The Open at St. Andrews. There are very few sentences that sound better to a golfer than that. Perhaps "That's good, pick it up" isn't far away but, "The Open at St. Andrews" conjures up all sorts of memories.
Even in my lifetime, which represents a tiny proportion of St. Andrews' great history, the winners are at the very least pure class, if not absolute legends of the game. Seve '84, Faldo'90, Daly '95 and Rocca's 18th hole duff and putt, Woods' 8 shot domination in 2000, Woods again but only by 5 in '05 and Oosthuizen by 7 in 2010. But when you go back through the annals the roll of honour is a who's who of the game. Winning an Open Championship at St. Andrews is not just an unbelievable achievement, it's a privilege, and you are included in the same sentence as the greats of the game. Nicklaus, Seve and Woods have said it; "To be considered great you have to win an Open at St. Andrews." I guess it is easier to say that when you have done it, but it holds true and it's what everyone at the home of golf will be grinding for this week, to be considered and honoured as a great.
There have been changes to the Old Course over the years but it ultimately remains the same test. The common consensus is it is a long hitter's course, that you can just hit it miles left from every tee and then a putting competition on huge greens. I would argue almost the opposite. Sure, being long won't hurt but the course is only 7297 yards of relatively firm links land, although it is said the course is playing slower and softer for this edition, the short hitters still won't be victimised too much is they hit it where they aim it. A course with only two par 5s, one of which everyone can reach with an iron if there is no wind, can't be considered a long hitters course. The two stats that have been key in the last three Open's at St. Andrews is driving accuracy and scrambling. Driving accuracy more than scrambling. The other thing one has to sadly report, there hasn't been a good Open at St Andrew's since 1995. Since then they have been won long before the final few holes on Sunday.
The Old Course allows you to bang it left from every tee but you don't get good angles to the pins if you do. A conservative line from the tee makes the approach shot so much harder in nearly every case. To me the course is all about strategy and short game and with bad weather forecast late Friday and early Saturday, the elements could play a big part in determining the winner.
The Lady Captains day was played in autumnal conditions on Wednesday with Mary Richards shooting the lowest score with a nett 70. Congratulations to Gill Bloxham for weathering the storm and enjoying a good day and evening for the ladies section.
The sun came back out for the Captains Away Day at Shrewsbury Golf Club on Friday where we enjoyed some tremendous food and service.
Once you've negotiated the firm bounces and about 6 million trees (on each 9), you reach perfect greens at Shrewsbury - they were running 11.5 on the stimpmeter which is a universal measure of green speed. Their club championship was due to be played on Sunday and they reckoned they were going to roll them and get them to 14 stimp!
The main winners on the day were Ian Graham (36 hole winner), Dave Hughes (afternoon round) and Geoff Walker (morning round).
A stimpmeter is the curse of most greenkeepers as club members love to boast about how fast their greens are by quoting high stimp numbers but it's a double edged sword. Yes, everyone likes to talk about fast greens but very few can play on them as it also means that shots into the greens don't stop and neither do chips and pitches and putting becomes an exercise in nudging the ball to the hole, plus you need flat greens otherwise they would be un-puttable. When I've played in Arizona the greens have been up to Stimp 12 and after a few rounds you do get used to the speed but the difference there is that they hold a shot hit into them. In this country, fast greens = very firm greens.
Andy stimped our greens last Friday and they were running at 10 which is the fastest ours can sensibly run at, the slopes on lots of the greens would be too much for a faster surface than that. It's rare to get a green running quicker than 10 in this country.
Here's a video of my 11 year old Simon who has been getting back into golf this year. We were out practising late on Tuesday, (ok, we were messing about having fun with the light up balls) - listen to the end of the video for some feedback from him.
It's nice to know you're doing something right with the golf swing but as Simon says, it would be good to know what it is. Likewise if you're doing something that's not working it's a good idea to change it!
A good example of this was at the Captains Away Day. I'm sure Mark Newman will forgive me for mentioning this as it has a happy conclusion. I played with Mark in the afternoon and he adopts a chipping action with the ball well back in his stance, his hands well forwards and his body crouched over. After many rehearsals, he tends to get stuck shoving the club to the right and can circumnavigate a green with a wedge. After watching him rehearse and practice the same action I had to intervene and the conversation went like this:
Me: "Mark would you please stop shoving your club to the right, I can't watch you doing that for 18 holes!"
Mark: "Well what should I do?"
Me: "Swing the club across the ball, inwards towards your body instead, you're pushing it out away from you all the time"
Mark: "I don't feel like I'm doing that"
Me: "Ok, well would you please at least do something radically different to what you're doing -it's not working is it?"
Mark: "Do what different?"
Me: "I don't care, just as long as it's not doing the same as you've been doing!!"
Many golfers try to get better at making a poor action instead of changing the action to a more successful one. We laughed about this exchange afterwards and I added that anything radically different would be good - move the ball position, chip reverse handed, one-handed, anything except trying to do the same thing better.
I saw Mark by the putting green the next day and spent 2 minutes fixing it. The cure was simple, instead of ball back, hands forward - we reversed it and moved the ball forwards in his stance and leant his hands backwards. A simple change but radically different in terms of feel and outcome. The happy ending is that Mark went out and won the Medal the next day - nice one Tardelli!
Take a look at these two pictures of one of our juniors having a swing. The ball has been hit off the toe of the club and just look at how much the club has twisted in the hands just after impact! Seeing errors like this in your swing is one of the most effective ways of changing and improving your game!
Shirt Amnesty
We have a few Ashworth and FootJoy men's shirts and Ladies Glenmuir shirts remaining which you can get £10 off by bringing in an old golf shirt. It's been a successful promotion and it was good to see so many smartly dressed golfers at the weekend.
Powakaddy trolley with FREE £149 bag.
Amazing offer from Powakaddy - order one of the fantastic FW7 trolleys which are £399 with a normal battery or £549 with a lithium battery and receive a Premium cart bag or deluxe nylon bag worth £149!! The offer is on for the rest of the month or whilst stocks of the bag remain. The trolleys come in a choice of colours and trims - we sell more of the lithium batteries these days as they have a pro rata 5 year warranty instead of a 12 month one.
Srixon balls
Buy 3 dozen of any of their golf balls and receive a 4th dozen free of charge. They have run this promotion on logo balls but this is now available for golf balls off the shelf.
