LET Debrief & Learning points
•As any tour event, it is a great learning experience to go and see the professionals compete this time right on our doorstep in the Ladies European Tour Event in Sotogrande. La Reserva Golf course was presented in excellent condition and became difficult when the wind got up.
•The first thing to note is that it was very windy today, and therefore very easy to have high scores. I was following the Moroccan professional Maha Haddioui, and she could have walked off with a double bogey twice but instead planned accordingly and only had bogeys.
• I definitely saw a lot of good shots but I’m sure she could have planned her way around the golf course better. We saw that on hole 4 she hit a fairway wood off the tee where she should have hit a driver because the fairway gets wider.
• She definitely wasn’t judging the greens on her chips properly, she was either flying the ball too close to the hole or not giving enough green and allow for miss hits. She had a chip, which was downhill, down grain and into the wind. The ball was sitting up above the rough and she just gave it to much launch and ended up leaving it short. I think she should’ve hit a club with lower loft to have a more direct ball flight and letting the wind put some spin on the ball (she had a little bit of green to work with).
• One good thing was that she hit every fairway in the holes I saw her play; which definitely gave her an advantage to hit into the green. She is definitely not the longest player on tour but she knows were to miss, even with this kind of strong wind.
•Her putting was definitely not the greatest because she did not hole any long putts, but her distance control was flawless as she left the putts inside that 3 foot circle around the hole that we had talked about beforehand.
•Many times we saw that full shots were affected by the wind and the results were poor. The bests shots I saw were lower flighted punch shots, the proximity was much better.
•I really enjoyed myself today and felt like I learnt a lot about course management and strategy.
•There are many ways to get the job done! Congratulations to Celine Herbin who walked away as the winner with a total score of -6 (under par) shooting an impressive 69 on the last day.
We hope that next year we can enjoy the women’s golf Ladies European Tour Event in Sotogrande, with the assistance of great golfers.
