Andy and the team have been top dressing and seeding the greens this week in readiness for a few wetter days next week, we should really start to see some growth coming on now. Every course we've been playing lately has been extremely tricky as shots from around the green are played off firm, bare ground to even firmer greens with below-season growth. Short side yourself and it's a high tariff escape required.
This has been reflected in the scores in the competitions at Brocton with the odd notable exception:
- Ann Rees won the ladies stableford by five shots with 39 points whilst being one over gross for the front nine holes off 13 handicap!
- Marcus Smith shot a nett 60 in the junior medal to win by 11 and knock four shots off his handicap!
- Al Dawes shot a nett 64 in the medal last week to win his division by five shots.
- Chris Llewellyn won the stable ford with 40 points.
- Nigel and Lewis Powell won the Centenary Salver Greensomes by four shots with 44 points.
I guess when you're hot, you're hot!
Tuesday's Social Golf this week saw 41 golfers take part on the back nine. The weather is beautiful in the evenings at the club - it's a great time to play as this picture shows. Nigel Metcalfe (£18) won the day with 19 points after he beat Wayne Bailey (£14) on countback. Sean Nelson (£11) was third with 18 points.
The Blue Tee winner was Simon Bland.
Rich Nicholls leads Mark Wheatley by one in the Stewart Staples Wonky Club Challenge with 16.
I often talk during lessons about how this is such a game of opposites, one of the best pieces of advice ever came from a learned coach from the wooden woods era who said
"In your deepest, darkest hour - just do the exact opposite of what makes sense". I see this happening quite a lot on the lesson tee. A golfer could be hooking the ball to the left and instinctively swings the club through impact further out to the right to try and keep the ball from going left. This makes the ball curve more and sends it further left, just the same as kicking a football or hitting a forehand tennis shot- the more the glancing blow is to the right, the more the ball curves left.
In many cases this type of golfer in question will swing so violently to the right that the clubhead will flip over and hit the outside half of the ball and the shot will start left of the target and go even further left. This is where many good players get trapped because now they think they've actually pulled the shot left and try to swing even further to the right. Shank!
The exact same thing happens with slicers but they swing more and more left in a doomed attempt to stop the ball flying off to the right. So, before you spend hours trying to correct your shots - just do the opposite of what makes sense!
Please leave my teaching balls where they are on the practice area! I can go to pick them up after half an hour and find them all over the place, in the ditches, on the course whereas I'd left them in a grouping following a lesson. We have balls in the shop to borrow to practice with but please, please, please leave mine alone. It can turn a 10 minute exercise between morning and afternoon coaching sessions into a lengthy one and lots of them begin disappearing as the undergrowth flourishes and people hit them back towards the tee.
Incredible shrinking loft disease. Somebody had mislaid a wedge on the course this week and as it was a 'distance model' club, I measured the loft. There isn't a standard in golf but a recognised pitching wedge loft in a set would be 48 degrees, then a nine iron would be 44 and an eight iron 40 degrees. This pitching wedge measured 43 degrees loft (less than a conventional 9 iron) and it also measured nine iron length. So, next time you think you're short with your irons, remember that you might not be comparing 'apples to apples'.
In the workshop this week:
Mizuno MPH5 irons - Wishon S2S graphite shafts
Tour Edge re-shaft - UST Mamiya shaft
Srixon 745 irons and Cleveland wedges - S2S graphite shafts
Callaway irons - shorten and re-weight
Titleist irons - loft and lie corrections
Titleist 3 wood - re-shaft ACCRA Tour
Z Nike driver - re-shaft X flex 60g
50, 54, 58 Vokey wedges - True Temper shafts
TaylorMade RAC irons reshaft
Superstroke putter grips
Lamkin, Iomic, Golf Pride re-grips
I think I should have cleaned out my shaft cutting machine a couple of weeks ago!
Here's a picture of Rich Le Page from a party at the club at the weekend where he earned some serious brownie points, but most of the men in the room just thought he'd raised the bar far too high!
