Featured in Today's Golfer Magazine - November 2007
Day four
Phill meets us outside the range, asks for our experiences on the course yesterday and then directs us to the bunkers. We line up with our buckets of balls and Phill steps into the trap. He draws two circles in the sand each the size of a large saucer. The idea, he tells us, is to swing our wedges so that all the sand is removed from the circle. He demonstrates the drill and then gets us each to try. I successfully swish out my first ‘saucer’. Suddenly, the most troublesome aspect of my game seems easy.
We spend half the morning on bunker shots, as Phill finds a variety of placements to create different problems: under the lip, half-buried, heavy sand. He moves steadily between us, encouraging , correcting and advising. Now, as he senses we are ready for a change, he announces another set of holes on the golf course. We go out in two buggies and play a Texas scramble again. Today he wants us to focus on good alignment, insisting that you can get lazy on the course when you’ve been practising off a range mat. We are all playing with more confidence and striking the ball better. We still hit bad shots, but definitely fewer.
