Big Improvement = A Happy Golfer

How many shots could you improve by after a few lessons? What follows is what a golfer named Ivor was able to achieve recently after taking a series of golf lessons with yours truly

Ivor’s Story

Back to golf after years of absence. 18 months of flogging balls, shanks, diverts, and spraying 140m with the driver. Typically, I’d leach 3 shots around the greens plus the one that finally crept on and that was after 5 or so shots to get there. At 70 my body wasn’t moving, and golf was about to be given away.

I went on the web to get training to no avail, I couldn’t see what I was or wasn’t doing.

Ring, Ring, Graham here, it was pro lesson time… one hour to begin with.

Let’s start by chipping I requested. Job done, home to practice for a couple of weeks.

My scores started to tumble.

Ring, ring Graham here, lesson two, the driver, to fix my interesting fade / slice with the odd hook. Job done, home to practice.

Scores continued to steadily tumble.

From 136 for 18 holes and sometimes more to 101 with the odd 93 thrown in.

Yeek’s golf is OK again

The difference now is that I’m hunting the flag from 50 m out allowing two puts to be normal.  My mate who drives 260+ m said on Monday that I’m killing him around the greens. Nice.

I’m hitting almost all fairways out 185 to 215 m, what slice I say!

Cracking 90 is my current goal along with another lesson…

So that’s Ivor’s story

Did you think when you started reading the golfer would have improved by that many shots in a couple of months? Ivor has made a 30-40 shot improvement in a short while and can see there are plenty more shots to improve by with another series of lessons

It wasn’t rocket science stuff during the coaching and we simply worked methodically through the areas that needed to be addressed.

Ivor had issues with his body motion in during his swing, so we identified the problem and got to work on a few easy to understand drills.

With his short game we looked where his technique was letting him down, talked through why he was doing it like that then made a few subtle improvements. Ivor then worked at making sure he owned the improvements.

Simple and effective!!

Ever thought how many shots you could improve by with the right coaching?

Give me a call and let’s find out!!

Good Golfing.

Graham

I have been helping Ben and Cecily learn to use the Para-Golfer over the last few weeks. They both have been coming along nicely and are now getting around the course very effectively. I have attached a video of some of Thursdays lessons

If you know of anyone who might benefit from using the Para-Golfer to either learn golf or get back out on the golf club then please give me a call

As an up and coming junior golfer I spent countless hours with my friends working on our games after school and on the weekends. My father would punt me out of the car and off I went. It’s not that he didn’t care but this was a Dad who made his own boat at 8 years old and towed behind his bike on an old pram to go fishing in. He knew we were fine!!

Because we had no parents telling what to do we would play, compete and try lot of different ways of doing things. Looking back now as a golf professional, I lived in a developmental dreamland. The golf course was our playground with a free rein to trial and error methods. 

I was always a gun being able to make a ball go under-over-round or through the trees on the range. This was no skill passed from generation to generation and I organically figured out how to shape the ball at will with pretty much any club in the bag. This skill following me onto the golf course and countless times in stroke or match-play I could hit a shot that seemed to defy the laws of physics and end up safely on a green from an impossible situation. One time out on the course playing a match my ball finished behind a large tree well to the right of a long par 3 green. My opposition walked over to check out my predicament and it was pretty obvious that either a chip out or a crazy shot through small window of the trees limbs was on. Of course, I went for the gap and knocked it in the hole. Great way to unsettle your opposition that.

Round the greens it was game on with my buddies. Putting comps and chipping comps were a staple with the prospect of beating one of the better kids holding a major championship like appeal. The pain of failure was real but a catalyst to get back out and figure out how to get better. The goal was straight forward.

If we were not having comps then we would be figuring out how to win those comps by coming up with the shots we needed to get the job done. I would throw balls down all around the chipping green then using a number of different clubs figure out multiple methods of getting the ball effectively close to the hole. I soon worked out that while I could play a Phil Micklesonesk flop shot with a 60 Degree wedge from the fridge a bump and run with a 5 iron is a better play.

We saw failure as a step on the road to success. We never practiced within our capabilities but rather right at their breaking point. No easy bunker shots for us but rather a plugged ball on a side slope. For those of you who come to my weekly short game clinic and wonder how I get those the balls close to the hole after burying it the reason is I’ve done it and hard a thousand times or more!

As juniors we weren’t taught how, we just figured it out.

So how do my formative years as a golfer help you get better as a player? The big takeaway is to be playful and exploration in your practice. There are many different ways of playing a shot and the best way to figure out what’s best is to try different methods out with no stigma attached for failing a few times along the way.

Better Golfing

Graham

Wednesday Tips Clinic

Every Wednesday from 5-30 till 6.30 I will be running a tips clinic at the Cairns Golf centre driving range. The cost is 20$ pp

For more information contact Graham Bolton on 0435533724

Graham is currently running beginners clinics at the Cairns golf centre driving range. These clinics run for 4 weeks, cost $100 and cover all the important bits when you first start playing

The next round of clinics with be starting November 2017. Contact Graham for more information on 0435533724