Here's my favourite picture from last week, I was showing the juniors in the group coaching on Saturday afternoon all the different putting styles that there are. 

We tried conventional, left below right, Claw, Armlock and side saddle. 

Here's Fraser Watkins inventing his own putting style - and it worked too! He called it the 'FrogSquat' and the closer he got to the hole, the more he crouched down - classic!

I've often thought it weird that the best putters in the world (PGA Tour) putt all the above ways but most club golfers are poorer putters and use a conventional method.


 

Sincere thanks to everyone for the gracious messages following last week's email newsletter, I'd like to share this response with you from a reader:

"I am not a Brocton member although I receive and enjoy your newsletters as someone who had an account with you. Just to say I found your account of Leon Callon's fund-raising both very well written and inspiring. I have had my own problems over the winter; playing golf in November, presently disabled with little use of my legs, and unlikely to play golf for some time, if ever. Nevertheless, rather than self-pitying, I felt your writing was uplifting, giving lots of hope about what can be done. Brilliant!"

As a breed, PGA Professionals have often been accused of not telling golfers how good we are at something - we assume everyone just knows. This newsletter, which I have been writing weekly for 12 years, was born out of a suggestion - "If you're not talking to your customers, then someone else is!". The inference is that we should be selling ourselves better to promote sales but I find it very gratifying to get messages like the one above whereby a story has captured someone's attention, rather than a promotion. 

Of course the promotions and campaigns are important to portray to you too both for us and for you. Again, the assumption by many is that PGA Pro Shops are more expensive than the High Street or online but that has rarely been the case. It can be dismaying to see someone using equipment that we provide and knowing they have paid over the odds for it, with a worse fit too. We all get bombarded by marketing so much nowadays that our campaigns in the shop are easy to miss, but we try to keep you informed as best and unobtrusively as we can. Each campaign supported by golf companies features:

1 - A special mail sent to your inbox 
2 - A poster in my A-Board 
3 - A prominent display in the shop 
4 - Signage and posters in and around the shop 
5 - A slide on our media screen in the shop 
6 - A banner in this newsletter

There is a whole team behind me that produce the material and source and stage these savings for you. A key member of that team is, Dan Thompson, who I'll be sorry to see leaving as he returns to his homeland of Australia to round up Kangaroos or play the Didgeridoo, drink XXXX or whatever else they do over there when they're not watching cricket. Thanks for all your help Dan, you've made a big difference and I'm sure you'll continue to do so - all the very best.




Captain Pro qualifier 

Good luck to everyone playing this weekend in the qualifier. The top 4 better ball medal scores on Saturday and the top 4 on Sunday will play against the Captain, Kevin Mellor and I during the year. The handicap allowance in the matches is 90% (favouring you all compared to us!) and we play off the white stones and this year there is a little twist - the winner of each hole will get to decide where we tee off on the next hole to a maximum of 10 yards ahead of the white stones. 




The Greenstaff and the team conducting the drainage work have made an impressive, start completing the 16th green in just over one day. 

The 6th fairway is now underway and hopefully with the forecast warm weather leading up to Easter, we should be fully back in play very shortly. 




Here's another great picture from this week, the ProTracer ball flights in the final of the Dell Matchplay between Dustin Johnson and John Rahm. Dustin is the blue high fade which went 428 yards and John is the low draw which went 432 yards!! 




April means many things - the US Masters is coming up, our Lithium battery trade in/ trade up promotion starts and our ECCO shoe bag promotion begins. PLUS your membership packs are available for collection from the Pro Shop, including the fixture lists, stickers and County Cards. 

The golf season is officially here as we had the first Tuesday Social of 2017. 44 golfers took part and the scoring was great: 

1st Mick Dilworth 21 points £18 
2nd Steve Smith 21 £15 
3rd Nathan Cooper 20 £13 
4th Matt Wilkes 20 £11 
5th John Maddox 20 £10 
6th Ian Gwinell 19 £8 
7th Billy Mackie 19 £6 
8th Rich Nicholls 19 £6 

You can check out the scores each week after the event on our closed group on Facebook - here's a link to the group, just go to the link and ask to join.

We also ran a Pro's fiddle on Saturday which was a mixture of Better-Ball Stableford and Better Ball Medal on the par 3's. What would the scoring be if the par 3 holes didn't count as much as the others? The total score was made up of the 15 holes stableford score PLUS the difference between the par 3 actual medal par of 9 minus their nett medal score. It means that your score on the par 3's is only worth 1/3rd of what it would mean in a stableford. Ironically the winners would have been the same had it been 18 hole stableford except for the last winning pair who scored 30 points and were 4 under par for the par 3's!. 

1st Pete Holford & Rich Egan £18 each 30 (points) + 9 (par} - 8 (medal) = 40 
2nd Craig Nesbitt & Mark Hudson £14 35 + 9 - 6 = 38 
3rd John Hall & Matt Wilkes £11 35 + 9 - 7 = 37 
4th Bob HArvey & David Shepherd £8 33 + 9 - 7 = 35 
5th Martin Hunt & Roger Flint £6 34 + 9 - 9 = 34 
6th Tim Edwards & Pete Hanlon £5 32 + 9 - 7 = 34 
7th Steve Smith & Steve Tinniswood £4 30 + 9 - 5 = 34 

Two's 
Neil Johnson Ryan Collier Mike Mazzitelli Mike Mason Ken Skelton Steve Tinniswood x 2 Matt Wilkes Craig Nesbitt 




We have 2 of the Garmin S20 Approach GPS watches left at the promotion price of £179 - these are £199 most places online now. Click here if you'd like to reserve one. 



Finally, I bet you're glad my newsletter's not coming out on April Fools Day this year? What a shame - I'd got a couple of good ones in reserve as well!