By the time you’re an advanced golfer, you can start letting go of some of the club features that helped control the subtler aspects of your shots as a beginner and intermediate player. Where before it was important for you to have some perimeter weighting on your Game Improvement irons, you are now ready to swap these for some Player irons, which will give you some real control over the ball. Although you will sacrifice some forgiveness, you should be hitting consistently already, so this shouldn’t matter.
You can also start reducing the loft on your drivers; do so gradually, however, to make sure you don’t dump yourself in at the deep end with a club that you struggle to use well. At this stage, golf becomes more and more about the feel of the clubs, the feel of the swing and the feel of the shots. Less-advanced clubs protect you when you make mistakes, but they don’t allow for the fine-tuning that makes a good player into a great player.
A huge difference in the club set of an advanced player is that it must cover the whole range of shot-distances, as well as trajectories. Try to get a set of clubs that allow for no more than 15 yards between one club and another and alternative clubs for situations where the course or weathers is against you.
For the first time since starting out of the Ladies European Tour, Russia's Maria Verchenova has finished top of the leaderboard, signing for a 67 at the Lalla Meryem Cup in Morocco. “How did she do it?” I hear you cry...perhaps the key to her success is in what she’s been doing when not playing golf at all...
Over the winter months, the Russian hasn’t huddled from the cold like us mortals; she’s being out running six days a week and even lifting weights to stay in shape! “I was keeping myself fit through the whole winter and going to the gym and preparing to play so I felt I was going to be pretty close” she explained, as if it was no particularly big deal. I’ll be honest; I never considered running half a dozen times a week would help my golf...maybe I was wrong!
As if a strict winter fitness routine wasn’t enough, Verchenova also found time to design her own range of golf clothing! Apparently the range is inspired by women’s tennis...so it should be interesting to see how it goes down on the golf course! She says her golf clothes “will come out really soon in about two months or so and it's going to be really young and fashionable and bright colours for really young girls... Hopefully the first year I will just wear it and show it and the next year we will try to sell it.”
I think it’s safe to say we‘re all looking forward to seeing what she has in store.
Here is Britain, the most dangerous thing we're likely to encounter on a golf course is probably one another! It's not that we're even prone to outbursts on violence in this country but, when it comes to harmful wildlife, badgers don't really strike enough fear in us to put us off our putting.
Unfortunately, this isn't always the case for golfers in other countries, as businessman Hong Kee Sion discovered six years ago...when he got bitten by a crocodile during a casual round of golf in Malaysia! 
It sounds unlikely but, whilst looking for a golf ball, he slipped into a marshy part of the course and mistook the croc for a log...which he then stepped on! Luckily he managed to fend the crocodile off using his golf club (which is news enough in itself!), but he was bitten in the process and required a whopping 38 stickes in his leg!
The reason I'm bringing this up today is that it has taken this long for poor old Hong Kee to win his legal battle for compensation, which amounted to £8, 500 - enough for a few rounds at St. Andrews... Apparently, since the attack, the resort has fenced off the area, which turned out to be a crocodile rearing ground! I mean really, I couldn't make it up if I tried - they put their golf course next to a crocodile rearing ground?! Or perhaps they built their croc rearing ground next to a public golf course - either way, it reeks of idiocy! Sou
It's been a while since we've had an update on Donald Trump's exploits in Aberdeenshire, so here's the latest news. You know, just in case you were in a good mood and wanted something to make you angry...
A two-day exhibition has taken place at the Udny Arms Hotel in Newburgh, displaying the masterplans for Donald Trump's billion-pound golf resort to the public. In my opinion, this is madness! Does he not know any British history? Has he not heard of William Wallace and Guy Fawkes? Combine the Scottish pride of one with the devious underground plotting of the other and the last thing you should do is show them the blueprints for a highly controversial building, set to devastate Scottish lives!
Unsurprisingly, the exhibition was met was fury, especially from the Tripping Up Trump campaign group, determined to support the families whose homes Trump plans to claim. One local home owner, David Milne, was actually told to "clear off" by project director Neil Hobday, which is a curious way to go about attempting to gain support for the project...
As many of you will know, families living on land wanted by the Trump Organisation are facing losing their properties under compulsory purchase order, should Aberdeenshire Council give the plans the go-ahead later on this year. Donald Trump considers this to be “another significant step towards our goal of building the world's greatest golf course and resort”, but that’s because he’s a selfish goon.
So, golfing friends, it has finally happened; Phil Mickelson's controvertial Pind Eye 2 wedge has been banned, after weeks of arguments and accusations that the American is a 'cheat' for using his 20-year old club.
For those out of the golf news loop, there has recently been a change in the regulations on golf clubs that has disallowed the use of clubs with U-shaped grooves. These grooves allow the generation of extra spin, making it easier to play our of the rough. By banning these clubs, it is hoped more golfers will focus on playing to the fairway and the rough will have more of a negative impact.
However, the rule only applies to clubs made post-1990, meaning Mickelson's Ping Eye 2 wedge was still technically legal, despite having banned grooves! This wasn't good enough for the world of professional golf though, where Scott McCarron said Mickelson was "cheating" and even our very own Lee Westwood accused him of "bending the rules".
Phil Mickelson's club will be officially banned after the 29th March.
Regular readers may remember our report on the biggest eBay scam ever, which involved nearly 100,000 transactions involving fake golf clubs, golf clothing and general golfing accessories. Those of you who were as enraged as I will be pleased to hear that today, the people involved in the counterfeiting operation are facing jail sentences! Who says there’s no justice in the world? I think they should be given a chance to escape their sentence by playing a round using one of their counterfeit golf balls – the ones that exploded on impact!
At the centre of operations was Gary Bellchambers, who pleaded guilty to his role, as well as to the unauthorised use of trademarks relating to counterfeit Sony memory sticks and Qantas business class lounge invitation cards! It would seem Mr. Bellchambers is quite the entrepreneur! Or should I say, was quite entrepreneur, before being slung in jail. Also charged are Keith Thomas, Chris Moughton and Sharron Williams, as well as couple Roy and Kay Cottee, who were found guilty in December of conspiring to sell or distribute counterfeit goods.
The majority of the counterfeit golf clubs were made in China before being sold all around the world, as our previous post reported.
In Saturday’s Evening News, the subject of declining golf club members was opened up to questions. One reader wrote the following; “Why pay £580 to play golf in the wind and rain,” he queried, “when the Playstation and the Wii get the job done in the comfort of your own home?"
My response to this question might be obvious, but captain of Lothianburn golf club in Edinburgh, David McBain, put it well himself; "The comment indicates perfectly the national trend towards obesity and early ill-health through lack of exercise” he claimed, following up by pointing out “You can't get...the wonderful wellbeing it brings, on a computer”.
He is, of course, perfectly correct. It is a total mistake to even associate sitting in front of the TV twitching a game controller to the sport of golf. Sure, the video game may have the word ‘golf’ in the title and the little figure on the screen may be making golf-movements, but this is not what golf is. Golf is, essentially, the sport of accurately hitting a ball around a course – there is nothing even vaguely similar involved when playing golf games on a computer. You may as well compare cooking a meal to flicking through the cookery channels on Sky!
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