18 August, 2008
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By PGA professional John Peters
The women are a fraction slower than the men so you have the chance to really see how they are playing their shots.
While practise is the virtue of all golfers, watching the top players in the world can also pay dividends for club golfers according to PGA professional John Peters, who has just had the cream of the Ladies European Tour on his home track of Machynys Peninsula - battling the elements.
For four days the Ladies European Tour camped on my doorstep and watching them at their peak of their performance is something to behold and something I'd recommend to all golfers.
The quality of the golf has moved on considerably and the way they all hit the ball and controlled it, especially in the conditions we encountered, was amazing.
The course suffered from extreme conditions and yet they kept on finding the fairways and creating birdie opportunities, despite driving rain, testing winds, cold temperatures and a course that was taking a battering and under intense pressure.
The pro-am was cut short and a day's play was lost during the tournament to show just how extreme it was.
But despite this, they showed their professionalism and this is a lesson all club golfers can learn. Whatever was thrown at them, their game never changed and the pace of their swing remained constant. They didn't allow of the elements to affect them, which isn't something you can say about club golfers.
If club golfers are hitting into the wind, they generally try to hit the ball harder and that can lead all sorts of problems. The answer is to take a club more but more importantly retain the same pace of swing and shot routine.
If the holes are longer, approach it in three rather than trying to reach in two and risk running into problems.
But the beauty of watching the women is they are a fraction slower than the men and so you have the chance to really see how they are playing their shots and how, in the conditions here, they control the ball to either use the wind or keep low to avoid it.
Key to winning here was the ability to control the ball and to keep it on the fairway, which was much more important than trying to hit it the furthest they could - again, something club golfers should bear in mind.
John Peters is head professional at Machynys Peninsula and can be contacted on 01554 744 666.