Being the penultimate event of the season many of the players face the pressure of either fighting for a place in the tour championship or their tour card, so as expected there wasn’t much changing of equipment this week.
Alvaro Velasco however picked up a Donna. Alvaro has been using a Callie for the last couple of seasons but by own admission was struggling on the greens and was looking for some inspiration. Hopefully he will find it in the Donna, as Alvaro is just inside the top 118 position required to keep your card for 2009.
This week I had some final versions of the SWS weighing system we have launched. The system received a GOLF EUROPE award last week at the GOLF EUROPE Munich Trade Show for the most innovative product of 2008, beating manufacturers such as Acushnet (Titleist and Cobra brands).
Tom Whitehouse tested the SWS shaft in a Natalie in practice. Tom has been using a standard Natalie all year and was interested to see how the new shaft performed. Using the SAM Puttlab we were able to show Tom how much more consistent his stroke was with the weighted shaft and also how it helped achieve more desirable rates of acceleration during the putting stroke.
On the Wednesday, Peter O’Malley asked me to have a look at him, he was intrigued to see what his stats would look like on the SAM Puttlab. Peter has been struggling on the greens and has tried various grips to avoid the dreaded over active right hand that most golfers fear. Testing him on the SAM you could see inconsistency from stroke to stroke in how much the club rotated. This is one of the most important parameters in the stroke. People that suffer from the yips will always be very inconsistent in this measurement even if other parameters are reasonable.
Whilst working with Peter we tested the SWS shaft with some different weights. As I would have hoped the shaft made a dramatic difference to the rotation parameter. Peter could feel the putter was more stable and consistent himself, helping him start the ball more on line, more often. A re trial with his existing putter at the end showed the consistency drop off again. I’m hopeful Peter will be using the putter this week if his contracting manufacturer will enable him to.
That’s all from sunny Portugal, next week is Valencia which will be my last tour event of the year.
