31/01/10

Scotland’s leading amateur Ross Kellett reports from the squad’s training camp at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida as the players prepare for next week’s Jones Cup Invitational and the season ahead.

Saturday 30 January

Final day today. Went straight to the range after breakfast for some practice. Weather forecast wasn’t great so the plan was to have a late lunch and get as much work done as possible. I started the morning doing some putting work with Ian Rae on the ‘Sam Putt Lab’. He gave me some good things to work on and think about for the coming week.

Callum also worked on his putting with The Doc, which he said was fantastic but actually mentally draining! However, he said his putting was feeling better for it as he’s been struggling a bit lately. He said how high the standard of putting was on Tour and that’s the area of improvement he’s focused on.

We had lunch around 1300, then chilled out and relaxed after a really good morning session. After our food, we had our final session of the week with The Doc and discussed goal setting. He wanted to get our own input and thoughts on it too. Again, it was a very worthwhile exercise as with all the work we’ve been doing this week. Ian gave us the rest of the afternoon off to chill and we also got our gear packed up for leaving tomorrow.

I have to say this week has been first class and great to have this opportunity, even more so with the bad weather back home. For me the practice has gone very well and my game feels in very good shape for the week ahead which I’m really looking forward to.

To have the use of such a world class facility has been awesome. We’ve been made to feel so welcome here and the staff couldn’t do enough for us, not just on the golf course but in the restaurant and everywhere else. Credit to IMG and their staff for that!

Also, the boys would like to say a big thanks to Gavin and Callum for joining us this week. They’ve really helped us a lot and having them around when we’ve been practicing has been great. Hopefully they’ll both really kick on this season.

All in all a tremendous week for the squad and let’s hope all the practice pays off for the Jones Cup Invitational and the season ahead, which we’re all really looking forward to. It’s a big season with Scotland defending the European Team Championship in Sweden and also the World Amateur Team Championship in Argentina in October.

I hope everyone back home has enjoyed our insight into the week here at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. Thanks for reading!