The Crying Game: Chatting to Rob Watts of SwingFit

The Sports Reporter plays some mind games with SwingFit

Rob Watts is a golf coach from London who currently works with six European tour pros ranked in the World’s top 500. Qualified in biomechanics, he had a reasonable playing career before going into coaching in 2005 and 18 months ago was approached by Simon Hunt from SwingFit with the idea of setting up an acadeymy in South Africa, principally to bring international players
and teams here for three-week coaching packages during the European winter. Three academies later (at Pezula, Oubaai and Pearl Valley) Rob has established himself as a leading thinker on performance golf and rather self-deprecatingly acknowledges that the more he learns the more he realises how poor a coach he was beforehand! We caught up with him at Pearl Valley Estates and asked him “what’s the difference between straightforward golf coaching and ‘performance’ coaching?”

Rob Watts: Is it a mental and emotional approach – the technical side of it is only 2% to 3% of the story - involving emotional management classes right through to chipping the ball over a bunker. The difference is that the client sets his own goals as to what he wants to achieve and then it is our job to create the critical path of how he achieves that goal. rather than just fixing it, we ask what drives a player to make a poor swing, so it’s more about goal-setting and expectation of outcome that influences decision-making before the shot is played. most bad shots are hit even before the set up - if it was all about keeping your left arm straight and your head down, why don’t we just do that? So we try to find out the ‘why’, and then fix it.

The Month: with a mental and technical approach?

RW: Too much technical coaching can turn a good player into a bad player unless he understands why he’s making mistakes. It’s like going on a diet instead of understanding why you over-eat. I’m not saying that an 18-handicapper doesn’t need to make technical changes - undoubtedly he does - the question is how you get him to make those changes. what is driving poor performance? what is driving the player to hit bad shots? we try to communicate the changes that need to take place in the swing and do that quickly. For example, if your heart rate is different between shots your swing will be different - the emotions going through your heart affect your brain and how you think. The truth is that if you’ve hit the ball well once you could hit it well every time. The question is why you don’t.

TM: and I guess a good time to start is when you are young?

RW: movement patterns are required in every sport and undoubtedly, the more sports you play, the better you become at the sport you want to play or want to get good at. at age seven, children have their highest ability to learn - whether that’s a language, a musical instrument or a skill. It’s about doing repetitive movements at the right age. The biggest reward is seeing how quickly youngsters change with the right training. but I also think families should look at golf for their kids not only as a life sport but as a nice way to spend quality time with them.

TM: Lastly rob, he’s having a bit of a hard time right now, how would you fix tiger woods?

RW: There are very few sportsmen who move perfectly. once the athlete can tell you as a coach what he needs to work on, it’s already a success because then they are mentally in tune with what they are trying to do and can conduct their own training sessions. tiger can do this and his movement patterns are world class – he just needs to go back to what he was doing 13 years ago when he won the masters by 12 strokes. what was going on in his mind as he settled over his shot 13 years ago is not the same as what’s going on his mind now and that’s the problem. having
achieved everything he may also have lost the will to win.

TM: Thanks rob

In addition, rob has two academies in the UK and is looking to set up academy in america.

Pearl Valley - the Real Winner

Scotland´s Richie Ramsay held his nerve in a sudden-death play-off with Shiv Kapur from India to win the 99th South African Open Championship at Pearl Valley Golf Estates in the Franschhoek valley in December.

On a day when any one of the top 12 players on the overnight leader-board could have won the second oldest national Open in golf, it was the 2006 US Amateur champion who closed out his first European Tour title at the first play-off hole, becoming only the seventh foreigner and first Scotsman to win this title.

An emotional Ramsay explained how he couldn’t put a price on the win. “To see my name up there with all those great names, like Gary Player and Ernie Els, it’s a lot to take in. It’s a huge honour to win South Africa’s national Open and it will open a lot of doors for me.”
Ramsay had made a strong start to the tournament with an opening 67, but a 75 in round two saw him fade from contention. He fought back with a third round 68 and began the final round three off the pace from overnight leader Pablo Martin on 11-under. “I talk about the power of positive thinking,” said Ramsay. “I didn’t think about a low round. I just picked a shot and went for it. It was a day to play fearless golf.”

Ramsay’s fearless approach delivered a bogey free seven-under-par 65 to set the clubhouse target at 13-under-par 275 and tie Kapur, playing two matches behind. Kapur, with a single bogey on his card, failed to capitalize on a spectacular chip shot at the last when he missed an eight-foot putt that would have given him the win. In the play-off, both players missed the fairway with their drives but Ramsay hit a superb three-wood second, from 260 yards, to within 15 feet, with Kapur barely managing to punch out into the rough. This left the way clear for Ramsay, who pushed his first putt just short of the hole and had a formality tap-in to seal the victory.
“If you’ve got two putts to win, you take them,” said Ramsay, who also predicts that Kapur will win soon on the European Tour. “He played some unbelievable golf there; a very steady golfer. He will become a very tough opponent in the next couple of years.”

The smile stayed, but the magic disappeared for Spain’s Pablo Martin who, although clearly enjoying himself out there, struggled to a one-over-par 73 and a tie for sixth on 10-under-par
278 with Darren Fichardt, the top performing South African on the day, who carded a 66.
The 2009 event was the final staging of the SA Open by Pearl Valley. The past three year’s professional and successful hosting is not only a feather in the cap of Pearl Valley Estates but
for the valley as a whole. Jack Hrad, GM-Operations, said “Members and Owners of Pearl Valley have been very proud to host the event and appreciated the praises of Tour Professionals and organizers for the entire experience - the golf course, the estate, the organization, the enthusiastic crowds, and the off-course enjoyment of the Franschhoek valley and all that it
has to offer. Many players, experiencing the valley for the first time, loved it and expressed disappointment only that they would not be here together again soon.”

The Championship will return to Durban Country Club for its centenary edition in December 2010.