With my sincere apologies to Mike Bender, I regret that I saw nothing of Zach Johnson's victory at Colonial last weekend and even worse, did not collect his rounds for analysis and to add to my Winner's Profile - Sorry Mike! I was not simply goofing off, I was north of the border at the Canadian National Junior Championships - and not just a spectator. My good friends at the RCGA paid me the great compliment of asking me to provide the performance statistic for the field of 99 players. 33 girls and 66 boys, between the ages of 14 and 18 - the best juniors from all over Canada.
The project was an extremely ambitious one and the idea of Doug Roxburgh, the Director of High Performance for the RCGA. Incidently, who better to put in charge of fostering high performance than a proven, world class high performer. Doug won't talk about it but I googled him to learn that he has only captured 4 Canadian Amateur, and 13 BC Amateur titles - and I was bragging about my member-guest...opps!
Doug's goal is to use the data collected for the field to set a benchmark for exactly where the best players are currently and let the analysis guide the RCGA's improvement initiatives over time. While Doug and I were coaching players through the data entry process, Henry Brunton (Men's National Team Coach) was testing each player's club and ball speed, spin rates and attack and launch angles on TrackMan. The combination of the on-course performance data and the sophisticated TrackMan data should set a new standard in performance analysis and I hope to team with Doug and Henry to publish our findings fairly soon - stay tuned.
It was an intense but exhilarating four days! The players were polite and enthusiastic and seemed to really enjoy ShotByShot. It warmed my heart to hear their good-natured banter: "Dude, what is your Putting handicap? Mine is a...." The experience made the part of my heart that is "Canadian" grow 4 sizes larger.
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