I’ve always had the idea of when you want to improve in something, you look at how the best do it and you try to do it as good as them. So, in golf, the best players are on the European- or the US PGA Tour. I’ve gone through the whole Swedish golf elite junior program. I started in the Stockholm Golf District Team and then went onto the Swedish National Team and I can honestly say that we have never watched any European Tour nor US PGA Tour tournaments in my 12 years on those teams. We did a lot of other really good things and I’m really happy for everything they did for us and I don’t think I would be at the level I am now without they help I got from them, but we never watched any of the top players in the world in action. Most of our coaches had played on high level tours but they had at the time they were coaching us put their clubs away. I think all of us players  had the aspiration to become world class players but, let’s face it, we had no idea what a ”world class player” looked like. We watched a lot of them on TV and that helped but it’s totally different seeing them live in action. As I said, we got great training on the National Team but I think we missed out on the most important thing. Watching the guys on TV will make us believe the pros hole every putt they look at and hit it close all the time, because on TV they only show the top guys that particular week. I can now, with three years of playing on the European Tour tell you guys that I wish I would have known earlier how the pros get the ball around the course as well as they do. 

We were taught at an early age to master all ball flights. Fade, draw, straight, high and low. That is good, but to make it out on tour you have to be able to repeatedly hit the same shot over and over.  That could be a fade for someone, a straight or a draw for someone else. Just look at Tom Watson. He is a legend and he is 60 years old and can still compete with the world’s top players. He consistantly hits the same shot, a little draw. We were always taught to hit a draw into a left flag, a fade into a right flag and so on. This made me very confused becasue I ended up being able to hit all shapes but I didn’t whcih shot came at which time. Watson hits the same shot to every flag. If he doesn’t want to go for a right pin he can just hit it to the middle of the green and have a go at a birdie. He will make a par at worst. If you hit the middle of each green, during a whole tournament I doubt you will finish outside the top-5. Make it easy for yourself. It has taken me these three years to really understand how to make it easy for myself out there. Now, I have to train my brain in action to think this way too. 

If I hit fourteen drives in one round, three years ago I would have tried to hit all different shapes with those drives to try to bend them in the way fairway bended or to prevent the wind to drift the ball too much. Now, I try to hit 14 equal shots. Straight. My feeling is fade, but a fade for me is pretty much straight. Tom Watson probably hits 14 draws. He can trust his draw very well so he will just aim a little more right if the wind is off the right. If he all of a sudden tries to hit a fance fade into the wind, it will be so much harder. Jack Nicklaus was the same way, but he hit a fade all the time. 

I’m writing this to you young guys out there in hope you understand the importance of watching the top players play and also the importance of making the game simple. I’m trying to make it simple at age 27. Wish I had started a little earlier:)

Wow, this was serious…let’s look at this car I saw here in Monaco. Electrically driven. 290 horses and 0-100 km/h in 3.7 sec. Charge it for 4 hours and then drive for 390 km. Good deal. 

It’s so small inside. I could barely get in and out and I’m not exactly a big guy.

alex