We hope you all enjoyed watching an ‘Autumnal’ edition of the Masters last week. Congratulations to Dustin Johnson for his win who played some stunning golf throughout the week A lot can be learned from the event, owing in great part to the move from April due to the Covid pandemic. Wetter conditions, and slower greens certainly made scoring much easier, and personally I thought the officials at ANGC did a great job preparing the course in what was difficult circumstances. Yes they have a huge number of groundstaff, and pretty much a money tree to use, but there were still signs of wear and tear, particularly as the week went on. It is still Augusta National, and they have the ability to switch on their sub-air systems to help dry the course out, but around the green it looked scruffy in parts, and if you looked closely you could see the greens churning up towards the end of the day. As perfect as ANGC is made out to be, it is still a golf course, which as every other, will go through peaks and troughs of condition throughout the year. It will certainly be different come April which is towards the peak of their golfing season MUD BALLS…….And lots of them!!! The powers that be love the game to be played as it originally was, so no preferred lies were in operation last week, much to the displeasure of many of the players. It is still something which we may experience throughout the year, particularly if we miss the fairway. The important thing to remember is that if you find yourself with mud on your golf ball, it ‘should’ fly in the opposite direction to the mud, this however is dependant on a number of factors. How to combat it, well your best option is take more club and swing easier (increased speed will often increase curvature). Aim for what you believe the ball will do…..if mud is on the right side of the ball, aim a little further right to compensate for the curvature to the left. This may help you miss your target by LESS or even get the ball to finish somewhere on the green Bouncebackability The final thing which didn’t get too much coverage, was the sheer doggedness of a certain Tiger Woods, who made a 10 on ‘Golden Bell’.....only to follow it up with 5 birdies in his last 6 holes to finish the event in the red. Much will be said about the 10, but what it shows to me is that you must keep grinding out a score, regardless of what has gone on before. I see many golfers simply ‘give up’ after making a mistake similar to what we saw Tiger do, however he was able to forget about it and move on DJ is maybe the best proponent of staying in the moment, with what Butch Harmon calls the shortest memory in golf. It is not an easy skill to learn, but one way I have found helps a lot is to not play 18 holes On your scorecard, draw a line after each set of 3 holes. This way, within a round you are actually playing 6 rounds of 3. It is normally the way which Scorecards on Tour are marked out, and it certainly helps provide a way to forget what has happened in the past, be it either good or bad! Rich | 
