Greetings golfers,

I hope you've all had a fantastic week on and off the golf course and welcome to another exciting edition of the weekly newsletter, bringing you up-to-date with all the latest news and gossip.

What an Open Championship...

...it was a thrilling last round at Royal Birkdale last week. Some may say Spieth was lucky with some of his breaks and why ‘wasn’t the practice ground out of bounds’ but he played by the rules, kept his head whilst many would have lost theirs and showed mental fortitude like no other. Even after missing a few putts in the early part of the round he stayed strong in his beliefs and holed some unbelievable putts in that last stretch of holes.  

The round may have been slow but it was great viewing and had me on the edge of my seat.

I went with Lewis on Wednesday and Royal Birkdale was a fantastic venue with an extremely well laid out tournament for viewing. I especially liked watching them around the chipping green and in the bunkers and I have some great videos for anyone that would like to see them.

Sam was then lucky enough to be part of an extra special day on Monday…

A day with Day and Rory...

PGA Teaching Professional Sam Mellor got a special invite by Nike Golf for an exclusive event with Jason Day and Rory Mcilroy on the Monday after The Open in London.

There was a private Q&A at Nike Town with the two athletes in London, where YouTube star Rick Shiels hosted the event.

After the questioning had finished, the players and audience took place in a Top Gear style race across London via the underground, black cab and coach to Greenwich Driving Range near the 02 arena. At the range was Sky Sports who were hosting a live Facebook streamed challenge with Team Rory vs Team Day. You can see all the action from the day from the following videos.

Millenium Trophy

We had the Millennium Trophy on Saturday, playing for one the best looking trophies we have at RGC and there were some great scores in, but a winner hasn’t been decided yet with a three way tie on net 67 by Colin Lord, James Gibb and Ian Magenis. Well done to you three and good luck in your playoff.

Latest results

Tempo and pace...

After Spieth’s unbelievable putting display now is a good time to talk about tempo and pace putting. After the round he was asked about what he was thinking about on the 15th when he holed the long one for eagle and his response was ‘pace, I just wanted to get the ball rolling at the right pace’.

How many of us practice the pace we hit the ball at and from a range of different distances and more importantly how well we can control it or is it just about does it go in or not!.

Looking into his putting technique an interesting area I found was that he has a 1:1 tempo meaning the putt goes back and through at the same speed rather than an increase in tempo of 2:1 (where the downswing is 2x faster than the backswing) which is widely regarded as the way to putt. We now have the SkyPro training device which can measure your tempo along with several other important statistics on your putting stroke. So if this is an area that interests you and who doesn’t want to hole more putts please get yourself booked in with the SkyPro for a putting session in the studio.