Riverside Oaks

The company I work for in China, Nanshan, has just purchased the Riverside Oaks golf course in western Sydney. It was privately owned prior to Nanshan's purchase and Nanshsan have some big plans for the development of the golf course and surrounding area.

Since Christmas some of my students from the golf school in China have been staying at Riverside Oaks with me and we have been training and seeing the sights of Sydney. It has been great to get out of the cold and snow of China and do some training in the sun and warmth of January in Australia. We have been covering all areas of golf with training involving long game practice, short game practice, putting, on course, fitness training and I have also introduced some eye/vision exercises and training for the students. We have had a lot of fun and the kids have worked hard as well.

As well as the golf training the students have had an opportunity to explore some of the sights of Sydney and I have attempted to introduce them to Australian culture, customs and food. They seem to like BBQ and they think the koalas and kangaroos are cute but they are a little scared of the spiders and they are disgusted with the taste of Vegemite! Tomato sauce gets mixed reviews but overall they are enjoying their time in Australia.

The students had a chance to touch and pet a kangaroo and koala and we took a speed boat ride on Sydney Harbour which they all loved and returned from in a very wet state! We visited the Sydney Aquarium and went sight seeing around Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. We are heading to the beach this weekend to give them a taste of an Aussie beach before they head home to China. They are a little scared of sharks but I am sure they will enjoy the sun, sand and surf.

We are here until the 5th of February when the students will head back to China for Chinese New Year and I will head to Melbourne for a month of leave. I am looking forward to the break, catching up with friends and clients and heading back to China in March ready to work hard with my students.

Until next time,

Brent

Pre Shot Routine

An often overlooked part of golf is pre shot routine. I define this as what you do before each shot on the golf course. It should be as consistent as possible both in actions and the time it takes to complete the routine.

As I watch players on the golf course in pressure situations I tend to see two different types of reactions when watching their pre shot routines. Some players will get faster and some players will get slower. Both of these reaction can cause problems for the player. As humans, we tend to do most things by following a routine. Think about what you do in the morning and I bet it will be the same most days. People tend to follow routines in their daily life so it makes sense to have a routine for your golf shots.

During the latest school tournament here in Nanshan I timed my students while they were playing different shots to see if they were consistent with their pre shot routines. As you can see by the picture they have some work to do on consistency.

Every one's routine will be different but it needs to be the same every time. The first step should be to formally define what your routine will be. Write down each thing you will do before you play the shot. Things such as choosing a target, visualising the shot, when you take your grip, how many waggles you have, how many looks at the target you will have and what your swing trigger is are all things you should write down.

Once you have written it down you should spend some time on the practice range working on your pre shot routine. Practice it with your practice shots until you find a routine that has all the steps you defined and feels comfortable.

Once you have a routine that feels comfortable you need to have a friend time you doing it in practice. Complete this stage a number of times until you find the timing that feels comfortable and relaxed for you. This is your own personal timing for your routine.

Spend some time each week practicing your routine and you will be more consistent when you are on the course and you can have a consistent routine like Greg in the video.

Until next time,

Brent

My Training Group

I have settled into my new role here at Nanshan Golf School and have my own group of students. My group is nice group of 8 golfers. It is nice to have a little smaller group as this allows me to do more individualised coaching and make sure that all of my players get the attention and coaching that they need.

There is a variety of skill levels and ages in my group which makes it challenging to ensure all the players get the information that they need. I have ages ranging from 12 years old to 22 years old, beginners and national squad players and both males and females. This makes the coaching fun and having the better players in the group gives the less skilled players something to aim for.

We started off their training with the usual group of evaluation tests. We tested their range of motion, basic strength, psychological profile, learning style and golf skills with a number of different tests. This gives us the starting point to develop the golfers to the level that they want.

There are different goals with each student. Some just want to play well in the monthly school tournaments, some have the specific goal of making the China National Squad and some want to be professional players. I always make sure I know what the players want before we start on any training program.

All of the players are being heavily coached on golf swing technique at the moment as well as completing their stretching program to develop their range of motion. They are also being slowly introduced to cardio training, fit ball exercises and body weight strength training exercises. We are moving nice and slowly as these ideas are generally very new to these students as golf is a new sport in China.

I will post again shortly to update their training and talk about how we deal with the Winter here.

Until next time,

Brent

New Job

I have just accepted a new job as the Head Coach of Nanshan Golf School in China. This golf school is based near the city of Yantai in the north of China. Nanshan is a large company based in China that have interests in golf courses, education, construction, manufacturing, textiles, wine and many other things. The company has the largest golf facility in the world and there are 275 holes at last count with several new courses in development at the moment. My job here is to develop and improve the golf training program at the school by training the coaches currently here as well as attracting new students to the program. As well as this role, I will also be doing some work for the China Golf Association with their development program. I will be working with some players on the fringe of National Team selection and hoping to improve them to make the National team.

My first job here was to run a junior training camp over the Summer vacation period. I had a group of around 20 players of varying standards and we worked together for around four weeks. During those four weeks there were also two tournaments for the kids to play in so it was a little difficult to fix too much in their games. We had some fun and did some video coaching and helped them a little with their on course strategy and it was a good opportunity to introduce myself to some of the students and let them know what my coaching style is all about. The students will choose a coach to train with when they come back to school next month so we will see who decides to train with me.

The camp finished last Sunday and this week I have been helping the players from the CGA National Squad. I have four junior boys that I am helping and we are training alongside the National Squad so they can see how the National Players structure their training. It is lots of fun and they have a tournament this weekend so hopefully I have helped them with their preparation and they have a nice result.

That is about it for now but I will post again really soon and fill you in on some of my student's results since my last post. Some of my Taiwan students have had some good results lately and I will tell you all about it next post.

Until next time,

Brent

Queen Sirikit Cup

April 1-3 were the dates that the Queen Sirikit Cup was held in Bali, Indonesia. This tournament is the women's team championships for the Asia-Pacific region. Each country that plays is represented by three players who play stroke play for three days. The best two scores are used each day to give the team score for the country. The winner of the Queen Sirikit Cup is the country with the lowest team score for the three days. Last year this event was held in Japan and the winning team was Korea. My Taiwan players finished third last year so I was keen for them to improve this time.

The players representing Taiwan this year was Yao Hsuan-Yu, Hsieh Yu-Ling and Tsai Pei-Ying. They teed up on the Par 74 Nirwana Bali golf course for the first round on the 1st of April. Hsieh Yu-Ling had 68, Tsai Pei-Ying had 71 and Yao Hsuan-Yu had 72 which gave us a team score of -9. This placed us in second place behind Korea who had a team score of -11. The second day scores were Yao Hsuan-Yu 68, Tsai Pei-Ying 73 and Hsieh Yu-Ling 77. This gave us a daily score of -7 and two day score of -18 This placed us in second place behind Korea on -25. The final round produced scores of 71, 75 and 76 for Yao Hsuan-Yu, Tsai Pei-Ying and Hsieh Yu-Ling respectively. This was our worst day for scoring but our final team score was -18 which placed us in second place, 10 strokes behind the winning team from Korea.

Yao Hsuan-Yu finished 3rd in the individual section of the tournament with Tsai Pei-Ying coming 7th and Hsieh Yu-Ling finishing in 11th place. This will be a confidence boost for Yao Hsuan-Yu as it is the biggest tournament she has played for Taiwan and she has played very well.

Overall the girls did very well and I am very proud of their achievement in this event. We improved from last year both on score and finish position so they should be very proud of themselves. 3rd in 2008, 2nd in 2009 and Queen Sirikit Cup champions in 2010 is what we are aiming for now!

Until next time,

Brent

Australian Women's Amateur

Tsai Pei-Ying played the 36 hole final of the Australian Amateur yesterday at Royal Queensland Golf Club. She played against Justine Lee from Australia who had also played well in the stroke play section.

Justine jumped out of the blocks in the morning 18 and had opened up a four hole lead by the time the players had finished the 14th hole. Tsai Pei-Ying fought back though, winning three of the last four holes of the morning round to head into the lunch break only one hole behind.

The break was handy for Justine as she opened up another two hole lead with only nine holes left to play. Tsai Pei-Ying showed what a fighter she is by getting herself back to square after the 35th hole. Unfortunately she lost the final hole and Justine Lee became the Australian Amateur Women's Champion for 2009.

Tsai Pei-Ying had a great tournament two weeks and gained a lot of experience from playing in this event. It is a lot of golf (11 rounds in 8 days) in both match play and stroke play formats and for her to finish 3rd in the stroke play section and runner up in the match play section shows how good she is as a player.

I spoke to her quickly last night on MSN and she said she was feeling a little sad and happy at the same time. I told her she should be really proud of herself and that she did so well in a strange country travelling by herself. I will speak to her more when she gets back to Taiwan later this week.

I also want to give a big thank you to Michael Craperi and Hills International Golf School for looking after Tsai Pei-Ying while she was in Australia. I really appreciate all the the help Michael gave her while she was in Brisbane.

Just a quick update on the Faldo Series Final at Mission Hills in China. Hsieh Yu-Ling shot 69 to be leading both the girls section and the tournament, Liu Yi-Chen had 71 to be well placed in the girls section as well. In the boys section Hung Chien-Yao had 71 and Hsieh Chi-Hsien had 75. Both boys are well placed to compete in the rest of the tournament. You can find the live scores here.

Until next time,

Brent

Faldo Series/Australian Women's Amateur

Some of my students are currently in China for the Faldo Series final at Mission Hills. They flew from Taiwan to China yesterday and were playing a practice round today. I spoke to a couple of them on MSN last night and reminded them them to make sure they do their yardage books and plans while they played the practice round. We focus fairly hard on preparation during tournaments and because I am not travelling with them this week I like to make sure they still do what they are meant to do. I will hopefully catch some of them online tonight so we can go through any questions/problems they might have so they are all ready to play when the first round starts tomorrow. I will let you know scores as the tournament progresses.

As you already know, Tsai Pei-Ying is in Australia playing the Women's Australian Amateur. I am pleased to say that she has progressed through the matchplay to be playing in the 36 hole final tomorrow. She won her first two matches on Monday 3&2 and 3&1. She won her quarter final match this morning 1 up after chipping in on the 17th hole to get back to square and winning the 18th hole with a par. She then played Julia Boland (the stroke play champion) in the semi-final and managed to win 3&1 in that match. I spoke to her quickly on the phone and she was very excited about her results so far. I will make sure we speak on MSN tonight so she can tell me all about the good golf and then we can refocus her for the final tomorrow. Live score updates will be here.

Until next time,

Brent