That was a turn up for the books at the weekend. When asked before the European Tour event in Oman whether I felt Chris Wood would contend, I would have said probably not. Purely down to the amount of changes we had been making in his set up and swing before he flew to U.A.E.
On occasions, Chris has asked for advice on his swing since the mid-way point of last year and I could see a number of problems had crept into his swing technique and contagiously had started to eat its way, into the odd chip shot around the green. At that time he was working with Mike Walker who is an excellent full time touring Swing Coach. Mike works alongside world renowned Golf Coach, Pete Cowan and between himself and a Pete have amassed over 100 professional tour victories, including majors. Mike had been instrumental in Chris’ change of form after we had split briefly in May 2015 but after the Ryder Cup the following year, Chris was struggling to implement some of the changes and his functional swing movements were in my opinion were evolving for the worse.
Last Summer and couple of weeks before The Open at Birkdale, Chris and I had our first go at trying to get the swing back into position and he initially found some form again finishing 14th. Mike continued to work hard to combine my changes with his methods and Chris continued to search for the exact thought processes to get him feeling back to some type of form. At the start of this month, Chris decided to stop working with Mike and seek my sole advice. The fact that we had attempted the odd session since the Summer, starting back together Chris found it much easier to understand and feel exactly what was necessary to make an efficient swing. He has always been my idea of a model pupil and not because of how good he is, it’s not to do with that, it’s to do with how he always does what you ask, experiments under guidance to find answers, works incredibly hard and he never ever gives up. Because of this, Chris has always been able to be moulded just as the world number one Putting Coach, Phil Kenyon has also found. Turning Woody’s putting from a technically quirky, streaky, tour average, to now statistically one of the very best putters in the world. Likewise with Phil and Chris’ putting experiences, we have also created a tremendous understanding of what it needs to feel for Chris to consistently hit world class golf shots. Although he didn’t quite have his grade ‘A’ long game in Oman a welcome return for his ‘B’ game, was plenty good enough to get him into the weekend mix. The weeks best player Joost Luiten, had his grade ‘A’ long game for all four days and even though he made the occasional short game ever, he thoroughly deserved to lift the trophy come Sunday. Albeit a second place finish is a great start back together, some bonus confidence with plenty of room for improvement. And the winners is... Last week I offered the opportunity to win a dozen Pro V1 golf balls for a correct guess of the hole that Nathan Moore was playing. I know it’s a very long hit from the tenth tee but Nathan was hitting his second shot to the tenth green from the eleventh tee. Unfortunately we didn’t have anyone guess the correct hole he was playing too. | 
