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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.
01:53Yeah.
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'm hitting a high shot. I'm going to feel a tiny bit more this way. If it's
02:41too low, it's going to make us want to 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.
02:53Thank you. Thanks.
02:55Okay, so Nick, you got the chance to play three holes with Amanda and then spent some
02:58time on the range with her. Good player, strikes it really nicely. What were the sort of things
03:03that you were talking about to try and help them improve?
03:05Well, we talked about a couple of different parts of game. One was sort of short game pitching
03:10and then the long game. The long game was the easiest. These are the sweetest things to work
03:16on with people because it's a gift that gives immediately and was very easy to attain. So
03:23for 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, and then
03:40the 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
03:45you to, you 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
03:55the ball flight, I thought the tee was a little low for starters, but then when I went to check
03:59out where she stood to it, she could see she's got plenty of power, moves well. You can see
04:03that she's strong in the way that she moves the club, but it was flatter. So I could see
04:07a big improvement could be made with the ball flight. I noticed that in the 11th. Then
04:10when it got to 12th, she actually had to improve the ball flight because of the fact of there's
04:14trees in the way. I was like, how was she going to do it? And the interesting, this was a
04:17classic,
04:18again, feel versus real thing for Amanda, where she thought the ball was in her stance actually
04:24wasn't where it really was. So what we did to improve it was I wanted a little bit more
04:29tilt in her upper body, which is what you see with any top player. I mean, you think
04:33about Rory McIlroy hits up on it six degrees when he's going for the big one. It's a lot
04:36of that. And of course, we're not looking for that. But what we don't want is a really
04:41either a descending blow, certainly even zero and out is like, it put pressure on her as
04:46well with 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
04:54and high and meet the ball up here. Whereas if it's at a perfect level when your club's
04:58on the ground, you ain't going to, well, you shouldn't be touching the ground when you
05:01come through the driver, which inevitably means you're going to be hitting it too low in the
05:04face. So 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?
05:11Yes. At the top end anyway. So we simply moved the ball further forward in the stance, which
05:16to Amanda felt way forward. All I had to do was to take a picture and show her and say,
05:21this is what you were stood to the ball on this last shot. And of course, it's not forward,
05:25it just looks great. Yeah, it looks like that's where it should be all the time. Well, that's
05:29where we're going to put it all the time. And then we're going to have it teed up higher and
05:33the 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
05:48moving this way a little bit will help to encourage that more inside out. Again, without having to think
05:51about not trying to do anything funky. And she got that changed pretty quickly. Immediately.
05:56Yeah. And the drives were the best drives that we saw all day. The ball flight was great.
05:59It was strong. It was long. I mean, that was, that was again, hitting the driver that she was using
06:06today. And you wouldn't change anything about that. That's as good as it gets. So I think that
06:11was a really, I mean, it's so easy to change. And then we did some stuff with the short game
06:15as well,
06:15which was when you get out of heavy lies, the instincts for everybody really, I need to lift it
06:21out of that lie because it's gnarly and like, how's it going to come out? But ironically, the lifting
06:27thing is something that moves the sternum back usually. And if nothing else, certainly shallows
06:32out the attack, which means you come through more grass, which means it won't come out. So ironically,
06:37we have to make peace with, we're going down into the ground and it's the club, not me, that gets
06:42the ball out of the grass. But going in through that grass as well, we had to make peace with,
06:45got to hit it harder. A bit like out of a bunker shot, a bit like I talked with Josh
06:48there as well
06:48today. Like 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 where you've got to practice
06:57these shots. You've got to convince yourself that there's a way to play it. Absolutely. And she
06:59demonstrated prowess in that straight away. And I think for her as well, getting a feeling for the
07:04pace and we talked about controlling distance is something she battles with. So we talked about
07:08trying to match it on both sides, because again, that becomes easy, right? Yeah. Same there. So it's
07:13quarter, quarter or half, half or three quarter, three quarter. And a rhythm though, like that, that stays
07:19the same. Whereas if I'm always going to be different, sometimes short and quick, sometimes longer and
07:24slightly slower. How do you know? Really hard to judge the pace. Whereas then,
07:28if I've got the same feeling all the time, I can stand next to the ball. That's why we see
07:31like the
07:31guys, sometimes top players be next to the ball and feel the shot like that, because they know exactly
07:36that pace and then they're going to step in and just recreate it. And it makes it so much easier.
07:41Again, not an overly complicated thing for her to apply. And she did so beautifully as well. So I
07:46think she made some really big strides with that. And then what about in terms of game plan and strategy?
07:52Amanda seems to me to be getting better quite quickly. So how do you adjust your kind of game
07:56plan 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. You know, and you could see that today a
08:13couple
08:13of times when we looked at how to play the hole. You know, I think for instance, like the 11th,
08:18where she
08:19was hitting up the hill, picking the shot that gives you the most amount of room. So I think
08:23that's the strategy that applies across the board, regardless of ability, but having the patience
08:27that you will naturally going to get better each time and you will be able to alter your target lines
08:31as you go, but make it easy. Make it easier. Don't put yourself under the cosh to make it harder
08:38than
08:38it needs to be. Even though you think, oh, I think I can play that shot now. It's like, that's
08:42fine
08:43in practice, but 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. Very rarely
08:58went at the flag in terms of if it didn't fit in his dispersion pattern. Never took a risk,
09:05played smart, always picked the right side of the hole to give him a buffer. So playing smart
09:09gives you room for error. And if he needed to do it, and he was arguably one, if not the
09:14greatest ever,
09:15certainly one of the top two with Jack, then we should probably take a note from that. And we
09:19probably play too aggressively at times. So playing within ourselves, as much as it's sometimes fun to
09:24go for the hero shot, and I'm a big advocate of that. When push comes over, if we're talking handicap,
09:28let's play smart. Yeah. So there you go. If you want to get your handicap down, then sometimes that
09:34patience, it 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 scores.
09:44I think
09:44the key thing here is the advice coming from Nick, really simple, really effective. Hopefully it's
09:50something that Amanda can take forward with her game to help her shoot lower scores. And hopefully
09:54there'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.
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