- 13 hours ago
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
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.
01:52Yeah.
01:52Yeah.
02:04Yeah.
02:27It's a little bit like you're going to hit it, lovely, or isn't it, it feels completely
02:32different. I mean, I'm hitting a high shot. You're going to feel a tiny bit more this way.
02:40If it's too low, it's going to make us want to hit the ground first.
02:46Nice. To the swing, depending on the distance, and it's going to have that same flow, whatever it is.
02:52Lovely. Thank you. Thanks.
02:55Okay, so Nick, you got the chance to play three holes with Amanda and then spent some time on
02:59the range with her. Good player, strikes it really nicely. What were the sort of things that you were
03:03talking about to try and help her improve? Well, we talked about a couple of different
03:07parts of 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. Right.
03:22So for her, it was something simple. Whenever there's things to amend that are pre-movement,
03:29they'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,
03:36as much as it might feel a little bit different, and it's not drastically different. Right.
03:40And then the rest is you just do what you do. Right.
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
03:50someone with a feel, a general overwhelming feel. For Amanda, it was really easy. So the ball flight,
03:56I thought the tee was a little low for starters, but then when I went to check out where she
03:59stood
04:00to it, she could see she's got plenty of power, moves well. You can see that she's strong in the
04:04way that she moves the club, but it was flatter. So I could see a big improvement could be made
04:08with
04:08the ball flight. I noticed that in the 11th. Then when it got to 12th, she actually had to improve
04:12the
04:12ball flight because of the fact of there's trees in the way. I was like, how was she going to
04:16do it?
04:16And the interesting, this was a classic again, feel versus real thing for Amanda,
04:20where she thought the ball was in her stands actually wasn't where it really was. So what
04:27we did to improve it was I wanted a little bit more tilt in her upper body, which is what
04:32you see
04:32with any top player. I mean, you think about Rory McIlroy hits up on it six degrees when he's going
04:36for
04:36the big one. It's a lot of that. And of course, we're not looking for that. But what we don't
04:39want
04:39is a really either a descending blow, certainly even zeroing out is like it put pressure on her as well
04:46with the low tee. You've got to be spot on. It's like, I'm a big fan for if anything,
04:50give it a little bit too much air. It also means that you can obviously tee it up nice and
04:54high
04:54and meet the ball up here. Whereas if it's at a perfect level when your club's on the ground,
04:59you ain't going to where you shouldn't be touching the ground when you come through the driver,
05:02which inevitably means you're going to be hitting it too low in the face. So it's going to come out
05:05flatter with too much spin, which means you're losing distance. So low flight, high spin, not good.
05:10We want high launch, low spin, don't we? At the top end anyway. So we simply moved the ball further
05:15forward in the stance, which to Amanda felt way forward. All I had to do was to take a picture
05:21and show her and say, this is what you were stood to the ball on this last shot. And of
05:24course,
05:24it's not forward, it just looks great. Yeah, it looks like that's where it should be all the 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
05:37position to find that upstrike. And also for her is a very easy, natural way to get away from a
05:44little bit more of that feeling of oats. She's not a lot, ever so slightly over the top. Just moving
05:48this way a little bit will help to encourage that. Again, without having to think about not trying
05:52to do anything funky. And 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.
06:00It was long. I mean, that was, that was again, hitting the driver that she was using today.
06:06And you wouldn't change anything about that. That's as good as it gets. So I think that was a
06:11really, I mean, it's so easy to change. And then we did some stuff with the short game as well,
06:15which was when you get out of heavy lies, the instincts for everybody really, like I need to
06:21lift it out of that lie because it's gnarly and like, how's it going to come out? But ironically,
06:26that the lifting thing is something that moves the sternum back usually. And if nothing else,
06:32certainly shallows out the attack, which means you come through more grass, which means it won't come out.
06:36So ironically, we have to make peace when we're going down into the ground and it's the club,
06:41not me, that gets the ball out the grass. But going in through that grass as well,
06:44we had to make peace. We've got to hit it harder. A bit like out of a bunker shot,
06:47a bit like I talked with Josh there as well today. Like you've got to have more speed. Just trust,
06:51have 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.
06:58Absolutely. And she demonstrated prowess in that straight away. And I think for her as well,
07:02getting a feeling for the pace, and we talked about controlling distance is something she battles
07:07with. So we talked about trying to match it on both sides, because again, that becomes easy,
07:12right? Yeah. Same there. So it's quarter,
07:14quarter or half, half, or three quarter, three quarter. And a rhythm though, like that,
07:19that stays 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?
07:26Really hard to judge the pace. Whereas then if I've got the same feeling all the time,
07:29I can stand next to the ball. That's why we see like the guys, sometimes top players be next to
07:33the
07:33ball and feel the shot like that, because they know exactly that pace and then they're going to step in
07:38and just recreate it. And it makes it so much easier. Again, not an overly complicated thing for her to
07:43apply. And 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. So how do you adjust your kind of game plan as an improving golfer? How should she be
08:00thinking when she's out on the golf course? I think again, resisting the urge to force it along
08:06and building her way around the golf course, playing to your strengths is a great way to get better.
08:12You know, and you could see that today a couple of times when we looked at how to play the
08:15hole.
08:16You know, I think for instance, like the 11th where she was hitting up the hill,
08:20picking the shot that gives you the most amount of room. So I think that's the strategy that applies
08:24across the board, regardless of ability, but having the patience that you will naturally
08:28going to get better each time and you will be able to alter your target lines as you go.
08:32But make it easy. Make it easy. Don't put yourself under the cosh to make it harder than it needs
08:39to
08:39be. Even though you think, oh, I think I can play that shot now. It's like, that's fine in practice,
08:43but in tournament stuff, play smart because generally the best players, and it's the biggest ever
08:48misconception about Tiger Woods, is that we think, well, this is a box office golfer of which there's
08:54never been another like it. One 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. And if he needed to do it, and he was arguably one,
09:13if not the greatest ever, certainly one of the top two with Jack, then we should probably take a note
09:18from that. And we probably play too aggressively at times. So playing within ourselves,
09:22as much as it's sometimes fun to go for the hero shot, and I'm a big advocate 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,
09:34it sounds easy, but it requires a lot of discipline, it's well worth giving 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
09:44scores. I think the key thing here is that the advice coming from Nick, really simple,
09:49really effective. Hopefully it's something that Amanda can take forward with her game to help
09:53her shoot lower scores. And hopefully there's some bits in there that might help you as well as you
09:58play golf in the future. But that's it for now from Wentworth. Thanks very much for watching.
10:01We'll see you next time.
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