European Tour Putting Blog from the Open de España in Barcelona

The European Tour was back in Europe this week for the first time since March. The recent 'Asian Swing' which had seen events in Malaysia, China and Korea had meant a welcomed four weeks at home working from the studio. However this week the venue of 'Real Club de Golf El Prat' Barcelona saw me back on my travels.

The course looked a challenging set up and was in superb condition with big undulating greens, which rolled great and also were also very quick. It's always nice to get great facilities to work from, as it makes for a more productive week.

As a result a lot of the work I did with my players this week was to try and help them get to grips with the greens as quickly as possible. As well as being very quick and undulating they had an element grain in them, which made some of the downhill putts unbelievably quick, while the uphill putts deceivingly slow.

The practice days saw lots of 'pace drills' to get a good feel of the pace of the greens and being able to adapt to the different slopes from putt to putt and how they affect speed.

Pace control is one of the most important aspects of putting. It's the basis for good green reading in that  to be able to get a feel of how putts react on different slopes you have to have a consistent delivery speed. When you can control your delivery speed, you can more easily build a picture in your mind of the line.

One of the biggest factors that affects pace control is tempo and in particular consistency of tempo. One particular drill to help you control your pace is to focus on the tempo of the stroke. This is an area I have been working on with David Horsey, who was up in the studio last week before coming out. David is using the Puttronome IPhone App to help train this aspect. This a great drill and practice aid that really helps develop consistency in your timing.

Others players I worked with this week included Simon Khan, Chris Wood, Ollie Fisher, Matt Haines and Richard Finch, Thorbjorn Oleson and Danny Willet.

Matt Haines had also been to the studio last week. With Matt Haines we had made a few tweaks to his technique, improving his balance at set up and a focus for keeping the club face squarer to the path of the stroke to help him starts his putts more consistently on line

One of the drills I used to help some of the players focus on both their line and pace this week as well as to give them feedback on their green reading is to place two tee pegs just a couple of feet in front of the ball, on either side of their line, just wide enough for a ball to travel through. Once this gate is set up the players then had to then try and roll the ball through the gate at the correct speed for the line. This drill not only gives you feedback on whether you are starting the ball on line but also whether you are matching the pace to the line. The gate only gives you one line to the hole, so the pace has to be perfect to match the line. The drill also gives the players feedback on the read, if the pace is good and the ball doesn't go in then you know you have misread it. This is a great drill to test consistency of delivery speed and green reading.

Hopefully the guys will be matching pace and line all week and one of them can add the Spanish Open title to their CV.