- 24/05/2025
In this video, Golf Monthly reader Amanda Rowley gets a golf lesson from Nick Dougherty in this episode of Game Improved.
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00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappin here from Golf Monthly and welcome to Wentworth Club and the second in our three-part series in which we're going to try to help some amateur golfers shoot lower scores.
00:10Now, in this episode we have Amanda Rowley who is an 18 handicapper. She's only been playing the game for sort of five or six years but she's managed to get her handicap down to 18.
00:21She's going to get the chance to play three holes here on the west course at Wentworth and then head to the range all with Nick Doherty to see if Nick can offer her some tips and some strategy advice on how to play better. Right, let's get started.
00:34Right, so Amanda, tell us a bit what's your handicap and where's your golf at at the moment?
00:51My handicap at the moment is 17.7 so I play off at my club about 19-20. I've had quite a good summer of golf. The consistency is definitely getting better
01:02but my weakness I would say is my short game and that's down to confidence really. I've just lost my confidence with it.
01:10So you only, I think I'm all right in saying that you only started playing golf a few years ago.
01:14Yeah, 2016 and then obviously we've had COVID in between so a few years off.
01:18Okay, so you've come down quickly then. Where would you want to get to in the next couple of years time?
01:25I'd love to be eventually single figure if I can ever get there. I can't see it because I always manage to blob holes
01:32every time I go out. But yeah, I mean I would love to comfortably be able to play off 12, 13
01:38and still be able to score well. So what do you think Nick will be able to help you with the most?
01:44My drive and definitely the short game. Yeah, some nice simple tips that will hopefully
01:49you'll be able to take with you onto the golf course to help you get your handicap down.
01:51Yeah.
02:21Make it look like you're going to hit it. Lovely. Or isn't it? It feels completely different.
02:32I mean, it's like I'm hitting a high shot.
02:38You're going to feel a tiny bit more this way. If it's too low, it's going to make us want to
02:43sort of hit the ground first. Nice. So the swing, depending on the distance and it's going
02:49to have that same flow, whatever it is. Lovely.
02:53Thank you. Thanks.
02:55Okay, so Nick, you got the chance to play three holes with Amanda and then spend some time on
02:59the range with her. Good player, strikes it really nicely. What were the sort of things
03:03that you were talking about to try and help them improve?
03:06Well, we talked about a couple of different parts of game. One was sort of short game pitching
03:09and then the long game. The long game was the easiest. These are the sweetest things to work
03:16on with people because it's a gift that gives immediately and was very easy to attain.
03:22Right. Okay.
03:23So for her, it was something simple. Whenever there's things to amend that are pre-movement,
03:29they're always going to bear fruit quickly.
03:31Right. Okay.
03:31Because it's something that you literally stood over the ball and I made a slight adjustment
03:36as much as it might feel a little bit different and it's not drastically different.
03:39Right.
03:40And then the rest is you just do what you do.
03:41Right.
03:42That's going to be easy to apply. Once I start saying, well, as we change direction, I want you,
03:46you know, and I will do anything I possibly can to avoid that. I may try and provide someone
03:50with a feel, a general overwhelming feel. For Amanda, it was really easy. So the ball
03:56flight, I thought the tee was a little low for starters, but then when I went to check
03:59out where she stood to it, she could see she's got plenty of power, moves well. You can see
04:03that she's strong in the way that she moves the club, but it was flatter. So I could see
04:07a big improvement could be made with the ball flight. I noticed that in the 11th. Then when
04:10it got to 12th, she actually had to improve the ball flight because of the fact of there's
04:14trees in the way, I was like, how was she going to do it? And the interesting, this was a classic
04:18again, feel versus real thing for Amanda, where she thought the ball was in her stance actually
04:24wasn't where it really was.
04:26Right. Okay.
04:26So what we did to improve it was I wanted a little bit more tilt in her upper body, which
04:32is what you see with any top player. I mean, you think about Roy McIlroy hits up on it six
04:35degrees when he's going for the big one. It's a lot of that. And of course, we're not looking
04:38for that. But what we don't want is a really either a descending blow, certainly even zero
04:44and out is like, it put pressure on her as well with the low tee. You've got to be spot on.
04:49It's like, I'm a big fan for if anything, give it a little bit too much air. It also means
04:52that you can obviously tee it up nice and high and meet the ball up here. Yeah. Whereas
04:56if it's at a perfect level, when your club's on the ground, you ain't going to, where you
05:00shouldn't be touching the ground when you come through the driver, which inevitably means
05:03you're going to be hitting it too low in the face. So it's going to come out flatter with
05:06too much spin, which means you're losing distance. Okay. So low flight, high spin, not good.
05:10We want high launch, low spin, don't we? Yes. Hit the top end anyway. So we simply moved
05:14the ball further forward in the stance, which to Amanda felt way forward. All I had to do was to
05:20take a picture and show her and say, this is what you were stood to the ball on this last
05:23shot. And of course it's not forward. It just looks great. Yeah. It looks like that's where
05:28it should be all the time. Well, that's where we're going to put it all the time. And then
05:31we're going to have it teed up higher and the ever so, and it's very subtle, a movement,
05:35the shift obviously creates this a much easier position to find that upstrike. And also for
05:40her is a very easy, natural way to get away from a little bit more of that feeling of oats.
05:45Not a lot, ever so slightly over the top. Just moving this way a little bit will help to encourage
05:50that more inside out. Again, without having to think about not trying to do anything funky.
05:53And she got that changed pretty quickly. Immediately. Yeah.
05:56And the drives were the best drives that we saw all day. The ball flight was great. It was strong.
06:00It was long. I mean, that was, that was again hitting the driver that she was using today. And
06:07you wouldn't change anything about that. That's as good as it gets. So I think that was a really,
06:11I mean, it's so easy to change. And then we did some stuff with the short game as well,
06:15which was when you get out of heavy lies, the instincts for everybody really, like I need to
06:20lift it out of that lie because it's gnarly and like, how's it going to come out? But ironically,
06:26the lifting thing is something that moves the sternum back usually. And if nothing else,
06:31certainly shallows out the attack, which means you come through more grass, which means it won't come out.
06:36So ironically, we have to make peace when we're going down into the ground and it's the club,
06:41not me, that gets the ball out of the grass. But going in through that grass as well,
06:44we had to make peace with, got to hit it harder. Bit like out of a bunker shot,
06:47bit like I talked with Josh there as well today. Like, you've got to have more speed. Just trust,
06:50have more speed, have more speed and it is better. Not enough speed will create way more problems.
06:55Yeah. And that's why you've got to practice these shots. You've got to convince yourself.
06:58Absolutely. And she demonstrated prowess in that straight away. And I think for her as well,
07:03getting a feeling for the pace and we talked about controlling distance is something she battles
07:07with. So we talked about trying to match it on both sides, because again, that becomes easy,
07:11right? Yeah. Same there. So it's quarter,
07:13quarter or half, half or three, quarter, three, quarter. And a rhythm though, like that,
07:19that stays the same. Whereas if I'm always going to be different, sometimes short and quick,
07:23sometimes longer and slightly slow, how do you know? Really hard to judge the pace. Whereas then,
07:27if I've got the same feeling all the time, I can stand next to her. Well, that's why we see like the guys,
07:31sometimes top players be next to the ball and feel the shot like that because they know exactly that
07:37pace and then they're going to step in and just recreate it and it makes it so much easier. Again,
07:41not an overly complicated thing for her to apply. And she did so beautifully as well. So I think she
07:46made some really big strides with that. And then what about in terms of game plan and strategy?
07:51Amanda seems to me to be getting better quite quickly. So how do you adjust your kind of game plan
07:57as an improving goal for what do you, how should she be thinking when she's out on the golf course?
08:03I think again, resisting the urge to force it along and building a way around the golf course,
08:08playing to your strengths is a great way to get better. You know, I know you could see that today
08:13a couple of times when we looked at how to, how to play the hole. You know, I think for instance,
08:17like the 11th where she was hitting up the hill, picking the shot that gives you the most amount of
08:22room. So I think that's the strategy that applies across the board regardless of ability,
08:26but having the patience that you will naturally going to get better each time and you will be
08:29able to alter your target lines as you go, but make it easy, make it easier. Don't put yourself
08:36under the cosh to make it harder than it needs to be. Even though you think, oh, I think I can play
08:41that shot now. It's like, that's fine in practice, but in tournament stuff, play smart because generally
08:47the best players, and it's the biggest ever misconception about Tiger Woods, is that we think,
08:51well, this is a box office golfer of which there's never been another like it. One of the most
08:55conservative golfers of all time. Very rarely went at the flag in terms of if it didn't fit in his
09:02dispersion pattern. Never took a risk, played smart, always picked the right side of the hole to give
09:07him a buffer. So playing smart gives you room for error and if he needed to do it and he was arguably
09:14if not the greatest ever, certainly one of the top two with Jack, then we should probably take a note
09:18from that and we probably play too aggressively at times. So playing within ourselves, as much as
09:23it's sometimes fun to go for the hero shot, and I'm a big advocate of that, when push comes over,
09:27if we're talking handicap, let's play smart. Yeah, so there you go. If you want to get your
09:32handicap down, then sometimes that patience, it sounds easy, but it requires a lot of discipline,
09:37it's well worth giving a go. So there you have it. That's our look at Amanda's game and Nick's advice to
09:43help her shoot lower scores. I think the key thing here is that the advice coming from Nick, really
09:48simple, really effective. Hopefully it's something that Amanda can take forward with her game to help
09:53her shoot lower scores and hopefully there's some bits in there that might help you as well as you
09:58play golf in the future. But that's it for now from Wentworth. Thanks very much for watching,
10:02we'll see you next time.
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