It was a tremendous score of 44pts that took the top spot in the Captain/Pro challenge (a fourball betterball competition for those lucky enough to beat the Captain and I during the Captaincy year) from Bill Wardrope & John Mack on Sunday. 



Taking the runners-up spot was Andrew Doyle & Don Harrington with 42 with Pat Owen & Peter Young taking third place on countback with 41pts.


 

The second of this year's three International matches took place on the West course on Saturday.

80 golfers took part in the event and the overall results were very close - with Ireland defeating England and the Rest of the World defeating Scotland. 

So after two matches in this year's series, Ireland top the table with two wins, closely followed by Rest of the World and England with one win each. 

Many thanks to all the people who played and especially to the Team Captains Kevin Turner, Kevin Collins, Charles Andrew and Upin Dattani and to Simon Wood in the office. 

The next match is on 20th November 2016 at 09.00 on the East Course


 

Is your driver right for you? 

Michael Ayling recently popped into the Pro Shop to ask about getting a new shaft for his driver which he had been struggling with. 

We booked him in for a fitting at the Studio to see what the options were. 

Michael warmed up then hit several shots with his current driver, a 9.5 degree head with a 65 gram stiff flex shaft, these were our observations: 

He has lots of power in his swing, a little over 100mph club head speed at impact (suitable for the stiff flex shaft), he also struck the ball from the centre of the club face on virtually every shot (suggesting the shaft was a suitable weight) - this gave him a very impressive average ball speed of 145 mph. 

However his ball was not flying anywhere near as far as we would expect (less than 200 yards in fact) due to an extremely low trajectory (less than 50 feet in peak height). On a good strike Michael's ball was launching at around 6 degrees (PGA tour average is 10.9) and had less than 1500 rpm of backspin (tour average here is 2700). 

This combination is frankly a recipe for disaster. For optimum distance and control we need to get the ball airborne (like a ball firing from a cannon) then we need backspin to keep the ball in the air (creating lift similar to the wings on an aeroplane). 

We built Michael a driver with a High Launch head (around 13 degrees of loft) to increase his launch and spin, with a virtually identical shaft to his current driver - the results were staggering - with no change in ball speed he could now carry his driver over 230 yards and achieve a total distance over 260 yards - all of this due to an optimised launch of 10 degrees and spin rate of 3000 rpm. 

As you can imagine he was a very satisfied customer!

If you are struggling with any aspect of your game and think that a fitting could be the answer, click here to get in touch or come and have a chat with us in the pro shop.


 

A strong field has assembled in Bad Griesbach this week to contest the prestigious Porsche European Open. Major champions Martin Kaymer, Padraig Harrington and Ernie Els will play, along with European Tour stars like Thomas Pieters, Bernd Wiesberger and Thorbjorn Olesen. Kaymer and Pieters will be looking to hit top gear as they ready themselves for Ryder Cup action next week at Hazeltine.

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