Putt for dough

In recent rounds, my major frustration has been my putting. This of course flowed through to the rest of my game, and ultimately wrecked my scores.

However, in my most recent round, I abandoned all of the theories about grip and stance etc, that I'd been experimenting with to try to solve my putting woes - and putted much better.

The lesson is clear: trying to solve a problem with too much theory, and not trusting that I have above average ability in this department, which I think most of my playing partners would acknowledge.

However, I must admit that there was one thought I did adopt during this round, and it's part of the mental game.

I simply thought about making sure the putter went back and through the same distance. That is, I tried to make sure my backswing matched my through-swing, at least as far as possible, with all putts, both long and short.

I believe that by adopting this thought process, much of the tension that causes bad, nervous, twitchy strokes is removed, much as concentrating on rhythm can often help remove the tension that ruins the full swing.

Anyway, the aforementioned concentration on rhythm in the long game is to be my focus in my next round. I much admire the swing of pro golfer Raphael Jacquelin, who has the ultimate in smooth swings, even smoother than John Senden's, who is no slouch either.

A final point about the long game. I've recently been working on extending the width of my take-away on the backswing.

I'm not sure if this is a so-called one piece take-away or not, or whether it's giving me the alleged extra power that a wide backswing is supposed to give, but what it is doing is giving me something simple to think about at this point of the swing, rather than all the other backswing theories I've tinkered with for many years.

My hope is that I can move completely away from complex mechanics and develop my swing, without all of the compensations and jerkiness that have plagued me previously. I know my swing is now better. It is less forced and more on plane. I just need to trust it more and keep it simple.

The formula 'drive for show and putt for dough' are not really applicable to me, but 'keep it simple stupid' certainly is.