GOLF:This week's event in Switzerland will be the seventh straight week I've spent on the road, writes REBECCA CODD
IF THE putter is cold, never mind being lukewarm, it can be very frustrating. I’m not alone in feeling that way. I remember the old quote from Chi Chi Rodriquez along the lines of: “I’ve heard people say putting is 50 per cent technique and 50 per cent mental. I believe it is 50 per cent technique and 90 per cent positive thinking – but that adds up to 140 per cent, which is why nobody is 100 per cent sure how to putt.”
I can empathise with that sentiment, especially the way that my putter – up to last week in Tenerife – behaved for much of the past month. Hopefully that will all change after I managed to squeeze in a couple of days working with Jussi Pitkanen at the Dave Pelz school at Killeen Castle last week and, in fact, there was evidence in Tenerife that I have corrected a fault in my green reading.
The past couple of months has been extremely busy, with a string of tournaments all over Europe.
This week’s event in Switzerland – will actually mark the seventh straight week I’ve spent on the road and I really believe the work with Jussi, which was overdue but it was simply hard to find the time, will prove hugely beneficial in the coming weeks with this week’s Swiss Open followed in a couple of weeks by the Finnish Open.
I’d been racking my brain to work out what I was doing wrong on the greens. My average in tournaments is 30.88 per round – and I’d ideally want it to be a couple lower than that – but it was only after visiting Killeen Castle that it all clicked into place.
All along, I thought I was starting the ball on line but the evidence of my sessions working with Jussi proved that I was massively under-reading my putts on the low side. So, if you under-read a 20 footer, instead of ending up 18 inces or a couple of feet away, you’re left with a pressure putt of four feet. All of a sudden, you’ve put yourself under pressure.
People often ask if I get my caddie to read the lines etc on the greens in tournaments. But I’ve always been a believer in doing that myself. I mean, someone can give you a line, but it is really dictated by pace. If a caddie is going to help me, it is more if I am really clueless. I’ve always believed no one knows how hard or how softly I am going to hit the ball and that it is much better for a player to go by their own judgment or feel.
In Tenerife last week, a tournament with an unusual format in that you play strokeplay qualifying before moving into two days of matchplay after which the eight players left standing go back into a final day of strokeplay, I was much happier with my putting. I actually had the second best score (a 68) in the first strokeplay round and then lost out to Lydia Hall, one of my best friends on tour, in the first round of matchplay. We’d a really good match. Lydia chipped in on the 14th and holed an eagle putt on the 16th and she won 2 and 1 on the 17th. She went on to finish fifth overall and I left in a much more positive frame of mind: my chipping was very good, my pace putting was much better and I didn’t miss any of those four to six footers. I noticed a big difference.
I’d also played quite decently in the Dutch Open a couple of weeks ago – finishing 26th, and leaving a number of putts behind – and that week in Amsterdam was one of the highlights on tour of the season. We got to do a lot away from the course too, which is also nice. We got to visit the Heineken factory, the Van Gogh museum . . . and even had a little stroll through the red light district, which was a bit of an eye opener.
This week we’re back to one of my favourite course on the women’s European Tour. The Swiss Open at Ticino is actually where I recorded my lowest ever round on tour – a nine-under-par 63 in the 2008 Swiss Open – and I arrived here yesterday with a spring in my step and hopeful that my putter is hot.
