Greetings golfers, 

Welcome to another edition of your pro shop newsletter, bringing you all the latest news from Alderley Edge Golf Club, including a recap of the Captain's fine form in the winter league, how Mandy added an extra 20 yeards to her game, and how a change in putter shape could lead you to lower scores. 

Enjoy this week's read.

This week at Alderley Edge

Saturday, 16 December – Gent's Christmas Competition – Click here to enter.
Sunday, 17 December – Gent's Winter League – 8.30am Shotgun Start

The Captain was in fine form in Winter League

There were a large group of reluctant golfers wondering exactly what we were doing as the snow was coming down at 8.30 on Sunday morning, but we managed to get the fourth match of the winter league completed, albeit in difficult conditions on temporary greens.

As I explained to the Captain at the start of the winter, he would have to be on good form when playing in these conditions as giving 18 shots on temporary greens is not easy! We were drawn to play against new members, Roy Parker and David Jeans. The Captain was on great form and we managed to take a four up lead through eight holes. Roy pegged us back to three up on the ninth with a birdie before the Captain came back with a couple of his own, with us eventually win 5 and 4.

Thanks to Roy and David for an enjoyable round.

Next week we are taking on team Anderson/Gosling/Dibble/Johnson/Isles, which we are both looking forward to!

And the winner of the Pro’s Christmas Draw is?

Thank you to all who attended my Christmas Draw on Friday night and to Chris for the tasty food!

Congratulations to Don Crawshaw for winning first prize.

How Mandy changed her swing and lowered her handicap?

Mandy has been working extremely hard on her game over the past year and has managed to drop her handicap by 3.5 shots since May.

Mandy has always suffered from an inconsistent strike due to a lack of body rotation as the K-Vest data shows (13 degrees pelvis rotation at impact) and an early release in the downswing which can be seen in the ‘before’ picture. The early release also caused a lack of distance.

We set off to improve these issues by doing a number of impact drills to improve Mandy’s awareness of how to get her hands leading the clubhead into the ball. As you can see in the ‘after’ picture, Mandy is now in a superb impact position which is giving her an extra 20 yards. She has added 24 degrees of pelvis rotation at impact which is allowing her to get her hands leading the clubhead into the ball.

If you would like help finding the primary causes of your inconsistency, please click here to book a lesson. We offer all new customers an introductory 30 minute lesson for £9.99.

Ladies group coaching 

I am starting my next course of group lessons in the New Year and the dates and times are below with the cost £7.50 per session, per person. If you would like to put your name down for any of the sessions, please reply to this email.

There are limited spaces available and places will be given on a first come first served basis. If you cannot attend the Thursday session, but would like to attend group lessons, please get in touch as there will be opportunities to run a session on another day.

Junior Group Coaching

Thank you to all who have been attending the junior programme over the autumn term, you all seem to have been enjoying yourselves!

Please click here to see the dates and times for next term.

Due to popular demand there are now sessions running on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. If you have any questions or would like to reserve your space, please click here to contact me.

Do you know someone who might want to give golf a try?

Then look no further! We are going to be running a number of taster sessions in the early part of the year, so please forward this email to them so they can get in touch by contacting me here.

Which type of putter do you line up with best?

This week I thought I would talk about the forgotten club of custom fitting – the putter. How many of you have been fitted for your putter? Not many I would imagine. There are many parts to a good putter fitting, but today I thought I would focus on putter head shape and how it can influence alignment.

The customer mentioned below came for a fitting last week and was using an Odyssey 2-Ball. We captured some data using the SAM PuttLab and instantly discovered that alignment at address was his biggest issue. If he managed to get lined up at address, he was holing the putt but his tendency was to line up with it open or closed as can be seen in the data below.

As every other area of his putting stroke was looking good, we tested a few different putter head shapes to see if there was one he would line up with better than his own.The PING Sigma Wolverine is always a popular model due to the long line on the putter encouraging better alignment. As you can see from the data below, his consistency went up from 42% to 80%. This also led to an improvement in face aim at impact from 54% to 79%, which in turn meant more putts holed.

Other areas looked at in a putter fitting include:

• Putter length
• Lie angle
• Loft – Ball roll analysis
• Grip size
• Counter weighting
• Face balance/toe hang putters

If you would like to book your FREE putter custom fitting session, please click here or call 01625 586200 (ext 2).