- 3 minutes ago
In this video, Golf Monthly reader Amanda Rowley gets a golf lesson from Nick Dougherty in this episode of Game Improved.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappin here from Golf Monthly and welcome to Wentworth Club and the second in our three-part
00:05series 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
00:16sort 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
00:25to the range all with Nick Doherty to see if Nick can offer her some tips and some strategy advice
00:30on how to play better.
00:32Right, let's get started.
00:46Right, 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
00:58quite a good summer of golf. The consistency is definitely getting better.
01:03But my weakness, I would say, is my short game and that's down to confidence really. I've just lost my
01:08confidence 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.
01:19Okay, so you've come down quickly then.
01:21Yes, yes.
01:21Where would you want to get to in, you know, 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
01:30manage to blob holes.
01:32Every time I go out.
01:33We know how you feel.
01:34But yeah, I mean, I would love to comfortably be able to play off 12, 13 and still be able
01:40to score well.
01:41So what do you think Nick will be able to help you with the most?
01:44My drive and definitely the short game.
01:46Yeah, some nice, simple tips that will hopefully you'll be able to take with you onto the golf course to
01:51help you get your handicap down.
01:51Yeah.
01:54Yeah.
02:04Yeah.
02:05Yeah.
02:27Make it look like you're going to hit it, lovely, or isn't it, it feels completely different,
02:32I mean like I'm hitting a high shot, you're going to feel a tiny bit more this way, if it's
02:41too low it's going to make us want to sort of hit the ground first, nice, to the swing, depending
02:48on the distance, and it's going to have that same flow, whatever it is, lovely.
02:54Okay, 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 were talking about
03:04to try and help them improve?
03:05Well, we talked about a couple of different parts of game, one was sort of short game pitching, and then
03:11the long game, the long game was the easiest, these are the sweetest things to work on with people because
03:18it's a gift that gives immediately and was very easy to attain.
03:22So for her, it was something simple, whenever there's things to amend that are pre-movement, they're always going to
03:30bear fruit quickly, because it's something that you literally stood over the ball, and I made a slight adjustment, as
03:36much as it might feel a little bit different, and it's not drastically different, and then the rest is you
03:41just do what you do.
03:42That's going to be easy to apply. Once I start saying, well, as we change direction, I want you to,
03:46you know, and I will do anything I possibly can to avoid that, I may try and provide someone with
03:50a feel, a general overwhelming feel.
03:53For Amanda, it was really easy. So the ball flight, I thought the tee was a little low for starters,
03:58but then when I went to check out where she stood to it, she could see she's got plenty of
04:01power, moves well, you can see that she's strong in the way that she moves the club, but it was
04:06flatter.
04:06So I could see a big improvement could be made with the ball flight. I noticed that in the 11th,
04:10then when it got to 12th, she actually had to improve the ball flight because of the fact of there's
04:14trees in the way.
04:15I was like, how was she going to do it? And the interesting, this was a classic again, feel versus
04:19real thing for Amanda, where she thought the ball was in her stance, actually wasn't where it really was.
04:26So what we did to improve it was I wanted a little bit more tilt in her upper body, which
04:32is what you see with any top player.
04:33I mean, you think about Rory McIlroy hits up on it six degrees when he's going for the big one.
04:36It's a lot of that. And of course, we're not looking for that.
04:38But what we don't want is a really either a descending blow, certainly, even zero and out is like, it
04:45put pressure on her as well with the low tee.
04:47You've got to be spot on. It's like, I'm a big fan for if anything, give it a little bit
04:51too much air. It also means that you can obviously tee it up nice and high and meet the ball
04:55up here.
04:56Whereas if it's at a perfect level when your club's on the ground, you ain't going to, where you shouldn't
05:00be touching the ground when you come through the driver, which inevitably means you're going to be hitting it too
05:04low in the face.
05:05So it's going to come out flatter with too much spin, which means you're losing distance.
05:08So low flight, high spin, not good. We want high launch, low spin, don't we?
05:12Hit the top end anyway. So we simply moved the ball further forward in the stance, which to Amanda felt
05:17way forward.
05:18All I had to do was to take a picture and show her. So this is what you were stood
05:22to the ball on this last shot.
05:24And of course, it's not forward. It just looks great. Yeah, it looks like that's where it should be all
05:28the time.
05:29Well, that's where we're going to put it all the time. And then we're going to have it teed up
05:32higher.
05:32And the ever so, and it's very subtle, a movement, the shift obviously creates this a much easier position to
05:38find that upstrike.
05:39And also for her is a very easy, natural way to get away from a little bit more of that
05:44feeling of oats.
05:45She's not a lot, ever so slightly over the top. Just moving this way a little bit will help to
05:50encourage that more inside out.
05:50Again, without having to think about not trying to do anything funky.
05:54And she got that changed pretty quickly. Immediately. Yeah.
05:56And the drives were the best drives that we saw all day. The ball flight was great. It was strong.
06:01It was long.
06:02I mean, that was, that was again hitting the drive that she was using today. And you wouldn't change anything
06:08about that.
06:09That's as good as it gets. So I think that was a really, I mean, it's so easy to change.
06:13And then we did some stuff with the short game as well, which was when you get out of heavy
06:17lies, the instincts for everybody really, like lift it out of that lie because it's gnarly.
06:23And like, how's it going to come out? But ironically, the lifting thing is something that moves the sternum back
06:30usually.
06:31And if nothing else, certainly shallows out the attack, which means you come through more grass, which means it won't
06:35come out.
06:36So ironically, we have to make peace when we're going down into the ground and it's the club, not me,
06:42that gets the ball out the grass.
06:43But going in through that grass as well, we had to make peace with, got to hit it harder.
06:46Bit like out of a bunker shot. Bit like I talked with Josh there as well today.
06:49Like you've got to have more speed. Just trust, have more speed. Have more speed and it is better.
06:53Not enough speed will create way more problems. Yeah. And that's why you've got to practice these shots.
06:57You've got to convince yourself that it's going to play it. Absolutely.
06:59And she demonstrated prowess in that straight away. And I think for her as well, getting a feeling for the
07:04pace.
07:04And we talked about controlling distance is something she battles with.
07:07So we talked about trying to match it on both sides because again, that becomes easy, right?
07:12Yeah. Same there. So it's quarter, quarter or half, half or three quarter, three quarter.
07:17And a rhythm though like that, that stays the same. Whereas if I'm always going to be different, sometimes short
07:23and quick, sometimes longer and slightly slow.
07:25How do you know? Really hard to judge the pace. Whereas then if I've got the same feeling all the
07:29time, I can stand next to the ball.
07:33And feel the shot like that because they know exactly that pace and then they're going to step in and
07:38just recreate it.
07:39Yeah. And it makes it so much easier. Again, not an overly complicated thing for her to apply.
07:44And she did so beautifully as well. So I think she made some really big strides with that.
07:48And then what about in terms of game plan and strategy? Amanda seems to me to be getting better quite
07:54quickly.
07:54So how do you adjust your kind of game plan as an improving golfer? What do you, how should she
08:00be thinking when she's out on the golf course?
08:03I think again, resisting the urge to force it along and building a way around the golf course, playing to
08:09your strengths is a great way to get better.
08:11You know, and you could see that today a couple of times when we looked at how to, how to
08:14play the hole.
08:16You know, I think for instance, like the 11th where she was hitting up the hill, picking the shot that
08:21gives you the most amount of room.
08:23So 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 and you will be able to
08:30alter your target lines as you go.
08:32But make it easy, make it easier. Don't put yourself under the cosh to make it harder than it needs
08:39to be.
08:39Even though you think, Oh, I think I can play that shot now. It's like, that's fine in practice, but
08:44in tournament stuff, play smart because generally the best players.
08:47And it's the biggest ever misconception about Tiger Woods is that we think, well, this is a box office golfer
08:53of which there's never been another like it.
08:55One of the most conservative golfers of all time.
08:57Is that right?
08:58Very rarely went at the flag in terms of if it didn't fit in his dispersion pattern.
09:03Right. Yeah.
09:04Never took a risk, played smart, always picked the right side of the hole to give him a buffer.
09:08So playing smart gives you room for error.
09:11And if he needed to do it and he was arguably one, if not the greatest ever, certainly one of
09:16the top two with Jack, then we should probably take a note from that.
09:18And we probably play too aggressively at times.
09:21So playing within ourselves, as much as it's sometimes fun to go for the hero shot, and I'm a big
09:25advocate of that.
09:26When push comes over, if we're talking handicap, let's play smart.
09:29Yeah. So there you go. If you want to get your handicap down, then sometimes that patience, it sounds easy,
09:35but it requires a lot of discipline.
09:37It's well worth giving it a go.
09:39So there you have it. That's our look at Amanda's game and Nick's advice to help her shoot lower scores.
09:44I think the key thing here is that the advice coming from Nick, really simple, really effective.
09:50Hopefully it's something that Amanda can take forward with her game to help her shoot lower scores.
09:53And hopefully there's some bits in there that might help you as well as you play golf in the future.
09:59But that's it for now from Wentworth. Thanks very much for watching. We'll see you next time.
10:02We'll see you next time.
Comments