Golf tips For more from BGLC @ www.tonybennettgolf.com Home

Lower your handicap

 Junior golf

Start ‘em
young
Sunday mornings Kevin Parry the new member of the Bennett’s Golf Learning Centre at the Alto Club has organised Junior Golf lessons. So if you’re on holiday and the kid’s are a bit bored why not get them along to the Alto Club. You may have the next Tiger Woods and know nothing about it.
The group lessons are open to all comers from 7 year olds and over and starts at 10am for an hour, you don’t need any equipment, the centre can provide both left and right-handed junior clubs in a number of sizes. Group lessons can be booked in advance or you can just turn up and pay & play, and there are no membership restrictions when using the range, so dads needing to polish up their game you can get yourself a bucket of balls and fire away, in peace and quiet.
Kevin is a fully qualified member of the Professional Golfers Association, he has a very pleasant manner and works well with the kids, he’s firm but guides the kids through anything they need to start playing golf. He starts with the basics, how to hold the club, the correct gripping, proper stance. He then works through all parts of the game from putting, chipping, medium and long irons and so on.
My two boys, have been going now for the past two weeks, it’s really good fun and they have learned loads, so they tell me. It’s great value for e10 per hour and that includes the balls, clubs, the lot.

When was the last time that you had the opportunity to take 20 balls and hit them off the 18th tee in a tournament?
Never that’s right, and yet that is the way that most people practice, they go to the range, hit a few iron shots and then pull out the big dog, tee up a few and just beat them down the range. Hey what the hell if you hit a few bad ones, it’s the range right! Wrong, what you practice is what you get and most people don’t really know how to practice, so the results that they get on the course are normally not up to standard.
Next time you go to the range, take a few minutes to warm up with a little stretching, make a few swings with a short iron and then perhaps hit a few wedges. After you’re warm, hit just a couple of balls with each odd numbered iron and then perhaps a few with the woods. Now you are ready to practice, take out the stroke saver of the course that you are next going to play, visualize the hole in front of you, plan your stroke and then execute your tee shot. Watch your ball and see where it lands. Imagine where it would have landed on the real course, then plan and execute your next shot as if you were playing it from there and so on. Let’s say it’s at Alto Golf, look at the layout of the first hole, 155m, par 3 with a bunker positioned on the front left side of the green and lets imagine that the flag is on the back left. You visualize the hole in your imagination, select the appropriate club and then play the shot. If the ball finishes on the green, move onto the second hole. This time it’s a 320m long par 4 with out of bounds on the left from the tee, pick out your target and play the tee shot, this can continue until the last hole if you have enough time. I call this, mind games practice and if you play enough of this type of golf I promise you that your execution on the real course will improve and your scores will come down.