in the future, tour golfers may have more individual choice as to what they can play as they may, for example, have to use just 8 or 9 clubs from one manufacturer instead of 13 or 14. This gives them much more scope to trial other equipment companies outside the normal big 5 or 6 marketed brands and return to private club makers to source their specifications. Padraig Harrington has used ACCRA shafts for quite a few years and he now has 5 of them in use when he won in Portugal. He had ACCRA Tour Z Extreme shafts in his driver and 3 wood and hybrid, then two different graphite ACCRA iron shafts in his 4 and 5 iron. That's right, graphite shafts in his longest irons and steel in the rest - Padraig is known for leaving no stone unturned in his quest for improvement.

ACCRA are only allowed to be used by qualified club fitters like myself and the ones on Tour, you won't ever find them in 'off-the-rack' clubs. The reason is because they understand how unique a shaft is to getting the club correct for someone, no matter what that golfer's skill level is. I have now reached the highest level in terms of being able to source a variety of shafts as I am a Performance Fitting Centre for ACCRA's partner True Temper. They often have nearly 80% of shafts in use on the tour each week including the Project X Hazardous shaft which was used by 22% of Pro's last week on the PGA Tour.

Mike Dewsbury was in testing the ACCRA and Hazardous shafts this week and comparing them to his previous one which was a generic manufacturers own model and XX Flex. The difference was extreme as this graphic from my Flightscope launch monitor indicates. The acceleration profile here shows us how a golfer's swing and club shaft is performing during impact and is measuring the amount of G force exerted on the shaft. If you consider that on the steepest rollercoaster you'll get to 4G which means you'll be feeling 4 x the force of gravity on you, a jet pilot will get to 6 G and can reach 9 G which is past the point of passing out for a human. The golf club is experiencing nearly 350 G during the downswing!!

Here's is the profile with Mike's own shaft:

This shows Mike's club reaches 300G sharply before impact and then slows down before hitting the ball. 

With the Project X Hazardous Yellow shaft, measuring between S and X flex, the result is quite different: 

  

This shows that Mike's club now accelerates much more smoothly into impact and reaches more force at 350 G without slowing down at impact. The result? He gained consistency, an extra 8 yards in distance and a higher flight all through changing the shaft. The grey line shows the average of shots hit with his current shaft and the orange is the average with the Hazardous shaft 

I'll put some screen shots taken from different handicap golfers over the next few weeks so you can see that shaft selection is not just the domain of the low handicap golfer.




The course remains in fantastic condition as we move into November and Preferred Lies are now in operation meaning you can mark the position of your ball on the fairway, pick it up, clean it and replace it no further than 6" away as long as it's no nearer the hole. I played against Lewis last Friday and once again we were in short sleeves at the end of October which was awesome. We made an effort to look for a pitchmark on each green and we didn't have to look hard to find at least one HUGE pitchmark on nearly every hole. The only ones that didn't have them were when the pin was on the front of the green. This shows that when balls land on the front of the green, golfers walk around to their ball further back and forget to repair their pitchmark. Please be extra vigilant and protect the playing surfaces. 




Luke Howe is now fully qualified and is taking bookings for lessons although he's away this week playing a pro-am in the sun at Vilamoura. One of the areas that Luke hopes to specialise in is course management as he's very knowledgeable at getting the most out of a situation on the course - when to play a risky shot and when to play safe. He also has the ability to bring the best out of people in pro-ams and this showed up last week as his team won the Staffs PGA Winter Alliance Pro-Am at Ingestre with a score of 15 under par. 

This week's event is on home ground at Brocton Hall and as such both the 1st and 10th tees are closed from 8am to 1pm and the course is open after that. 




Lots of juniors took part in the Stableford during half term - it was good to see junior organiser Steve Kanes back. 

Division A (congu) 
1st Place Ellie Treadwell 39 Points 
2nd Place Jasmin Lou 39 Points 
3rd Place Marcus Smith 32 Points 

Division B (club Handicaps) 
1st Place Neve Collins 46 Points 
2nd Place Edan Dollochin 42 Points 
3rd Place Thomas Efford 41 Points 

9 Hole Division 
1st Place Kerr Dollochin 9 points 

Welcome to Neve Collins who played in her first qualifying competition and won Division B. 

Thank you to all the helpers Christine Davies, Diane Ferriday, Diane Bell, Mary Harris, Colin Thompson, and Liz Balkoy. 




SNAP this one up quick - we have one set of PING G30 irons which have been traded in and are for sale at just £299. They are standard length with regular flex steel shafts and come in 4 to PW. Click here if you'd like to reserve them, first come first served. 

Also on the 'soon to be gone list', I have two spaces left on my Winter Academy package. This involves an hour lesson followed by 5 shorter lessons working through a plan throughout the winter and all for £199 and including a FREE club assessment MOT. Click here to book one of them.