Winter time golf practice is all about charting your progress through feedback. You can’t really tell how you’re playing with your scores
- You can’t swing as freely when it’s cold so you’ll miss more fairways and greens.
- You’ll come across worse lies on the turf so your distance control will be off.
- Range balls and mats don’t provide dependable results.
That being said, I’d certainly recommend playing and practicing as much as you can in the winter, it’s just that you can’t tell how you’re performing as lots of the unusual shots may not be your fault.
On the plus side:
- You can place the ball on the fairways.
- The ball won’t bounce off the edge of greens into the undergrowth.
- The thick rough is less thick!
Winter is a great form of golf, especially when we play on proper greens throughout the winter. It was zero degrees on Tuesday and lots of golfers were playing – on the same day in the summer we often hardly see a soul!
Useful feedback comes in many forms and some that we use in coaching include:
GAME Golf tracking system - Why not set up a winter account to compare against your summer stats next year?
The monthly PGA Trade magazine came out this week and there was an article I had contributed to about the benefits of the GAME Golf system which we sell for £149 and is the hot product this Christmas.
FlightScope Launch Monitor - you need to know what you’re looking for.
One of the key elements for playing consistent golf is to have a consistent club path through impact. This is the direction the club is travelling as it hits the ball, it is in 3 dimensions and makes up something called the ‘D-Plane’ e.g. Whether you hit upwards or downwards on the ball changes the club path. Believe me, you will NOT be a consistent ball striker if your divots point to the right of where you aim.
Here’s a screen clip from a coaching session I had with the elite CONGU junior group. We were trying to match impact to the target line (blue line on the pictures below) those being the direction of the club path (shown as an orange line), the direction the face aimed at impact (green line) and the direction the ball started on (yellow line).
Here you can only see the green line as the others are directly underneath it. The ball was tilted to the side by just 0.2 degrees which meant it was going to fly dead straight. Mission accomplished!
Then we tried to hit a huge hook and you can see the result here:
Here you can see the club path (orange line) going right, the club face (green line) pointing left and the ball (yellow) starting left. The ball was tilted 45 degrees to the left which meant a huge hook. Mission accomplished!
It didn’t take a change of swing to do this, just 2 minutes of knowledge and they’d learnt how to escape from trees with distance.
Swingbyte, Zepp, 3Bays - devices that fit on the club to analyse movement
Again you need to know what the numbers mean.
Skills tests indoors and outdoors - it’s all about setting targets.
Putting rails, mats and training aids all help to spend a few minutes and create sustained improvement.
The PING putting app and cradle - we use this for easy putting practice feedback using the free app.
All the feedback devices are available from the Pro Shop and are used in coaching sessions when we feel it’s relevant.
I went to the funeral of Stewart Staples this week. A large number of Brocton members were in attendance including many of the Tuesday Social crowd and the church was absolutely packed as the winter sun streamed in through the stained glass windows. An incredibly touching and poignant service in which I felt quite privileged to be there as the family shared their personal experiences and happy memories with us.
Many of you have commented how nice the shop looks after Phase 1 of the ‘Shop-shuffle’ is complete. The next step is to bring the club-building workshop downstairs and extend it into the shop. I’m busy designing the layout and sourcing new machinery and equipment to make an extra impact. Watch this space.
The Winter Green Fee is now available – Coffee on arrival, 18 holes of golf and a Brocton Club Sandwich, all for just £37.50. This is available for weekdays, avoiding busy times and can be booked through the Pro Shop on 01785 661485.
The President and I played a challenge match against John Lynch and Dave Thacker on Saturday and we had a great match, finally losing on the 17th. I was unsure whether the course would be open after torrential rain on Friday afternoon/evening and although there was some water lying, it was fantastic condition as we teed off at 9:00. I posted a photo of my trousers and shoes on Twitter as we came off the 18th – they were spotless! Well done to Andy and the green staff for a tremendous winter course.
Pro's fiddle results
18 teams played in the three ball texas scramble with the winners being:
Josh Smith, Sam Harvey, Sean Nelson 58.2 £19 each
Wayne Bailey, Richard Gee, Steve Treadwell 58.2 £19 each
Niall McPhee, Paul weetman, Mark Newman, 59.3 £16 each
Neil Jackson, Pete lowndes, Nigel Metcalfe 59.5 £14 each