China Girls Camp

As I mentioned in an earlier post we held a girls training camp recently in China. This was held in the Chinese city of Xiamen at Orient Golf Course. This golf course is part of the Orient Golf Group which runs eleven golf courses all over China as well as one in Taiwan. This golf course allowed us to stay at the club in the caddy accommodation and utilise the golf course and practice facilities.

In previous training camps I have run in Taiwan we have had a mixture of boys and girls and quite a large number of players. This camp was different in that we had only girls and the number was kept to six. This allowed me to run things a little bit differently and get into some more detail in certain areas.

One of the challenges of this camp was some of the players have spent a fair bit of time with me over the past year while some of the girls were either new students or players that, for different reasons, hadn’t spent a lot of time with me over the past year. The main focus I wanted for this camp was “playing golf” as apposed to technical golf. We have worked fairly hard last year on the player’s golf swings and this year I want them to have a greater understanding of all the other pieces that make up successful golf. As some of the girls hadn’t spent a lot of time with me last year, I did some technical coaching with them along with the “playing golf” sessions with the rest of the players.

One of the first things we did with all the players is run them through a physical evaluation. We did a basic body screening as well as some basic physical fitness tests to evaluate where their bodies are currently. The video on this post shows one of the players running through the body evaluation. We run them through a number of tests which highlights a player’s body weaknesses and allows a total body conditioning program to be written. These tests are used periodically through the year to assess a player’s progress.

Another focus of this camp was fitness. Each morning the players completed a physical training session. We were lucky enough to have one of the girl’s mothers at the camp. She has a background in physical education and basketball coaching so the players had some basketball style training combined with some golf specific exercise. This cross training kept the players interested and the sessions fresh.

Competitive practice also played a large role during this camp. Lots of games and competitions where used to simulate on course pressure. Putting challenges, with the bridge as a punishment for the losers, as well as ball flight control games were all used during these sessions. Everyone disliked doing the bridge so the competition was intense and serious, just like on course play.

We also utilised the golf course on several occasions and used these sessions to develop and finetune warm-up and tournament day routines. Each player designed a perfect warm up plan and listed the steps they would take to warm up before a round. I then asked them what would happen if the golf course didn’t have a driving range/practice fairway (like a lot of Taiwan golf courses) to warm up on? They then had to design a warm up plan that they could use if they faced this situation. After these two were designed and finetuned I asked them what would they do if their car broke down on the way to the golf course and they only had 10 minutes to warm up? They then had do design an emergency plan that they could use if they ever had to face this situation. The players now had three separate warm up plans that they could use to handle any situation they found themselves in.

Overall, the camp was great fun and I finished the two weeks learning more about each of the players and I am sure the players also learnt a lot about themselves and how to continue their improvement.

Until next time,

Brent