Robert Rock Gets Your Game Competition Ready

Handsome, stylish, one of the most beautiful swings in the game, one of the most luscious

and thick heads of hair in golf. But we're not here to talk about any, we've got Robert Ropp behind me, so let's go and

find out how he warms up for a tournament. that'll do you rob yeah not the best but it's all right to start with thank you for joining us again

right everyone we've got robert rot back on or every time we do a video with rob you guys love

it i get all sorts of comments saying you should have asked him this you should have done that we're

going to do a little bit more today we're going to do a bit on long game we're going to do a little bit on short game it's specifically around tournament preparation okay so i'll get a lot

of people that uh i speak to that have something coming up whether it's a corporate day whether

it's their monthly medal whether it's the club champs left preparation a little bit late so we're

going to focus on what you would do as an elite player in the last week leading up to a tournament

to try and get your feels and everything in the right place and i want to start with the long game

and we're going to see if us mortals can take something from it

what you do, and see if we can apply it to our own games and sort of expedite the process of being good within a week

So where would you start with your long game? I think the stage I'm at now is a bit more realistic

When I was playing tournaments every week, you're only topping up a little bit

You're already loose. You're already playing well. You're already playing lots of golf

So that isn't relevant to your normal person that's got a comp coming up in a few days now i don't play anywhere near as much a little bit

busier doing other stuff but i have got some events coming up shortly and i will be trying

to cram in a bit of practice in in a week a week or two's time really to get myself ready so

from almost a start where i've done nothing so i'm building a game from trying to tap into what

I've done before but I'm trying to get myself loosened up first of all try and get some sort of

speed back into the swing and going through all my basic drills but trying to cram them all in

into a few days so I think that's a bit more relevant now and I'm in the same boat I've got

comp coming up in the middle of April and I'm gonna it's not the masters

hey you never know we'll never know but i'm going to try and get my game in his best possible shape

with as minimal balls hit as possible okay because my back doesn't like hitting loads of balls

especially loads of drivers so i've got to be careful and efficient and not waste time and

effort well that'll be relevant to a lot of people watching at home we're going to stop with their own ailments and aches and pains as well yeah so in terms of efficiency and where you would start

I guess on the swing side of things, I can see you already sort of laden up with your TRS slider

So is that something you kind of start every session with just to get yourself the right feels from the get-go

What I used to do on a Monday would be reset my whole swing

So from a tournament, obviously finished on a Sunday and a bit of traveling time, get back home on a Monday

and I'll start rebuilding the swing for the following week. Hang on, rebuild, what we're talking about

Just a control, alt, delete, clear it all out and... Like a reset, a rebuild's probably

Well, I did do a lot of rebuilds, but I reset and realign everything

so I know I'm starting the next tournament, hopefully at the same point that I started the previous one

because you go backwards when you play four or five rounds in a row

because you're not doing technique work. You're just hitting shots and you're just playing. So what do you mean specifically

Do you've got checkpoints in the goal swing that you... Yeah, I've got checkpoints and everything, even just down to your basics of alignment

making sure my grip hasn't just tweaked its way around just for comfort's sake while I've been

playing so I realign everything using sticks the slider camera work I do loads of slow motion drills

first to make sure my practice swing is actually like I think it is yeah because I got I get that

wrong loads of times I think I'm getting the takeaway right and I just loosely sometimes

rehearse the takeaway and then I've caught it on video and it's like miles on so get it right

slowly first build it up bit by bit doing just practice swings really for me getting my shoulders

working early enough making sure my club head is in the right place at p2 in the takeaway making

sure I'm stretching enough to the top of the back swing which is a real big one for me at the moment

as you get older it's easy just to do like a just half an effort and get it to the top

and you think you're winding yourself up, but you're not. See, I see that with you a lot

And every time we've done something together or one of these sessions, I see you arguably making more rehearsals than hitting balls

I see you doing a lot of movement. You're just training movements rather than actually hitting shots

so that when you do come to hit the shots, you've got all your feels in the right place. I promise we are going to make him hit some shots

because that's what you all want to see. But I guess that's a real key takeaway

that even if you can't get to the driving range or the golf course, there's an it you could go to your garden you can pop on a train in it yeah this i'll do this at

home right i'm only we're here hitting balls because we've got space to hit balls but

in the weeks or the days leading up to a tournament i'll be rehearsing my backswing

throughout the day in in the garden or in the house people think you just have to be hitting

shots no no no you don't you don't at all no i've got to get my backswing so it feels

lined up and powerful so that the downswing isn't as hard and if you haven't got all your things sort

of all your leverage accumulated in your backswing then you're you're going to be limited as to what

sort of clubhead speed you can actually produce well come on then let's see lined up and powerful

lined up and powerful so this ticks a box for me because it keeps my right arm close but i am

trying to stretch everything else out as far away as deep as I can trying to keep my left arm

straight and stretched make sure my shoulder turns enough make sure my hip turns enough so I can get

it and get my forearm traveling backwards enough so my swing's long enough because if it's too short

it becomes snatchy and lose a rhythm and would that be the benefit of using your slider versus

a towel because presumably when people tuck a towel under there you can't get that well your

Your towel drill is going to look like, it going to be like that And I don know any shots I ever hit like that on the course I do me Yeah But you can only really do that sort of shot with a towel drill

and we'll do that later. So just adding that movement of the right arm

This gives me a full backswing to play with so I can now work on moving my body, for me, my upper body

and my right shoulder all the way through and my arms flying away from..

Cool, let's kick the double away then. So I'll do some like this where I'd build the takeaway up

stretch that to the top, and then try and get a shot at the end of it

Because it's that patience as you build to the top of your swing

if you haven't played a lot, the calmness to sort of take your time up to there and then swing down

So when you're doing that slowly in slow motion and you're stopping, you consciously registering that position once you're in it you're going right okay that's what

that feels like so I will slow down through this point because I want to get that bit right and then

this bit will feel like I'm pausing for a second or two but I'm obviously not it's a fraction of it

and when I feel that extra stretch and I hit where I'll feel like I ought to be

then I'll start moving down okay so so these are staggered shots and I'm not expecting anything

out of the shot so we're not even really looking at ball don't really don't really care no okay

so how much of this would you do then say say we're playing you've got a week from today you've

got a tournament this is your first session after a little bit of time off we're getting going

how long are you doing this for really so i might need to hit 30 40 50 balls until i start feeling

looser and i'm getting the same spot at the top and i will check it on video so when i'm pausing

at the top it's right and i won't move on until that's right and how many shots will you hit we

literally hit one check one check or are you i'll do 10 or 20 to start with just to loosen the old

body up a bit and then when it feels better i'll video probably every other shot okay cool and then

when i'm hitting a consistent spot then it's time to take this off and see if i can actually

replicate that and then i go again well hit me one more because we're going to speed that 30 40

ball process up to about three or four all right it's windy and cold Well, that looks very good to me

So I'm going to assume you're positionally very good. Oh, he fancies one more already

One more. That didn't feel quite right to me. Needed a little bit wider

Yeah, that was better. Good. So when, let's assume now you've done that work

you're in the position where, okay, I'm in the right place. I've got my fields. I've checked off my positions

Do you change into kind of a more playing mindset? Do you think about, all right, what golf course am I going to play

What shots am I going to need? or are you someone that just goes if I've got my skill set in place that's applicable for anywhere

almost yeah it's almost like that it would have been like that when I was playing regularly now

I've got to go through the bag a bit more and remind myself of the just tiny little adjustments

to hitting drivers making sure that the the length of the driver swing is correct um my stance is

right first of all get wide enough and I don't I tend to sometimes lean up to the ball position I

try and make sure that's all right and then trying to keep a decent rhythm with the driver which it's

much easier with a seven to have a reasonable rhythm so that will come off i'll try and do the

same same backswing now probably do one or two where i'm pausing that felt pretty good pretty

good all right so then i'll link that together now into a almost a yeah come here a non-pause

go on then clean that mate that's what you said you were coming for lovely it's always been important for me to do this first move slowly

right that was probably my best one so yeah bang on i'll do a few like that then i'll go four irons

drivers okay and then you feel comfortable you've worked your way up through the bag i feel that the

swings if i can get my four iron and my driver working then it's then it's after that it's time

to come back down to the wedge work what are you like okay that's interesting i was going to say that what what in terms of just being in your studio i think you've got gc quad knocking around

here somewhere would you start to implement some of that to look at start looking at numbers and

yardages to make sure they're as they should be yeah something you do now nowadays i do i used to

be able to feel that pretty well again because i'm playing every week now it's been well it's been a

few weeks since i've actually played around the golf dropping about four yards a week yeah if i

If I don't do anything about it, yeah. So this used to go 169 yards, right

Now my first few shots today would have probably gone about 160

Yeah. So that's why I've got to sort of crank it up and stretch the swing out a little bit

So I'm refusing to adjust my yardages at the moment, right? You're still fighting back to that stage

Yeah, it's coming, but for as long as I can up it after a bit of practice

and I'll use the quad to tell me, am I hitting this as far as I should be

and don't think you can't do this if you haven't got a gc4 that's an expensive bit of kit there's

trackman ranges it's top trace there's all sorts of things that driving range you can just laser

a flag can't you of course and just exactly yeah if you've got your bush or whatever laser a target

and you can get an idea of where that stuff's going so about i hate to do that on a day like

this it's cold it's probably not going to go 169 in truth it might go 165 at best in this

cold wind right so we've assumed we've done driver we've seen we've done four iron we're

we're now going to talk about wedges you just grabbed a 52 degree wedge so what does this look

like for you what are you trying to achieve from your wedge sessions with a week to go so i would

tend to hit most shots with a 52 it seems to be that i get a lot of 100 yard ish shots so this is

the most important one for me for scoring and i've got to hit the right numbers so i've got

i've got a few favorite shots that i feel like i'm okay at so it would go 107 if i hit it full

i've got a hundred yard shot that i can replicate quite nicely and then if i push it to its max i

can hit 112. okay so those shots are the ones i'm trying to hit now to remind myself of what

my swing speed feels like to get those three numbers so you're controlling are you just

controlling an inner speed dial you're not a clock face no no it's just it's the same swing

same setup everything just done at a slightly different tempo and pace okay well let's show

the nuances of that give us a clear what your hundred looks so i'll start with the hundred yeah

so my wedge play is just slightly different i a little bit more upright and i keeping my weight on my left that little bit more during the swing and i not using my wrists as much so that was an attempted 100 but

probably it's probably gone 90 something maybe even only 90 didn't feel quite right so what's

the thought process of essentially what you're describing there is almost a different technique

you're going wide to wide you're feeling less hinge yeah what what's your thought process and

and higher hands you said yeah this is your thought process around that because people

look at your golf swing and just think well that just popped out on everything why that

subtle change um i found it more reliable for the starting line and to and to sort of replicate the

pace i wanted um and i copied this basically off thomas bjorn because i played with thomas

quite a bit bit and i tried to help him somewhat with his swing but he helped me more so with

wedge play and i just watched how he did it and he was brilliant at it always looks big long right

arm right yeah so it was it was minimal wrist hinge controlled the speed of it with his turn

in his chest okay and it's simple now in the manner that i hit my full shots i would have

my hands lower yeah and i'd be building up a bit more lag lag's not great for wedge play and having

low hands is a bit of a death move because it promotes a pull left that's the worst thing you

can do with a wedge long left's never good on any green surely if you're cranking up to 112 is that

when you start to introduce a bit of hinge or not no no i just i just i just turn a bit harder so

so this that was the 100 if i try and get nearer the the normal speed

so that may have gone a bit further that would feel like an attempted version of

107 it's gone further yeah and then the 112 is as is as hard as i dare hit it with this technique

without risking messing the strike up okay so it's it's the same thing you're not really noticeable i

suppose but it's just a little firmer hit but the intention of the whole swing is the same

so it's exactly exactly exactly five yards further i can see that in my eyes there we go

so once you've done a bit of that so you're going to spend a bit of time working up and and down your 100 shot, your 112 shot, your 107 shot

Until I can hit the numbers close enough, like to within a couple, do the same with my 46, my 56 and my 60

Okay, so then we've taken care of the positions of the swim, we've got our fields, we've got our fundamentals set

we've got some wedge yardages. Yeah. I guess now we'll probably go over to the pitching green

and see what we can do with the scoring area, right? Yeah, so that should give me a reliable tee shot

my iron play should be pretty sharp, my wedges should be all inside 10 foot

I shouldn't be pitching much or chipping, so we've just got to hold putts after that

But just in case, we'll do some pitching. Go on then, let's go. Right Rob, we have covered off long game, so we know we're in decent nick now

You feel more comfortable heading into tournaments, people are going to know what to do

We're now entering a zone that a lot of people sort of ignore, and this is really important for scoring, right? Wedge play

Why is it important and what do you do to try and sharpen up pre-tournament

well these are your opportunities to hit it close to the flag right if you're not playing a lot

there's still no excuse for not being able to hit a pitch shot from 50 yards and get it

closer than you would do with a full shot because this is the relatable bit right people will look

at your goal swing and go well that's all very well him saying that i can't do that but there's

no real excuse there's no huge physical prowess or strength or speed involved in this this is just

just a bit of technique and a lot of practice um i used to be absolutely horrendous at 50 yards

and it used to spoil my chances of winning money as a pro right because i would drive it into this

zone on a lot of par fours because i used to be pretty good off the tee and hitting it 300 ish

but you're going to face this shot so if it's a short par four you've got it if it's a par five

that you can't get up in two you've got this shot and if you've hit a bad drive you had to

wedge out you've got the shot again right so you've got to be good at this shot as and if you can get

good at 50 yards 40 yards 60 yards right you chances of saving saving shots are there but

also not completely messing it up so just to clarify then this is our kind of expedited speed

process of getting some touch you'll get into this 50 yard range yeah if you were practicing

wedge play and you're pitching as a general rule of thumb without this kind of target of getting

set up would you be coming back and forth moving yardage or this is your start here until i get

this right if i can hit my 50 yard number with the right spin the right divert the right strike

the right flight i know i can kind of adapt so if i'm pressed on time start at 50 yards or it might

be for others it might be 40 it might be 60 but pick the one that you that you face a lot of

and practice that first and then you can gauge the others around it because it's just an extension of

right it's the same shot it's the same technique it's either slightly slightly less or slightly

more slightly shorter back swing slightly longer slightly firmer right but the same basically the

same technique right then you're there cool we're sort of clipping a couple away and start to get a

feel for it so this is a 60 degree wedge and i'm playing it a bit like we talked about with the

full wedge shot where i'm trying to get minimal divot and i'm trying to get a nice

sort of wide waist high swing for me for 50 yards at a sort of moderate tempo should give me 50

remind me of your feel for that you just feel wide to wide or are you feeling a long right arm yeah longer arm i'm higher in the setup i'm not dropping the hands down low i don't want

any wrist action i want this relationship here yeah in line hands slightly forwards and i want

to be kind of collecting it like that i'm not trying to hit down into the ground too much

having my my weight set slightly on the left to start should give me my low point in contact with

the ground and i'm trying to maintain that for as long as i can i don't want i don't want divots i

feel i feel like it's more of that sort of action yeah makes sense so it's just wider and just

just a turn to a finish so So. Sounded nice. Just for the benefit of the camera there

he's just one bounce and clipped it against the stick. Do you want to just wrap it up there? That'll do

You'll calibrate it. If I did that, I'd be quite happy. I probably do a few more and I be done with that But a lot of people could learn from that So as soon as you said wide to wide all i see is jason day that kind of yeah jason your your model for stuff like that he so good at it so kind of just like that so it doesn make any sense to not do that it

got more margin for error jason thomas bjorn luke donald you know it's it's not into the ground and

trying to get loads of spin through hitting down on it really sharp and you just see that from your

divot yeah you barely bruised it's a firmish bit of ground but if i got it wrong it would dig in

okay and then it would come up short so it's got to be like that flighted relatively low

had a bit of spin on it luckily got the line right but it felt right first go look pretty

good let's have a couple more then let's get you calibrated because we've got a tournament to win in a week sound of that rob that was probably slightly better strikes with there so if these

are landing at 50 and i'll check with my pitch mark when we get down there that's a great that's

a great yeah so you laser it first of all and then are you landing it where you think right because

it's easy to come up on the the front of the green here is angled towards us so we've got to get past

that bit otherwise it's just going to stop on the front and that's a it might feel like a nice strike

but if it lands on the front edge and you're leaving yourself 25 30 foot down a green that's

no good so from this range particularly just past it is better because you're putting back at it

and as you're clipping away great tip for people at home exactly what rob said look at your pitch

marks find out where you're pitching because you can just go up there the ball's next to the hole

and you think oh great i'm good at 50 yards but it won't give it on that but still okay it might

have pitched 10 foot short add a big bounce so go up find those and just this is disgusting for

For the benefit of those who can't see that, I reckon our longest putt there is probably the one that hit the pin

and bounced to four and a half feet. So I'd like them a little closer. Yeah, well, I'd say you're fairly calibrated

So let's go and get calibrated on the green so we can take advantage of those wedges and go and knock them in

Right, Rob, we're on putting green now. Yeah, my favourite place. Yeah, you've made no secret of the fact

that this isn't necessarily your favourite part of the golf course. But when you're hitting pitch shots in like you've just hit

I guess that tells us the importance of taking advantage of those and holing out

So you've got a week to go, as we know. You're trying to sharpen your putting skills

Just give me a little bit of a flavour of what you do to get yourself tournament ready on the greens

So the most important part for me is holing out. I don't make many of my mid-range putts, but if I can lag my long putts up close enough inside it

Should we start that again? You haven't even missed one yet. And I've thrown it already. You've thrown it already. If I can lag them up close enough, I'm going to be faced with four, five foot

hopefully three foot if it's close enough, but the pitch shots have come to this range

If I'm going to make birdies, I've got to expect these to go in

I don't expect longer ones to go in, but if I get a good pitch, this has got to go in

So the main focus of this would be what then? Your fundamentals of? Just start line

So we're looking at, we've got an alignment aid here down that gets your club part, your club

Yeah, it gives you a bit of an idea of the club face and path during the whole stroke

but you've also got the gate to send it through. And I will often have the line on the ball as well to tell if I'm striking it well and rolling it properly

So without the mat, I would be lining that line up on my target line

But I try and do all these things together to help get me a bit of confidence in what I'm doing is somewhere near right

that roll pretty nice so if i can keep it rolling like that from short range i know it's just a

matter of reading and lining that lineup is this something like with your long game where you'd use

video camera and you'd refer back to that and have a look at your stroke or yeah i'd have a i'd have a

sort of tripod with the the camera hanging directly over this mat so i can check the face along these

these um yeah sort of face alignment lines with the path that gives me a bit of confidence that

that the stroke's on line, then it's a matter of reading it and lining it up properly

But I need to do quite a lot of this to reassure myself

that I'm gonna hold shortish putts. Which you are doing. Yeah, I'd like that to go in a little bit faster

So trying to hit the back of the hole would be something. Keeping a nice rhythm to the stroke is important

holding my follow through and checking that I'm my tendency would be to come this way sometimes

so I'm just trying to stay down long enough match the club face up and just stay in position right

not not coming out of out of the putt too soon I think this is a really good one because this isn't

no disrespect this isn't a difficult task as such is it so we're looking at a relatively straight

shortish putt where we're just checking fundamentals this is something everyone can do

And this is just to recalibrate to make sure you've got the confidence that you're rolling the ball end over end and you're starting it on the line

and you can take that to the goal force. Everyone can do this. I mean, I'm moving the putter from there to about there and through to there

So it's not a complicated movement. If you get it somewhat near, the ball should start and roll straight

On short puts, you've got to get it through the tiny gaps. So the bigger gap's a bit pointless because it'll probably miss

So that's start line. That's sort of your fundamentals. we all know putting's got a bit more to it than that because you're going to have longer putts

well you might not but i will have longer putts than this on a golf course do you do much in terms

of pace control and what do you do to try and get the pace or would you leave that to the day

i'll use i'll use this ball and just put across the green hoping and trying to get this ball to

to run true end over end and just put backwards and forwards across the green making sure i'm

rolling it right so it could be just not particularly aiming at hole but just setting it up

and giving it a decent size stroke this time and see if i can get the line to

to roll it's wobbled a bit but if i'm striking it through on longer putts then i know my distance

control is going to be probably as good as i can do it cool right so there we have it so we've got

long game calibrated we know what we're doing you've got your fields with your crs slider we've

got pitches that are just hitting the stick. Yeah. We can hole out from three foot

So you've got no excuse not to shoot 65 every round. Hope you can take something from that

There's some real good gems in there. And thank you very much, Rob. And we'll see you next time

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