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You know what’s it like, 1 round you can’t do anything wrong, irons are pure’d and drives are launched majestically down the centre of every fairway. 10 foot putt? No problem! It’s the purple patch that all golfers long to experience, sometimes it lasts a few months, sometimes a few weeks but more often only a few rounds.

Let’s get one thing out there…GOLF IS A HARD GAME! It’s a game where we are asked as players to perform an unnatural move that the human body is simply not built for. A lot of the golf swing happens behind the player and I’m sure we can all relate to the idea that what we think our swing looks like is far from reality!

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As PGA professionals our training allows us to assess a golf swing from several angles. One of our key beliefs is that a golfer should build a swing that their body physically allows them to carry out. It’s not necessary to have the flexibility and rotation of Dustin Johnson to be a great golfer, the strength and swing speed of Tiger Woods, there are several players who do not complete a traditional “full shoulder turn” but still get phenomenal results – just take a look at John Rahm’s swing and you will see you can generate power and a silky smooth and technically sound swing without that full rotation.

It’s no secret that most club golfers do not get coached on their golf game, often magazines or YouTube is the goto source of information for that golf swing fix. There is a lot of great information out there but more often than not it is very generic information, it’s easy to convince yourself that you have found the fix for your swing and then you take it straight out on the course which inevitably delivers the opposite result that you were hoping for.

Coaching can benefit your game, and those benefits can come quickly, without fail always quicker than the YouTube approach. Our own research shows these are the most common answers to the question of “What has stopped you getting coaching before now”:

“I know I will get worse before getting better if I take coaching”

Unless we are rebuilding a swing from scratch this is a very unlikely outcome! You will come out of a lesson with a drill or two after seeing your swing at the start of the lesson and your swing after the lesson – this gives you the confidence you need to take those drills into your practice to get your game back on track.

“I’m not good enough to have lessons at my current ability”

We coach our club champion (who plays of a handicap of 1) as well as complete beginners, for example our getting into golf scheme has been a huge success. Coaching can help you improve your golf at a faster rate.

“My swing is awful and I’m a little embarrassed, and you want me to swing in front of a professional?”

a. There is nothing to be embarrassed about, will focus on the positives and work with you in the way that makes you feel comfortable. Taking that first step is the hardest thing to do, by the end of your coaching session you will have seen how good your game is – this alone will build your confidence and help you enjoy golf even more.

“I don’t have a physics degree – what chance have I got of understanding all the data you will give me?”

Do you like data? “No”? In which case we won’t show you data! “Yes”? Then we have plenty of it for you. Our principle aim is to give you meaningful information, data can become confusing and YouTuber’s often push lots of numbers on the screen – those numbers are really for your PGA professional to help understand what is going on with the swing so they can give you simple guidance to help you improve.

Our approach at Ted Maher golf performance here at Great Barr Golf Club is to work with the golfer to set realistic expectations. We see a clear difference with club golfers vs the casual golfers who come in to the club. Casual golfers often respond to the question of “What are you hoping to achieve today?” with an answer along the lines of “I want to swing like Tiger” or “I want to be able to play the flop shot like Phil Mickleson”. Club golfers are more realistic and always come to us with some good insight to their own swing and what they think is wrong.

We have several ways to carry out coaching:

• Simulator – this maybe used where we do need to take a look at some numbers using our GCQuad sensor housed in our recently refurbished swing room.
• BodiTrak pressure sensor mat – we have recently successfully undertook the “BodiTrak Golf Ground Mechanics” certification, this new addition to our golf performance centre allows us to get the most out of your swing – with really minor changes to your swing you can finally gain those extra few vital yards but more importantly see with your own eyes the difference between poor weight transfer and goof weight transfer. We are sure you won’t be disappointed – click here to take a look.
• Practice area – we are lucky to have a practice area where you can hit off grass. This is really useful where a golfer may struggle to take their game from the driving range to the course.
• Chipping and putting greens – these areas allow us to coach you on the often overlooked but so vitally important areas of your golf game.
• The course – another overlooked area of a golfers tool-set is course strategy, here we take you around some of the holes at Great Barr Golf Club to work on your strategy, “Do you really need to take driver on this hole?”

Our approach to coaching can be tailored to your needs. Our focus is not to sell you a bunch of lessons, our focus is to build a coaching plan to fix a swing fault or to improve your game in the way that you want. We are really proud of the fact that the vast majority of new students come to us by recommendations of current students, and we feel that speaks volumes for the results we deliver.

We offer coaching all year round and can make use of the simulator up until 10pm (9pm last session) so there is never a reason to not practice or book our coaching sessions as we will always have time to fit into your busy schedule.

Our overall mission is to help you enjoy the game of golf, the more you enjoy it the better you get, the better you get the more you will get out this wonderful game we call golf!

Let us help you play the best golf of your life.

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I said, “I will be ready for The Match,” and I will be! Thank you to Dave Phillips and Greg Rose from @mytpi for their knowledge and expertise. Tom House who has helped so many athletes prolong their careers. @SeanMCochran for keeping me healthy, strong, and injury free for the last 16 years. Andrew Getson for working with me to get my game back and for helping me win this year – the first time in 5 years. And, to my brother @timmick29 – for making my job fun and enjoyable. Thank you all, I appreciate it so much! @TigerWoods, you’re going to need your best next Friday. Just saying.

A post shared by Phil Mickelson (@philmickelson) on Nov 14, 2018 at 4:29pm PST

So, without further ado let’s get into this post.  We are delighted to speak to Ian Neal, a member who has been at Great Barr Golf Club for over 20 years.  Ian was proud to announce the launch of his book “The Gypsy Golfer” which was launched on Amazon earlier in the week and we wanted to help him shout about it and spread the word about this fantastic news so we thought it was only right to put him in the spotlight and let him tell you all about it!

Ian decided to write a book as “there wasn’t much on TV” and always fancied the idea of writing some fiction.  One day he set about that task and found creating this piece of fiction to be quite a therapeutic activity and had a great deal of fun in letting his creative mind run loose on a story around his love of golf.

The Gypsy Golfer

The book tells of story of a young traveller who falls for the game of golf, as you can imagine it’s not a simple tale of  “boy goes to the driving range and falls in love with the game”, it’s a much more entertaining story beginning with a bit of trespassing onto one of the best courses in the world and being “a bit nosey” as to all the shenanigans going on that lit the spark for main character in the book to fall for the game of golf.  The book covers many highs and some lows but one thing for sure, Ian’s writing style and his hilarious anecdotes around the fictional characters journey will keep you laughing all the way through the book.

Perhaps grab yourself a copy and bring it to the club, I’m sure Ian will only be too happy to sign it for you!

The book is available on Amazon now – you can get the book in both paperback and Kindle formats.

Great work Ian!

I have really enjoyed writing this book, it’s been a really fun experience writing it and I definitely want to do another book soon.  Can I take this opportunity to thank our Lady Captain Debbie Copper and Micheal Howard for their valuable help in making this a reality for me.

Author of the Gypsy Golfer – Ian Neal