Tour Insider Report from the Vivendi Seve Trophy, France

The Vivendi Seve Trophy was the venue this week at Saint Nom La Breteche Golf Club near Paris. I had 3 players playing in the series of matches, two on the Great Britain and Ireland side and one on the European side.

I arrived Monday evening and endured the madness of the Paris Ring Road to make it to Versailles in one piece. On the Tuesday I spent some time with David Horsey who was making his debut in this event. Specifically we spent some time doing some pace drills before Dave went out and played 9 hole of practice.

After Dave I caught up with Thomas Bjorn with whom I hadn’t seen since his win in Crans. It was great to see Thomas and talk through his performance in the Swiss Alps, with what was a fantastic display of iron play and of course putting! Interestingly Thomas was 1^st in greens in regulation that week and also 7^th in putts per green in regulation (with 1.68 per green) which is a great combination.

Darren Clarke was also playing this week. I had visited Darren last Sunday at his home in Portrush to do some work. We had a productive day despite the weather so it was just a case of supervising his drills and practice this week and making sure he was on top of things and ready to play. His stroke looked really good and much improved from the last few weeks. I had not seen him since the Open during which time Darren had crept back into a few old habits. However if he trusts what he is doing out on the course the putts will start dropping again just like they did at Royal St Georges.

Finally I spent a little time again with Lee Westwood. Lee seemed quite positive about the work we had done in Holland, where we had worked on his tempo. We continued that here, using a special prototype training device called the ‘TempoStik’ that gives a player visual and auditory guidance for the tempo. Lee’s stroke looked like it had a lot more flow to it. Hopefully he can roll a few in this week for the GB and I team.

Perfect result would be a GB and I victory with Thomas Bjorn as top points scorer!