Lakelands based golf professional Mark Officer has won a recent Lakelands Open golf tournament with a five under par round of 67 on the Jack Nicklaus designed course. The Lakelands Open is a weekly golf tournament for amateur and professional male golfers played at the renowned course on Queensland’s Gold Coast, Australia. Professionals that regularly play on the worlds top tours play in the event which often has pros comprising 25% of the field. General Manager of Lakelands Golf Club is Trent Scaysbrook, a PGA member himself who was also instrumental in setting up this pro/am concept. “We are very happy to run this event at Lakelands and as our fields show each week the pros and members and visiting amateurs also enjoy the concept. We have had some of Australia best professionals play in this event over the last several years with one of our members, Rodger Davis winning recently and our golf professional Mark Officer winning the pros purse last week”. Scaysbrook enthused. The event is sponsored throughout the year by a number of local businesses and a professional’s prizemoney purse is provided by the club.
Officer is a teaching professional based at the Gold Coast facility and was somewhat surprised by his performance. “Having played such little golf recently it was nice to play a decent round which combined reasonable ball striking and a good short game. The only practice that I do consists of me instructing the people that I teach to do the drills and exercises using training aids such as the Heavyiron, Leaderboard and Swing Setter. I also occasionally use the Perfectstroke Putting Aid and a couple of the putting mirrors when I do assessments with students using the SAM Putt Lab”. Officer stated.
“I only took 26 putts in the round and I put that down to using the putting platform that we have at our putting studio which enables us to replicate real putting conditions by adjusting the tilt”.
The putting platform Officer refers to is the Perfectstroke Putting Platform which is an adjustable indoor putting surface which is 3.6metres long with an artificial grass surface which runs at around 11 on a stimp meter. When training golfers in the art of putting Officer and his colleagues at Lakelands use string lines, lasers and all manner of other training aids and technology to improve a golfer’s ability to putt competently. The SAM Putt Lab is the latest in technology which evaluates a players putting stroke and provides information on 28 different areas in the putting stroke.
“The alignment of the face at address and impact and the stroke path are the two components of the stroke that we are most interested in”. Officer said. “We can measure these and other variables in the stroke using the SAM system with both straight putts and breaking putts and then provide solutions as to how to improve or fix any problems. Once we have identified any issues we can then advise our students on how to practice correctly in the future using training aids and techniques that give very accurate reference and feedback”. One of the most popular training aids that Officer uses is called the Perfectstroke Putting Aid which is also used by many playing and teaching professionals in Australia and around the world.
Incidentally Mark Officer is the designer of the Perfectstroke putting aid and the owner of a
company which manufactures and distributes golf training aids under the Perfectstroke brand. Students of the Lakeland’s Golf Academy are able to test and train with these learning tools and there are many stories of remarkable improvements in students in the golf programs. David Nable is the head teaching professional at the Lakelands Golf Academy and he also advocates using training aids and technology to help students improve. “We use the latest camera and computer equipment including the SAM system to evaluate different parts of a players game and then design training programs and schedules to maximize improvement. This will usually include the use of training aids such as the Leaderboard, Swing Setter, Heavyiron, Perfectstroke Putting Aid and advice from experts in the areas of physical conditioning and golf biodynamics”. Nable is the coach of PGA Tour player Andrew Buckle as well as a number of other leading professionals and outstanding juniors.
For more information on the Lakelands Golf Academy go to the Perfectstroke website www.perfectstroke.org or http://www.lakelandsgolfclub.com.au/
