Golf Blogger - Golf News and Golf Blog

Links golf is not stopping Scottish professionals make it in tour golf

Posted by under My Golf Returns

I read an interesting article by Douglas Lowe within The Herald, a Scottish Broadsheet Newspaper with a very large west of Scotland following.

Lowe was talking to Richie Ramsay, the former US Amateur Champion about the negative influence of growing up a links tournament player, and what he is doing to hit the ball higher. It reads as follows.

“I caught up with the 25-year-old Aberdonian last week on the range at the Tolcinasco Castle course near Milan where he was preparing for the Italian Open with a row of some 20 different drivers behind him.

His shots were being assessed by a radar device that was designed originally to track missiles but which has been subsequently modified for golf balls.

“I am trying to hit the ball higher and this kind of technology helps,” confirmed Richie, who learned his game on the Royal Aberdeen links and made his way right through the international ranks to the Walker Cup. “I can change my swing a little bit to achieve that, but altering the shaft and the weights in the clubhead can do the same.”

Ramsay was a Walker Cup contemporary of the Americans Anthony Kim and JB Holmes, both big-hitting, high ball-flight winners on the PGA Tour this year. While such victories are inspiring, he was quick to point out that any suggestion that he and Lloyd Saltman are slower developers is not entirely fair.

“These guys are coming from college golf where they play top-class courses week-in, week-out,” said Ramsay. “Then they go on tour and they play the same courses. People sometimes don’t realise that when we played amateur golf, it was on courses like Royal Lytham and Royal Aberdeen. Then you come out here and it’s completely different.

“For players like me who were brought up on links, it is a total change. I have to learn to hit the ball higher, especially with the driver. I also need a better flight for approaches to tight pin positions. That’s the stuff I’ve been working on. I had a good result at the US amateur, but since then it’s been a case of re-learning what I’m doing.”

Does that mean players who were brought up playing inland courses cannot hit it low enough to play links courses? What a load of baloney! Devices to try and hit the ball higher is one way of putting your head in a total bin as does trying out 20 drivers and then not sure what you should be going with.

I would have thought this would have taught you to hit high down wind, low in the wind, hit drivers off the deck, hit one iron stingers, and use right to left or hold it up in left to right wind directions. What have we done to the game when growing up playing firm, windy links such as the fantastic Royal Aberdeen Balgownie Links, isn’t the recipe to making you a better player?

The Ed.