Hi everyone,

Another wonderful week has passed with competitions every day in our Open week. It certainly seems to have been a great success and is a credit to all those involved in organising the event. The weather is still doing us proud and the work that was done on the greens last week seems now to have completely settled in and they are running perfectly. The Victory Bowl on Sunday was won by Rob Dukes who gets his name on a board for the first time! Well done Rob - you've been due.

The shop has been very buy lately with, surprise surprise, sales of Rory McIlroy's clothing being very good! We have new shirts in from his range as well as his trouser, which I will be sporting today in a pro-am at Wrotham Heath. I will also be using his ball which I wrote about in my last letter, the RZN Black. I got some early this week and I was very surprised with how good it is - nothing like the old 20XI that we all felt was too hard. This ball is long and spins and feels very good off the clubface. So, you will definitely be seeing some very soon in the shop and I will try to give you an introductory offer so you can try them for yourselves.

A little bit of insider info for you all, particularly those of you who keep a close eye on the internet shopping sites: I had a meeting with Nike last week who are going to change wholesale how they do business. This is mainly because of the mess that the industry is in (actually lots of industries are going the same way) with ludicrous prices being advertised on internet sites and on Amazon and eBay. There have been three noteable casualties in the golf market in recent months and it really is no surprise when you just look at some of the prices that are being offered on current ranges.

As a result next year you will not see any Nike golf products from the current ranges being advertised on Amazon or eBay. You might find something old that someone is clearing but nobody will be able to have a shop selling Nike products in bulk. If they do Nike will literally shut them down! Suppliers who do as Nike wish will become Nike Authorised Retailers (there has not been this accreditation before despite some online companies stating they have it!). I and my website will most definitely be authorised and I hope you will see something quite impressive growing at Chestfield with Nike's help. Quite simply, whilst it's great as consumers to get knock down deals you must all realise that it can't last. Drivers that start out at £300, which you then buy for £150, mean that the supplier is losing a lot of money. That means they disappear in the end and you are left with less choice. We all want a deal but think about your own industry and jobs - if there was no profit being made how would you be paid? We all need to make a living and it seems the big companies are starting to realise things cannot stay the same. These problems do seem to have come from a few large golf names and they may be making similar changes very soon.

Anyway, that was just a little heads up about what's going on - big things happening soon!