Hello golfers,

Welcome to another edition of our newsletter, this week we have a bear that has had one too many, I report on a winter pro-am form Druids Heath, we talk course conditions at this time of year, we have some shop offers for you, and we offer you score reducing promotions.

Enjoy the read!

Good Food show

Thanks for all your messages about my newsletter last week. I was at the Good Food show on Thursday and it was nice to see a big support for the Birmingham Children’s hospital there. I’m not sure this Teddy had managed to stay away from all the free gin samples on offer.

Winter Pro-Am

Well done to my team in the final Staffordshire PGA Winter Pro-Am of 2017 at Druids Heath this week. Tom Beasley, Stu Hunter, Karl Horvath and myself dovetailed swimmingly to shoot 12 under, 84 points to finish in 3rd place, narrowly pushing Brocton ‘B’ of Luke, David Thompson, Matt Wilkes and Shaun Davison into 4th place. Mike was also playing with a team of Brocton golfers and the events start again in March - we don’t have the dates or venues yet but as soon as we do I’ll publish a list for you to get involved in, it’ll be great to get three teams each event as well to battle for fivers and prizes!

Course conditions

The coldest conditions I’ve ever played in were in the above event at Druids some years ago and I recall another year when I was due to play with Dave Morgan and David Robinson and the temperature was minus 5 and white over, so the event was cancelled, but we went and played 9 holes anyway - proper golfers! It looks like wintry weather is due to hit us early this winter, we’ve already had some snow and are forecast bouts of the white stuff over the next week or more, but we’ve had a good run so far this winter. It amazes us when the course is deserted on days of good weather in the winter - make the most of the good days by getting layered up, grab a coffee and some hand warmers and go and get some exercise golf style!

I keep a daily record of the weather and these are the snow stats for the last few calendar years:-

2014 - 1st snowfall 28th December = 4 days total
2015 - 1st snowfall 1st January = 4 days total
2016 - 1st snowfall 15th January = 4 days total
2017 - 1st snowfall 13th January = 5 days total including a week last Saturday

As you can see we don’t get affected much and of course the good thing at Brocton is that the course is often open on full greens the day after the snow has gone, in fact some of these days were affected by a single day of light snow which then froze on a nice sunny day and lingered. You’ll be glad to know I’m in the process of updating the swing studio in the loft above the Pro Shop. We’ve already installed the amazing new GCQuad launch monitor that takes 10,000 photos of the club and ball in a single second, I’m also hoping to add a simulator package so if the course is closed in the winter you’ll be able to book the studio to play golf with up to 4 golfers with amazing accuracy and clarity. We’ve also cleared out one side of the loft and are in the process of designing a putting and chipping area to fill the entire space.

I actually have the average for every single mph of clubhead speed so we can compare your speed and spin to that of your compatriots and I have also recorded the difference in spin from long and short shots with each ball model. So, if for example, you are above average spin for your speed range, you could use a firmer ball and if you want to use the softest version of these around the greens, I can tell you which one to go for. Ball fittings take half an hour and include time to warm-up, hit a few different clubs, sip a free freshly ground coffee and also include a sleeve of the recommended ball for you. The cost of a ball- fitting is £20 and can be booked through the Pro Shop or bought as a gift voucher.

Book a ball fitting here.

Score reducing

I also have vouchers available for other score-reducing golf events in the studio:

Yardage gapping session - Spend an hour indoors hitting shots and leave with a chart of how far you hit each club in your bag. Plus see how that compares to others of your swing speed - £40 cost.

Game and equipment analysis - Another hour session where we check out the specs of all your kit and see how we can tweak them to suit you better - £40 cost, including some tweaks to your clubs.

Club Fitting - What shaft type, length, weight and flex should you be using? What club weight, balance and grip size should you use and what loft and lie should they be? - £40 cost and the fee for this session comes off a purchase over £100.

Captain/Pro

The Captain Pro final was played out at the weekend with Eamonn Gormley and Jack Murphy winning the matchplay final against Nigel Metcalfe and Ian Gwinnell. Thanks to Kevin Mellor and Roger Howarth for some exciting matches played in earnest and to all the other qualifiers - there was a lot of good golf played throughout the year. Late in March 2018 we will have the qualifying weekend for next year’s matches, the best 8 pairs compete against the Captain and I during the year - get your pairings ready!

This along with the other men’s trophies are awarded at the presentation night which takes place this Saturday night - not sure how good the scoring is going to be in the Fur & Feather on the following day!