Scotish Open

No practice for me these past two days, On Wednesday I had a work meeting in Glasgow and afterwards having finished early I nipped up to Loch Lomond to check out practice day at the Scottish Open. I managed to see Phil Mickleson and Ernie Ells among others play in the Pro Am and spent time walking the course and checking out the practice range till late o'clock.

Indeed I enjoyed it so much I arranged a quick day off work for the next day and found somewhere to stay the night near by. I then got to spend Thursday watching the first round golf too. I followed Chris Wood, Christian Cevaer & Michael Hoey in the morning, then vaguely followed big Phil's, big Easy's and big (literally :p) Montnty's groups in the afternoon. By the ninth hole in the afternoon the crowds following those headline groups made it too much hassle so I went and watched the pro's practicing on the range for an hour then took a ringside seat at the par 3 17'th and watched all the remaining afternoon groups come in.

It was very enjoyable and quite revealing as to how those guys actually play and practice and how the courses are set up.

Firstly let me say they hit it a god damn long way without much obvious speed and strength, it's quite clear that technique and tempo plays a huge part in the power they display. I mean 300 yards carry is a long way!! No really! Makes me laugh when so many Internet amateurs claim 300 yard driving averages, to this day I have not seen any handicap player hit a driver as high and as far through the air as those pros do, and another thing, most of them deliberately use a fade shot off the tee ( if not on all shots) and I'm quite sure that if they went after one they could get more yardage than they actually play for.

The other amazing thing is how little they try and work the ball unless they have too. Baby fades, little cut shots and small draws are the order of the day until they get out of position. Highlight of Thursday was Phill Mickleson on the first fairway, he was 20 yards behind a big dead tree, he sliced the ball around the tree and onto the green in true big Phil style. That was worth watching :)

But the most impressive thing was their distance and trajectory control with irons and their short game skills, truly worth watching.

And the most surprising thing is how many putts they miss. Now obviously they are good putters and to be fair their distance control is spot on and impressive, but it just goes to show why putting is often the thing that makes the difference for those guys, because from 4-6 foot they miss a lot more than I expected even on the practice green. Still much better than us hackers of course but amazingly human.

Having said that the greens looked awfully fast, and the course looked set up pretty tough with shaved run off areas and some fairly demanding fairways to be found. No way would I brake 100 on a course like that even off the short tee's! Those greens would give me about 45 putts and my lack of short game would kill me :p

It was very obvious why the pro's rounds take 5 hours, they spend an age on the greens, reading it, walking around to every side view, getting set up, trying to make the putt count. Where as in club golf we pretty much all rush the bit at the green, which for the sake of family life's and our Sat morning sanity is probably no bad thing because we all hate 4.5 hour rounds let alone 5.5 hour ones, but I think putting and how to read greens correctly, that may be the single biggest difference we could make to our hackers games if we went at it like a Pro.

All in all I enjoyed being there and if you ever get the chance of watching an event especially a practice day when there are much fewer spectators then I heartily recommend it.