In this video, Golf Monthly reader Amanda Rowley gets a golf lesson from Nick Dougherty in this episode of Game Improved.
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00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappin here from Golf Monthly and welcome to Wentworth Club and the second in our three-part series in which we're going to try to help some amateur golfers shoot lower scores.
00:10Now, in this episode we have Amanda Rowley who is an 18 handicapper. She's only been playing the game for sort of five or six years but she's managed to get her handicap down to 18.
00:21She's going to get the chance to play three holes here on the west course at Wentworth and then head to the range all with Nick Doherty to see if Nick can offer her some tips and some strategy advice on how to play better. Right, let's get started.
00:34Right, so Amanda, tell us a bit what's your handicap and where's your golf at at the moment?
00:51My handicap at the moment is 17.7 so I play off at my club about 19-20. I've had quite a good summer of golf. The consistency is definitely getting better
01:02but my weakness I would say is my short game and that's down to confidence really. I've just lost my confidence with it.
01:10So you only, I think I'm all right in saying that you only started playing golf a few years ago.
01:14Yeah, 2016 and then obviously we've had COVID in between so a few years off.
01:18Okay, so you've come down quickly then. Where would you want to get to in the next couple of years time?
01:25I'd love to be eventually single figure if I can ever get there. I can't see it because I always manage to blob holes
01:32every time I go out. We know how you feel. But yeah, I mean, I would love to comfortably be able
01:37to play off 12, 13 and still be able to score well. So what do you think Nick will be able to help you
01:43with the most? My drive and definitely the short game. Yeah, some nice simple tips that will hopefully
01:49you'll be able to take with you onto the golf course to help you get your handicap down.
01:51Yeah.
02:19Make it look like you're going to hit it. Lovely. Oh, isn't it? It feels completely different.
02:32I mean, like I'm hitting a high shot.
02:38You're going to feel a tiny bit more this way. If it's too low, it's going to make us want to
02:43sort of hit the ground first. Nice. To the swing, depending on the distance, and it's going to have
02:49that same flow, whatever it is. Lovely. Thank you. Thanks.
02:55Okay, so Nick, you got the chance to play three holes with Amanda and then spent some time on the
02:59range with her. Good player, strikes it really nicely. What were the sort of things that you
03:03were talking about to try and help them improve? Well, we talked about a couple of different parts
03:07of game. One was sort of short game pitching and then the long game. The long game was the
03:13easiest. These are the sweetest things to work on with people because it's a gift that gives
03:20immediately and was very easy to attain. So for her, it was something simple. Whenever there's
03:25things to amend that are pre-movement, they're always going to bear fruit quickly. Right. Okay.
03:31Because it's something that you literally stood over the ball and I made a slight adjustment as much
03:36as it might feel a little bit different and it's not drastically different. Right. And then the rest is
03:41you just do what you do. Right. That's going to be easy to apply. Once I start saying, well,
03:44as we change direction, I want you to, you know, and I will do anything I possibly can to avoid that.
03:49I may try and provide someone with a feel, a general overwhelming feel. For Amanda, it was really
03:54easy. So the ball flight, I thought the tee was a little low for starters, but then when I went to
03:59check out where she stood to it, she could see she's got plenty of power, moves well. You can see that
04:03she's strong in the way that she moves the club, but it was flatter. So I could see a big improvement
04:08could be made with the ball flight. I noticed that in the 11th. Then when it got to 12th,
04:11she actually had to improve the ball flight because of the fact of there's trees in the way.
04:15I was like, how was she going to do it? And the interesting, this was a classic again,
04:18feel versus real thing for Amanda, where she thought the ball was in her stance actually wasn't
04:24where it really was. Right. Okay.
04:26So what we did to improve it was I wanted a little bit more tilt in her upper body,
04:31which is what you'd see with any top player. I mean, you think about Rory McIlroy hits up on it six degrees
04:35when he's going for the big one. It's a lot of that. And of course, we're not looking for that.
04:39But what we don't want is a really either a descending blow, certainly even zero and out is
04:44like it put pressure on her as well with the low tee. You've got to be spot on. It's like,
04:49I'm a big fan for if anything, give it a little bit too much air. It also means that you can
04:53obviously tee it up nice and high and meet the ball up here. Yeah. Whereas if it's at a perfect level
04:58when your club's on the ground, you ain't going to, well, you shouldn't be touching the ground when you
05:02come through the driver, which inevitably means you're going to be hitting it too low in the face.
05:04So it's going to come out flatter with too much spin, which means you're losing distance.
05:08Okay. So low flight, high spin. Not good. We want high launch, low spin, don't we? Yes.
05:12Hit the top end anyway. So we simply moved the ball further forward in the stance, which to Amanda
05:16felt way forward. All I had to do was to take a picture and show her. So this is what you were
05:22stood to the ball on this last shot. And of course, it's not forward. It just looks great.
05:26Yeah. It looks like that's where it should be all the time. Well, that's where we're going to put it
05:30all the time. And then we're going to have it teed up higher and the ever so, and it's very subtle
05:34movement. The shift obviously creates this a much easier position to find that upstrike. And also for
05:40her is a very easy, natural way to get away from a little bit more of that feeling of oats. She's not a
05:46lot, ever so slightly over the top. Just moving this way a little bit will help to encourage that.
05:50Again, without having to think about not trying to do anything funky.
05:53And she got that changed pretty quickly. Immediately. And the drives were the best drives that we saw
05:58all day. The ball flight was great. It was strong. It was long. I mean, that was, again, hitting the
06:05driver that she was using today. And you wouldn't change anything about that. That's as good as it
06:09gets. So I think that was a really, I mean, it's so easy to change. And then we did some stuff with the
06:14short game as well, which was when you get out of heavy lies, the instincts for everybody really,
06:20like, I need to lift it out of that lie because it's gnarly. And like, how's it going to come out?
06:25But ironically, the lifting thing is something that moves the sternum back usually. And if nothing
06:31else, certainly shallows out the attack, which means you come through more grass, which means
06:35it won't come out. So ironically, we have to make peace when we're going down into the ground.
06:40And it's the club, not me, that gets the ball out of the grass. But going in through that grass,
06:44well, we had to make peace with got to hit it harder. A bit like out of a bunker shot, a bit like
06:47I talked with Josh there as well today. Like, you've got to have more speed. Just trust,
06:50have more speed. Have more speed and it is better. Not enough speed will create way more problems.
06:56Yeah. And that's why you've got to practice these shots. You've got to convince yourself
06:58that it's the way to play it. Absolutely. And she demonstrated prowess
07:01in that straight away. And I think for her as well, getting a feeling for the pace. And we talked about
07:05controlling distance is something she battles with. So we talked about trying to match it on both sides,
07:10because again, that becomes easy, right? Yeah. Same there. So it's quarter,
07:13quarter or half, half or three quarter, three quarter. And a rhythm though, like that, that
07:19stays the same. Whereas if I'm always going to be different, sometimes short and quick,
07:23sometimes longer and slightly slow, how do you know? Really hard to judge the pace.
07:27Whereas then if I've got the same feeling all the time, I can stand next to the ball. That's why we
07:30see like the guys, sometimes top players be next to the ball and feel the shot like that, because they
07:36know exactly that pace. And then they're going to step in and just recreate it. And it makes it so much easier.
07:40Again, not an overly complicated thing for her to apply. And she did so beautifully as well.
07:45So I think she made some really big strides with that. And then what about in terms of game plan
07:50and strategy? Amanda seems to me to be getting better quite quickly. So how do you adjust your
07:56kind of game plan as an improving golfer? How should she be thinking when she's out on the golf course?
08:03I think again, resisting the urge to force it along and building her way around the golf course,
08:08playing to your strengths is a great way to get better. And you could see that today,
08:13a couple of times when we looked at how to play the hole. I think for instance, like the 11th,
08:18where she was hitting up the hill, picking the shot that gives you the most amount of room.
08:22So I think that's the strategy that applies across the board, regardless of ability,
08:26but having the patience that you are naturally going to get better each time,
08:29and you will be able to alter your target lines as you go, but make it easy. Don't put yourself
08:36under the cosh to make it harder than it needs to be. Even though you think,
08:40oh, I think I can play that shot now. It's like, that's fine in practice. But in tournament stuff,
08:45play smart because generally the best players, and it's the biggest ever misconception about Tiger
08:50Woods is that we think, well, this is a box office golfer of which there's never been another like it.
08:55One of the most conservative golfers of all time. Is that right?
08:58Very rarely went at the flag in terms of if it didn't fit in his dispersion pattern.
09:02Right. Never took a risk. Played smart. Always picked the right side of the hole to give him
09:08the buffer. So playing smart gives you room for error. And if he needed to do it, and he was
09:12arguably one, if not the greatest ever, certainly one of the top two with Jack, then we should probably
09:17take a note from that. And we probably play too aggressively at times. So playing within ourselves,
09:23as much as it's sometimes fun to go for the hero shot, and I'm a big advocate of that. When push comes
09:27shove, if we're talking handicap, let's play smart. Yeah. So there you go. If you want to get your
09:32handicap down, then sometimes that patience, it sounds easy, but it requires a lot of discipline.
09:37It's well worth giving it a go. So there you have it. That's our look at Amanda's game and Nick's
09:42advice to help her shoot lower scores. I think the key thing here is that the advice coming from Nick,
09:48really simple, really effective. Hopefully it's something that Amanda can take forward with her
09:52game to help her shoot lower scores. And hopefully there's some bits in there that might help you
09:57as well as you play golf in the future. But that's it for now from Wentworth.
10:00Thanks very much for watching. We'll see you next time.