There were more playing on the Tuesday social than, I guess, there would have been if England v Costa Rica had meant anything! This week we played an ‘Erase’ game, whereby each competitor had to elect to erase one of their holes, before they played off the next tee. This worked well apart from two golfers who deleted their best hole of the game! (and still came in the prizes)
- Andy Metcalfe 19 points
- Josh Smith 17
- Emily Coleman 15
- Bill Whittle 15
- Richard Le Page 15
Did you watch the Womens US Open from Pinehurst? It was the first time the Womens event has followed the mens event at the same venue and it seemed to work perfectly well. I’m not sure we’ll see it happen again in the near future as there aren’t many venues which could handle the logistics, the wear on the course and set up to play equally well off both sets of tees.
The Women’s championship recorded record viewing figures and lots of people tuned it to watch 11 year old Lucy Li. She was the youngest ever competitor in the event and at the same time as she narrowly missed the cut Michelle Wie was leading, previously the youngest competitor when aged 13, and Lexi Thompson was second who replaced her as the youngest ever at age 12! It’s not a new phenomenon in the Womens game however, the youngest ever to make the cut was a 14 year old in 1947! Lucy’s woods and irons are both longer in length than the mens clubs on tour, proving that the only people who can hit long shafts are slower, flatter swingers – no matter the age. She has very light shafts in her irons which allows her to use the longer length. We come across this in club-fitting often, those golfers whose favourite club is a longer, lighter hybrid club, often benefit with lighter, longer shafts in their irons (but not their woods).
It was surprising to watch the differences and similarities in the mens and the womens approach to their games, for example both Lexi and Michelle had their caddies lining them up on their full shots, which I’ve only seen Rob Rock do on the mens tours. The best players on each tours have developed unique styles – Michelle’s unique aspect is her table top putting style. Whilst she got some flak for it when she started last year, her putting stats have improved dramatically and she’s steadily moved from 150th up to 5th in the putting stats since adopting the method, which was her own idea. Will this new style go the way of Bernhard Langer’s left arm hold putting style, or Mickelson’s claw grip, or Kuchar’s left forearm putter and only be adopted by the worlds best players? Club golfers understandably feel self-conscious about adopting a radically different method but the best players consistently display the opposite trait.
Further success for Luke
Luke teamed up with Tom Cheetham of The Chase Golf Club to compete in the Golfbreaks.com PGA Fourball Championship event at Swindon Golf Club. The pair finished joint leaders and booked a place along with six other qualifiers at the £33,250 BMW-supported grand final at St Mellion in Cornwall on August 20-22. Full details of their great performance can be found at the following article link:
http://www.pga.info/tournaments/national/pga-fourball-championship/news/2014/06/cheetham-makes-winning-debut-to-book-st-mellion-place.aspx
Luke and I missed out on our bids to get through the Regional qualifying round for The Open on Monday, Luke was at Little Aston and I was at Luffenham Heath in Rutland. If you ever get the chance to go there, it’s a brilliant course which I used to get to play as a junior for £5 for the day!
What made Monday special for me was my Uncle was over from Brisbane and stopped over to caddie for me before flying home – I can’t imagine anyone else had a caddie from OZ!
The Summer Ball on Saturday night was great fun and well supported on the longest day of the year. I went out to put the nearest the pin markers out for Sunday's Invitation Day at quarter past ten at night (in my dinner jacket) and it was still light and quite eerie on the course.
Thanks to Svein Balkoy for lending me a new carbon bike for my upcoming 100 mile charity bike ride on August 10th. Thanks also for taking me on a 30 mile hilly ride on Sunday afternoon in the heat of the day – great cure for a Saturday night out as it happens!
Please visit my website www.justgiving.co.uk/nevilbland to donate and help me raise £2000 for the Katherine House Hospice.
Congratulations to Peter Mason who scored a hole in one on the 3rd hole in the last medal. He sent me a message this week to say that he repeated the performance the very next time he played the hole later in the week and this time it landed straight in the hole!!
We had a couple of great Captain/Pro matches last week. On Wednesday we just scraped a half against Neil Flowers and Paul Hodkinson by chipping and putting on the last for a par after they put up a good fight holing big putts on 16 and 17. Then on Saturday we had the same result against Ian Thornton and Jon Brookes as we were dormie 1 up before Ian birdied the last to finish all square. Opponents have to beat us over 18 holes in order to play off for the trophy and every match has been a grind.
Hopefully this Saturday’s Dartmouth Bowl against South Staffs Golf Club at Brocton can go our way too. This is the oldest trophy in the whole of golf, played for between clubs and was first contended between the two clubs in 1894. We’re very lucky to have such an historic trophy to play for and it is hard fought between the 40 a-side teams.
Congratulations to a pupil of mine who has been playing off +1 handicap for a number of years and whose goal was to get off +3 but the time he was 50 (3 better than scratch). He achieved it last week with less than a year to go. Well done Paul, Seniors Tour soon?
We have a Titleist ProV1 promotion on at present.
Purchase a dozen ProV1 balls with ‘The Open Championship 2014’ stamped on them at the dozen discount price of £40 and get entered into a draw for a Titleist cart bag, RRP £149. There’s only 24 dozen balls so that’s a 1 in 24 chance of winning!
