Tuesday 16 June 2009

Jeremy Dale's Short Game Scoring Schools

The Day I Learned to Score Better Without Changing My Golf Swing

I've been on my fair share of 'golf instruction days' over the years and I have to say that this was different and better in so many ways than so many I have attended before.

On Sunday, I attended a Jeremy Dale – Scoring School set in the beautiful surroundings of Stapleford Park Golf Club just outside Melton Mowbray. Before, I go into what I learned and how it will transform my golf; I first must explain what is different about this golf school and the approach of Jeremy Dale that I feel is at the root of his success.

Jeremy Dale is one of the country’s most accomplished trick shot artists. He’s performed his golf trick shows in over 30 countries worldwide and once finished second in the World Trick Shot Championships.

He is also an accomplished and ambidextrous scratch golfer.

Yes, he plays golf better than most of us with left handed or right handed clubs!

I believe it his ability to play the difficult shots (some would say impossible) with such ease that makes his Golf Scoring Schools so refreshingly different. He has a knack, even a gift, for making the difficult seem easy; and better still he communicates this so masterfully.

In one day, he had helped me let go of all the technical swing thoughts and paralysing mechanics of the golf swing and had helped me focus on the one thing that really matters, the one thing that everyone cares about - saving shots. The day started with a friendly group chat with the four other golfers who have travelled from across the country to learn how to lower their scores.

Within half-an-hour, with the help of a few flipcharts and the odd diagram, Jeremy had convinced us all that the area of our game that would make the biggest single difference to our scoring ability was the Finesse Game – chipping, pitching, bunker play; and the Mental Game – making good decisions and controlling one’s emotions and concentration.

We then spent the rest of the day on the practice ground ‘re-learning’ each aspect of the game, but not from a technical perspective, from a shot making and shot saving point of view. Sure enough, Jeremy went round the group in turn giving us a few pointers about various aspects of our technique and showed us the key Dos and Don’ts for each type of shot. But his focus was primarily on changing the way we approached each shot, by giving us a method that would help us make better shot making decisions that would increase our margin of error and make the percentages work for us.
Every aspect of the day and his coaching was geared around giving you practical tools that you could use in your practice that would make you more effective out on the course. Whether, it was his practical tips for practising long putts, so you get a great feel for the strength required to play a 9 yard, 12 yard or 15 yard putt; or his practical short game tips for consistent wedge play using different clubs and a 9 O’clock, 10 O’clock and ‘L—Shaped Swing’; and then applying the same swings to your bunker play so you instinctively build a short, medium and long bunker shot into your shot making arsenal.

As a leading golf trick shot artist, Jeremy Dale is ideally suited to translating what most people find a difficult and sometimes frustrating game into something that all of a sudden seems simple!

As a consequence, his session on the mental game was peppered with practical suggestions about how you can use these skills on the golf course to make the right decisions and keep a cool head; and left me feeling confident that the skills I had learned on the day would stand the test of time.

After a full day’s ordinary golf coaching you often leave with more questions than answers, more swing thoughts and technical modifications than you can possibly remember and perhaps a handful of tips that you think might really work for you.

After a full day’s golf scoring school with Jeremy Dale, I left with a much clearer picture of how I can lower my scores and a golf bag brimming with an exciting new repertoire of golf shots (none of them trick shots). If you are interested in attending a Jeremy Dale Golf Scoring School then visit www.jeremydale.com or call Jeremy on 07748 307849. To see what my fellow golfers thought of the day please visit http://www.saveamillionshots.com/golf_scoring_school.

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