Thoughtful Thursday: Artistry versus analytics

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Anyone who is even remotely interested in golf will no doubt be well aware of what is happening at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin this weekend. THE RYDER CUP.

The Ryder Cup, three words that mean so much to so many.

Over the last 30 years, this event has become not only the greatest show in golf, it is now arguably one of the greatest sporting events on the planet and rightly so. With every playing, it’s appeal grows and grows, perhaps more so than any other golf tournament, including the 4 Majors.

Why should that be the case? There are a number of reasons but for me, the two main ones are that first and foremost, it is very much “us against them”. The European Tour versus the PGA Tour. There is an awful lot at stake here, pride being very high on the priority list.

Secondly, The Ryder Cup is matchplay, perhaps golf’s truest and most engaging, enjoyable and watchable form. Only three weeks ago, Catriona Matthew led Team Europe to victory in the Solheim Cup, the ladies version of The Ryder Cup, on American soil, a feat Padraig Harrington will undoubtedly be keen to emulate.

The FedEx finals, the PGA Tour’s “biggest” event was being played at the same time and broadcast at roughly the same time and I have to say, I watched a LOT of the Solheim and not one shot of the FedEx. Why? Again, numerous reasons including knowing and having coached Captain Catriona but largely because it was matchplay.

For thrills and spills, strokeplay is a very poor and distant cousin to matchplay. You just can’t beat it for excitement.

Until the first ball is struck on Friday, there will be lots of speculation about who will win and why. On paper, the USA are the stronger side. However, as former European Ryder Cup star and captain Sam Torrance once said, “We don’t play them on paper, we play them on grass!”

Analytics have become a big part of golf in recent years. They will tell you which team hits the ball further off the tee. They will tell you who hits the most greens in regulation and who gains the most strokes on and around the greens……in strokeplay events.

While analytics have their place and I have no doubt both captains will have endless amounts of data to help them with their four ball and foursomes pairing selections but ultimately, it will come down to who performs best over the course of the three days of competition.

With the weather forecasters predicting relatively strong winds which may well change direction over the course of the weekend, I have a very strong feeling that artistry and the ability to adapt and adjust to the fluctuating conditions will prevail.

I have been very fortunate in my career to have spent time with, coached and learned from numerous Ryder Cup players and one of the things they have all had in common apart from supreme talent, is their ability to adapt, adjust and play the right shot at the right time. Not make the right swing but play the right shot.

With the course being set up the way it is, combined with potentially testing weather conditions, it is my firm belief that the European team have superior artists in their ranks who are capable of creating a wider array of shots than their American counterparts.

Personally, I cannot wait to see how this weekend unfolds and I am sure we will be treated to some excellent, entertaining, engaging and enjoyable golf. A veritable l feast for golf fans around the world.

Will the European artists be victorious or the analytics obsessed Americans?

If I were a betting man, which I’m not, my money would be on Harrington’s heroes to bring The Ryder Cup back home to this side of the Atlantic.

Until next time, put your feet up, switch the TV on, pour yourself a nice refreshing beverage and enjoy!

Gary Nichol

Pre-Order your copy of The Lost Art of the Short Game

Triple Track Tuesday: A visualisation technique to help hole more putts

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Gary Nicol has teamed up with National Club Golfer, Callaway and Odyssey’s Triple Track ball and putter technology to create a special series of putting videos.

Using techniques from The Lost Art books, co-author Gary Nicol will help you look at putting in a new way. These videos are guaranteed to give all variety of golfers a whole new perspective on the greens.

All of our videos were filmed at Archerfield Links in Gullane.

Triple Track Tuesday: Widen your target to hole more putts

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Gary Nicol has teamed up with National Club Golfer, Callaway and Odyssey’s Triple Track ball and putter technology to create a special series of putting videos.

Using techniques from The Lost Art books, co-author Gary Nicol will help you look at putting in a new way. These videos are guaranteed to give all variety of golfers a whole new perspective on the greens.

All of our videos were filmed at Archerfield Links in Gullane.

Thoughtful Thursday: Then there were three

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Just over four years ago, my very good friend Karl Morris and I decided we would write a book together. We had talked about it for some time and while we knew it was going to be a book on golf, we weren’t entirely sure exactly which direction it would take initially.

We had been hosting some putting schools and Master Classes at Archerfield Links where I am based and were seeing some quite astonishing results with players of all abilities, from relative newcomers to the game to seasoned professionals.

Our initial aim was to help players hole more putts, shoot lower scores and perhaps, more importantly, have more fun on the golf course. We wanted to avoid traditional “technical instruction”, as we had seen too many players over the years lose their natural ability by drowning in a sea of information in their pursuit of a “perfect stroke”, whatever that looks like?!

Decision made, we would write a book about how to become more efficient on the putting surfaces and the concept of “The Lost Art Of Putting” was born.
Fast forward a few months and with the help of 1999 Open Champion Paul Lawrie, who was kind enough to write the foreword, we launched our first book at the 2018 Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open just along the road at Gullane.

We joked at the time that if we didn’t actually sell any copies of the book, at the very least we would have some very nice 150-page business cards! We needn’t have worried as it soon became an Amazon best-seller and continues to sell around the world. 

As satisfying as that was and still is, what gives us a far greater sense of satisfaction are the thank you notes, letters, and emails we continue to receive from golfers from all four corners of the globe. The words which keep popping up in these notes of thanks are “liberating, freedom, gratitude, and enjoyment”. If we have helped even a small number of golfers to experience any of these, then we feel we have done our job.

On the back of the success of our first collaboration, we were encouraged to embark on another journey to follow on from our thoughts and ideas on putting in the form of another book.

After much deliberation, we decided this one should be about “The Lost Art of Playing Golf”. During the process of putting this together, a chance meeting and subsequent conversations Karl had with Rudy Duran, who was Tiger Woods’ first coach, in China of all places, confirmed we had chosen the right topic.

Rudy very generously agreed to write the foreword where he talked a lot about the young Tiger and his desire to learn how to create all sorts of different shots with different clubs. Something we feel has been lost to a certain degree in recent years.

With the help of some great guest contributors, as we had with our first book, combined with countless hours of research, writing, and re-writing, in October 2019, we launched “The Lost Art Of Playing Golf”.

Naturally, we experienced a certain amount of trepidation as to whether this one might sell and whether we had got the content, flow, and tone of this one right.

Once again, we were delighted not only when this too became an Amazon best-seller but the content seemed to resonate with a far greater number of golfers than we could ever have expected or wished for. We really weren’t sure that the opening chapter about “Gratitude” would be welcomed by people wanting to play better golf but from the feedback we have since received, we are glad we choose to include it.

Over the last couple of years, Karl and I, just like pretty much everyone else on the planet, have had certain issues to deal with due to this global pandemic. We both had longer periods of not having any income from our day-to-day coaching than we would have liked but it did provide us with the opportunity of dust off our respective laptops and get writing again.

This time we felt we should provide an alternative viewpoint on the short game, having already covered putting and actually playing the game.
Once again, we have had tremendous support from a variety of guest contributors (you’ll need to buy the books to find out who they all are), including the legendary Bob Vokey, the godfather of wedge design, who wrote the foreword for “The Lost Art Of The Short Game”.

As with our previous two books, the waiting game we had to play while the publishers and printers turned all our collective thoughts from Word documents into books, as anyone who has written a book will tell you, is a period when the second and hour hands on our clocks and watches appear to be working in slow motion.

In addition to the three books, we are also offering a “The Lost Art Of Golf Collection” box set which contains all three books in a very stylish cover, these are available to pre-order and will be available in the coming weeks.

What started out as an idea just over four years ago, turned into a book, then a follow-up, and then there were three!

Despite the fact Karl and I have read, re-read and proofread this third book more times than we care to count, we can’t wait to share our thoughts and ideas on the short game with the golf world and we wait impatiently for “The Lost Art Of The Short Game” to be held in the hands of golfers all around the world.

Until next time, appreciate every opportunity you have to play this great game.

Enjoy!
Gary Nicol

Order your copy of The Lost Art of the Short Game

Triple Track Tuesday: A drill for working on pace putting

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Gary Nicol has teamed up with National Club Golfer, Callaway and Odyssey’s Triple Track ball and putter technology to create a special series of putting videos.

Using techniques from The Lost Art books, co-author Gary Nicol will help you look at putting in a new way. These videos are guaranteed to give all variety of golfers a whole new perspective on the greens.

All of our videos were filmed at Archerfield Links in Gullane.

Triple Track Tuesday: The key to hitting putts consistently

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Gary Nicol has teamed up with National Club Golfer, Callaway and Odyssey’s Triple Track ball and putter technology to create a special series of putting videos.

Using techniques from The Lost Art books, co-author Gary Nicol will help you look at putting in a new way. These videos are guaranteed to give all variety of golfers a whole new perspective on the greens.

All of our videos were filmed at Archerfield Links in Gullane.

Triple Track Tuesday: A green reading tip to help with longer putts

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Gary Nicol has teamed up with National Club Golfer, Callaway and Odyssey’s Triple Track ball and putter technology to create a special series of putting videos.

Using techniques from The Lost Art books, co-author Gary Nicol will help you look at putting in a new way. These videos are guaranteed to give all variety of golfers a whole new perspective on the greens.

All of our videos were filmed at Archerfield Links in Gullane.

Tripe Track Tuesday: A ladder drill to stop those three putts

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Gary Nicol has teamed up with National Club Golfer, Callaway and Odyssey’s Triple Track ball and putter technology to create a special series of putting videos.

Using techniques from The Lost Art books, co-author Gary Nicol will help you look at putting in a new way. These videos are guaranteed to give all variety of golfers a whole new perspective on the greens.

All of our videos were filmed at Archerfield Links in Gullane.

Thoughtful Thursday: Good things happen to good people

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Only a few weeks ago, I wrote about an enforced layoff due to a niggling hip injury providing Grant Forrest the opportunity to rest, reassess, recuperate and reset. 

Grant could have viewed this untimely incident as bad luck and extremely annoying as it was slap bang in the middle of the season. Thankfully, as frustrating as it was, he took the time to reflect on where he was with his game and think about what needed to improve in order to achieve his goal of winning on the European Tour. Something that anyone who has seen him play will know he is more than capable of.

Forrest thinks deeply about his game and he made the decision to end his working relationship with his swing coach and seek the opinion of Matt Belsham, who is probably best known for his work with Alex Noren. What he had been working on wasn’t quite going to plan. The intention having been to improve his accuracy off the tee and with his iron play.

His ability to strike the ball solidly and hit it prodigious distances has never been the issue but his accuracy had been letting him down more than he was prepared to accept.

Decision made, after a couple of sessions, he felt he could finally take more ownership of his game and hit the shots he was visualising and intending to hit, which is obviously a very nice place to be on the golf course. Especially when playing tournament golf is how he makes his living.

Having spent a good deal of time with Grant over the last 18 months or so, helping him with his short game and putting, I have got to know him fairly well. He is always polite and punctual, two traits that cost nothing but are to my mind, invaluable. 

Grant is not afraid of hard work, he puts in more than his fair share of hours and effort in the gym and on his game. He is also learning, very quickly I might add, the value of working smart. While integrating the changes he was making to his long game, he recognised he had perhaps been neglecting his putting and his recent stats backed that up.

With that in mind, he knew he wasn’t going to improve his putting stats or his scores by merely noticing he had been spending too little time honing his putting skills. He knew he would have to actually do something about it.

On the Monday preceding the Hero Open at The Fairmont, St. Andrews, Grant arrived at the Archerfield Performance Centre at 9am sharp, just as we had agreed. As always, we discussed what his INTENTION was, where his ATTENTION was and it goes without saying, we were going to tackle the situation with a good ATTITUDE.

When his putting goes slightly “off”, it is rarely anything drastic or dramatic. A little tweak here or there, a shift in focus of attention or a slightly different feel. In this instance, the strike off the putter was less than optimal, therefore making his pace control a bit of a challenge. Moving the ball slightly further forward in his stance seemed to do the trick along with experimenting with a left hand below right grip on a few putts.
The data we were picking up on TrackMan was virtually identical with both a conventional grip and left hand low. The difference was something only he could feel.

Long story short, six days later, Grant Forrest was crowned as Hero Open champion 2021 with an astonishing four round total of 24 under par.
Statistically, this was his best ball striking tournament of his professional career in terms of fairways and greens hit by some considerable distance. Opening with consecutive four under par 68s on Thursday and Friday, using a conventional putting grip was pretty solid but somewhat disappointing, considering how well he had played from tee to green. On Saturday he decided to go left hand low with the putter and 62 (10 under par for the day) shots later, he was tied for the lead.

Sunday was going to be a new experience for Grant as he headed out in the last group, tied for the lead with fellow Scot Calum Hill at 18 under par.

Despite making a bogey 5 on the opening hole, just as he had done en route to his 62 the previous day, he didn’t let that phase him. He and his caddie John McLure stuck to their task of assessing and playing one shot at a time, something else Grant has been working on. Being more present in the here and now, focusing on the task and trusting his technique. This shot and this shot alone. “Our big thing all day was one shot at a time, let’s just keep hitting shots and I hit a great 9 iron into 17 nice and close and that really helps and then two great shots into 18. It was a great way to finish.” 

I hope for Grant’s sake, he wasn’t as nervous as I was watching him play the back 9. I think he added a few more grey hairs to my ever increasing collection. To his credit, he stuck to his task and played some outstanding golf shots, eventually making birdies on the last two holes to edge out James Morrison who chased him down with a spectacular final round of 63. Thankfully those closing birdies and a final round of 66 was good enough to clinch his first win in the European Tour.

“There are so many emotions”, said Forest after his victory. “To do it in front of everyone who has come up to support me – the last year and a half has been a real challenge on and off the course so I’m just delighted.”

With his mum Audrey, sister Ailsa and girlfriend Christie walking every step and feeling the full spectrum of emotions, in attendance, this was a very proud moment for Grant who dedicated his victory to his late father Graeme.

“I wish he was here to see this, he’d be so chuffed. He’s been the big inspiration and a lot of the reason why I’ve really knuckled down when times were tough.”

With sentiments like that, I doubt there has been a more popular winter on Tour in recent times and it is easy to understand why.

Good things really do happen to good people.

Until next time,
Be good.

Triple Track Tuesday: Why are we so bad at asking good questions?

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Gary Nicol has teamed up with National Club Golfer, Callaway and Odyssey’s Triple Track ball and putter technology to create a special series of putting videos.

Using techniques from The Lost Art books, co-author Gary Nicol will help you look at putting in a new way. These videos are guaranteed to give all variety of golfers a whole new perspective on the greens.

All of our videos were filmed at Archerfield Links in Gullane.