Jeremy Dale’s Scoring Schools at Stapleford Park are a refreshingly different way of improving your golf and lowering your scores, discovers Gary Firkins
Golf is an addictive obsession. Just ask any golfer – or their long-suffering partners – and they’ll tell you of the frustration at not being able to hit better shots and shoot lower scores.
Despite a plethora of golf magazines, TV channels, websites, instructional DVDs and training aids, all dedicated to helping golfers play better golf, the statistics show that we are not, on average, better golfers than in previous decades – the average handicap is still above 20.
No matter how good you are – a 22-handicap wanting to get down to 18 or, like me, a single-figure handicap player wanting to shave a couple of shots off every round, we all want to improve our scores. So I was intrigued to see if Jeremy Dale’s Scoring School at Stapleford Park, billed as an alternative one-day coaching session focussed not on the technicalities of the swing, but simply lowering your score, might prove effective.
I was joined on the course by a friendly, mixed group of golfers, including a married couple who had seen a feature about Jeremy’s Scoring Schools in The Times newspaper and both wanted to lower their handicaps, a regular golfer whose wife had bought him the day as a gift, a couple who had come for the weekend (although she was making the most of Stapleford Park’s spa rather than participating in the golf) and another local golfer, like me, hoping to find his inner Tiger Woods. Jeremy also puts on ladies-only days.
Jeremy Dale’s approach is very different to the way most golf professionals teach. For a start, the first hour of Scoring School is spent in the boardroom of Stapleford Park’s thatched pavilion, sipping coffee and watching Jeremy draw graphs on a flip chart – more like a business meeting than a sports lesson.
“I believe our profession has got it wrong in the way we teach golf,” says Jeremy, who qualified as a golf professional after a taking a degree in psychology at Sussex University, and who is also one of golf’s best known trick-shot entertainers, performing shows all around the world. “We spend too much time trying to change peoples’ swings, we make things too technical, too complicated.”
Jeremy’s distilled theory, clearly backed up by statistics, is that it is the ‘finesse’ element of golf – including pitching, chipping and bunker play – that is key to lower scores. And with the evidence ringing in our ears, we head out to Stapleford Park’s pristine practice area to sharpen up our short game.
Jeremy teaches us about selecting the right club, how to judge distance, why we should look at the spot where we want to land the ball – yet spends only a fraction of the time actually working on technique. The results, for many of us, are instant. Instead of hoping the ball will end up close to the hole, we are focused on creating a route map for each shot and executing it more accurately than previously.
“Look – you’re now chipping the ball closer to the hole and giving yourselves shorter putts,” enthuses Jeremy. And he’s right – it may not be miraculous, but it is undoubtedly good enough to knock a shot or two off a round.
Despite some unseasonal cool, damp weather, our spirits are warmed by the revelation that we don’t need a swing transplant, or indeed a new brain, to play better shots. (Lunch at Stapleford Park helps, too.)
For my part, the most effective aspect of Jeremy’s approach is that it teaches you to think about each shot, to focus on a routine or formula, and that the resulting improvement in consistency breeds confidence, a vital element to shooting lower scores.
It’s actually a very simple way of doing things, but in a game that can at times be made to appear as complicated as rocket science, that’s a good thing.
Jeremy Dale one-day Scoring Schools at Stapleford Park take place on July 26, 27, August 10, 16 (ladies only), 17, 28 (ladies only), 30, September 14, 28, October 19 and 26. The cost is £147.50 per person and includes lunch and refreshments. To book yourself, or a friend/partner, on a Scoring School, call Jeremy Dale direct on 07748 307 849 or e-mail jeremy@jeremydale.com For more information, visit www.jeremydale.com