10 things you can do to help your Golf in bad weather

Here I will list 10 that when you do get the chance to get out and play regularly will improve your golf, they are not in any particular order, I would choose as many as you can and do them as often as you can to suit you.

1. The most obvious is to try and find a course that is open, Dukes Meadows in Chiswick, West London where I coach has been open and provides a great option as it’s a short course and rounds are quick. Where I live in Surrey some of the courses which are based on chalk have remained relatively dry, examples such as Epsom Downs, Cuddington and Banstead Downs spring to mind.
2. Now is a great time to take a few lessons and your local driving range provides the perfect facility, where you can play all year round under covered bays, at Dukes Meadows it’s been very busy for coaching and practicing.
3. If you are confident of practicing the correct things why not make a few visits to the driving range on your own or with a friend and devise a few small skill tests or competitions to make it more interesting.
4. Buy an indoor putting mat and practise your putting, there are some good ones available and a few minutes a day will surely help your holing out, just remember when you do play the greens will probably be running quite a bit slower than your indoor mat!
5. This is my favourite! Book a golf holiday to somewhere warm and dry, me and a colleague (Richard Ellis) organise coaching trips away in the winter our next one is in Portugal and these give people a great chance to learn, practice and play in good conditions. Spain and Portugal often have good winter weather but also countries such as Turkey, Greece and Egypt offer great courses and good climates. Looking further afield I love Thailand , Hua Hin, Bangkok and Phuket have some truly outstanding courses still available at very good value compared with some other destinations. South Africa and parts of the USA also offer a lot.
6. Get in the gym or do some excercise but for this I would strongly recommend the help of  trainer who knows golf and movement as some excercises could actually be detrimental to your golf, the trainer who has helped me the most is Andy Driscoll (www.andydriscollpt.com) who is an expert in functional movement.
7. Visit an indoor golf simulator there are now lots of these facilities and with a group of friends they can be a lot of fun playing golf courses you would not ordinarily get the chance to play and its a good social occasion.
8. Clean your clubs and equipment so that the next time you are on the course everything is in order and performs correctly.
9. Purchase a new set of clubs and if you have never had some clubs fitted for you this can bring a massive benefit to your game and also gives you an added incentive to practice so it’s a win double! Most facilities offer good club fitting services, at Dukes Meadows we use a Flightscope monitor to measure ball speed, spin, distance, direction and club head speed and even if you don’t make a purchase it offers valuable information on what you can work on in lessons.
10. If you have space at home try some practice swings in front of mirror, it’s probably not ideal but it’s better than doing nothing and it keeps those golf muscles moving.

Thanks for reading and I hope some of these help.