After my first pro session of the year last friday, it was about time to get some practice on the course. One of the things I want to work upon this season is my short game, hitting a precise shot into the green from under 100 meters, chipping and sand saves.

A perfect training facility for this is the new 6-hole short course at the Golf Resort Berlin Pankow. I didn’t have an opportunity to play it until yesterday.

The first hole is the longest with 124 meters and also the hardest green to hit as it sits back right behind bushes and trees. The above picture is looking back from green to tee, so judge for yourself. Either you hit it directly or you play a nice left to right shot (which I have no clue of whatsoever). This hole would be a good enough par 3 for any grown up course.

The following hole lengths are 46 – 96 – 74 – 79 – 94 meters. The greens are rather small, which spices things up a little bit. Basically, I could play all holes except #1 with my PW and SW. The thing I tried yesterday was to hit three tee shots on every hole, the first with a wedge, the second with my 9i and the third with my 7i. As I was alone on the course, I was in no ones way.

It turned out to be a very funny practice routine that helped me get more versatile with my iron play. The most precision came with my wedges, but I have to practice the other shots more often to get a better feel for them. And the 6-hole course was just the perfect training facility.

Two rounds on the short course are 14 €, so if you get tired of hitting bucketloads of golf balls on the range, try something different here.

Had my first trainer lesson of the season with my fellow Royal Benzinger colleague Reiner Stallbaumer. Very good lesson and lots of stuff to work on as you can see:

Wednesday, 23. March 2011
22:00 Eurosport, US PGA Tour 2011 – Transitions Championship in Palm Harbor, FL (USA)
23:00 Eurosport, European Tour 2011 – Sicilian Open in Donnafugata (ITA)
23:30 Eurosport, Golf Club

It hasn’t been pretty in recent times for Tiger Woods. The three-time British Open champ has been struggling big time since his divorce with his wife Elin Nordegren and many fans are wondering whether he will ever regain his dominance.

This past week, Woods was dealt with some more turmoil as the PGA Tour fined him for spitting on a green at a recent tournament in Dubai. The tournament directors were somewhat insulted as Woods was clearly busted breaching the code and the video was passed around virally on Youtube.

So it begs the question, what should we expect from Tiger when the majors roll around and when he visits The Open Championships at Royal St. George on the week of July 10th to 17th?

Before, we had the excuse that Woods head was simply not in the game. Nowadays, sports betting sites aren’t sure what excuses to provide for his sluggish performance. It’s been more than a year since he last won a tournament – let alone a major

But will Royal St. George bring the best out of him? The last time the Open was held there, relatively unknown Ben Curtis won the tournament, beating out stars like Woods, Vijay Singh, Nick Faldo and Davis Love III. A lot of golfers will have that in the back of their mind when the tournament approaches in 2011.

It seems like the Woods mystique is gone. Before, golfers wouldn’t want to pair with him because of the intimidation factor. Nowadays, it seems like it has the opposite effect as he is a lightning rod for attention while his partners can generally fly under-the-radar. At this point, it’s tough to expect Woods to bounce back at Royal St. George. The history isn’t there and momentum clearly isn’t on his side. There’s still time to change that around but for now, not much should be expected.

Minigolf:

Link: www.youtube.com

Witnessing history, and you?

We all agree that Martin Kaymer plays excellent golf. But as good as his game on the course is, as bad is his “official” presence on the web. No official website, no possibilty to find out where he plays next or what the news around him and his game are.

Four years ago, before MK signed a deal with Sportyard, his father also acted as his manager. Back then we tried to establish a contact, offering him that we – the guys behind http://leadinggolfblogs.de/ – set up and run a first website for MK, giving his growing number of fans a first contact point. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out. We had some nice ideas back then that still would work out today. But at least we gave it a try.

To see that things can work out different, you don’t have to look very far. Of course, Paul Casey and Ian Poulter have very nifty websites and especially IJP is a twitter star. Both make good use of social media components.

But the example I want to show you is a very talented young german golfer, who until recent played on the Challenge Tour before surprinsingly announcing the end of his pro career: Florian Fritsch. Contentwise, his website offers all necessary things, some personal notes in his blog, pictures and videos, a tournament schedule, there’s room for sponsors etc. etc. Ok, there’s some design flaws, but the average fan won’t notice that. All this for a player that used to play on the 3rd class challenge tour and on the other hand we have the Major Champion Martin Kaymer with no official internet presence whatsoever? It’s 2010, right? Ok, there are various inofficial Facebook pages (here, here, here and here), but nothing that officialy represents Martin.

With his first major win, he enters a new stage of worldwide attention. About time to rethink his official presence on the internet – apart from his outdated “set card” at Sportyard. Thousands of fans worldwide would be very thankful.

By the way, our offer still stands. Flights to Stockholm are cheap at the moment, as I just found out.

“Ein hungriger Tiger und zwei Deutsche” – so macht Focus-Online seine Geschichte über die heute beginnenden U.S. Open auf. Laut Leaderbord ist aber nur ein Deutscher am Start. Und ein Tscheche. Hat Alex Cejka etwa tatsächlich die Fahne verlassen? Unerhört!

By the way: Beide unter den Top 15. Und Lee Westwood auf der 1. Meine Ansage….

I ran into this simple, yet effective putting practice idea the other day at the Golfclub Gross Kienitz. They just drilled two smaller putting holes into their putting green, both barely wider than a golfball. Now, if you practice on these holes and you manage to sink your putts after a while, you surely will hit it dead center on the regular-sized holes.

One other thing that finally sunk in is the revolutionary insight that when I swing slower, I am able to hit the ball more precisely. Wow! The people that have played golf with me know what I am talking about. For the last years I used to thrash at the ball as if I wanted to kill it. It worked for a while, but then resulted in loss of accuracy.

The proof that swinging slowly works came on the Par 4 seventh hole of the Vodafone course. You have to manouver your tee shot through the constriciton guarded by high grass on the left and the pond on the right and then face a narrow fairway to the green. My seven wood off the tee landed perfectly on the left side of the fairway, leaving me 155 meters to the green. The following six iron made it to the fringe of the green on a perfect straight line down the fairway. And I didn’t even try to hit it hard, I just let the club do the work. So that was what my pro was telling me all the years. It just needed some time to sink in.