Hello everyone,

 

Drive for show, putt for dough? 

This is one of golf's great debates: given the choice, what would you rather be - a great putter or a great driver?   

Without wishing to influence your vote - and you can vote below on our website - we'd take a guess that most of you would go with the former; that if you are a confident putter and better than most, your scores will be far greater.

Others may say you could be the best putter in the world, but it counts for nothing if you're chipping out sideways from the fairway rough all day long - therefore accuracy and length off the tee would be preferable.   

There's no right or wrong answer, of course, although how good does it feel when you bomb one off the tee? Actually, it feels pretty good when you hole back-to-back 30-foot birdie putts, too.   

Vote on what you'd rather be, we'd be interested to know.    


 

Well it's not the first time that I've bad-mouthed Rory McIlroy and he's shot me down almost as soon as my words have gone to print. From seemingly nowhere he's suddenly turned things on at the weekend and ended up winning by two, when a few days earlier he was still suffering with his putting woes.

What was good to hear was his interview on Sky when he talked about what he was trying to do. He is clearly very aware of what goes wrong with his putting and he certainly seemed to find something that did look better and more importantly, very definitely worked! He knows he holds the putter off (this is where his left arm comes away from his side as he swings the putter through, which results in him holding the putter 'open' on his follow through. Sometimes this is clearly happening too early as he misses to the right all the time) and has been working hard at the solutions. What is great from our mere mortal points of view, is that it shows it's not that easy even for someone as talented as Rory to solve things. It takes months of hard work and it will be tough on the way. If you work hard at it though it will come back to you, as we are all hoping it is with Rory.

There can be little doubt that when he has all the elements of his game working he is the best golfer in the world. Just this week I played with a very good professional whose swing speed is around 8mph slower than Rory's. It was like playing a different golf course. He eagled the first at Canterbury by hitting an 18 degree hybrid and an 8 iron inside 10 feet both times, on a hole of 500 yards! It was a joy to watch, but the truth was he didn't have the short game or putter to go with his long game. If you think of Rory hitting it 20+ yards past him and then having the complete game afterwards you can imagine just how incredible he can be.

It was great to watch Rory back to his best so let's hope he's there for the Ryder Cup in just a few week's time.