Fylde coast golf review: Lancashire up for county of year award and our Lytham expert offers to improve your swing

Academy tutor Alistair Taylor will offer his advice to golfers sending him videos of their swing

Paul Lawrie relishes Senior Open debut at Royal Lytham and St Annes

The BBC’s Dan Walker will host the ceremony, at which either Lancashire or Wiltshire will take the county prize.

Eight other awards to be presented include Volunteer of the Year, for which Lancashire has its other nominee in Mark Feeney of West Derby.

The other categories are Most Welcoming Club of the Year, Coach of the Year, Innovation Award of the Year, Golf Access, Young Ambassador of the Year, Performance of the Year and Championship Venue of the Year.

Nick Pink, England Golf Chief Executive, said: “The judges had an incredibly difficult job to produce this shortlist of amazing volunteers, players, clubs and counties.

“They all contribute so much to the sport that we all love and we look forward to telling their stories over the coming weeks as we build up to our gala dinner.

Alastair Taylor of Lytham Golf Academy has advice for driving further and invites you to contact him for personalised tips.

One of the key ways to improve your driving distance is to increase your ball speed off the driver. With TaylorMade launching its new M5 and M6 drivers, and Callaway launching the Epic Flash drivers, all the hype this year is about increasing ball speed, particularly on off-centre strikes.

This is a great development by the manufacturers but many golfers mishit their driver because the shaft is too long and they cannot find the middle of the club face consistently.

By simply shortening the length of the shaft, most golfers improve their strike, increase their ball speed and therefore boost their distance, all without having to buy a new driver.

There will still be mishits, even with the shorter shaft, but they should be of better quality and still give you a better shot.

I’m not saying the new drivers won’t improve you even more but getting the correct length of shaft is so important.

To contact Alastair at Lytham Golf Academy call 01772 631520.

If you would like Alastair to take a look at your swing and offer advice, email a video to him at

[email protected]

Alastair would then happily write a tip based on what you need to work on and add a video to his YouTube channel.

Visit the YouTube channel AliTaylorGolf for club reviews and many more free tips to help your game.

Knott End staged a full card for The Pro’s Winter Fourball.

The winners of this monthly event were A. Sharrock and S. Stott with 49 points.

D. Briggs and D. Rushworth were second on 49 points, with R. Nelson and M. Ainsworth third and J. Kilgore and P. Shipton fourth, both pairs with 47.

Knott End Ladies held a nine-hole team of three Stableford won by Kath Wright, Pauline Fawcett and Barbara Crosland with 34 points.

Runners-up were Jean Molloy, Muriel Naden and Linda Gregory with 33 points.

Fairhaven staged round four of its Winter Trophy.

The winner (0-20) was Lynn Griffiths with 33 points.

Paula Leah was the 22-28 winner (28 points) and Yvonne Reilly won the 28-54 (30).

A group of golf students warmed up for the 2019 season in style at a training camp in Portugal.

The travelling party comprised 46 students from Myerscough College, near Garstang, and six members of staff.

The group enjoyed the excellent facilities at the Dom Pedro Vilamoura Resort to prepare for a busy year of competition at home and abroad.

They played rounds on top Algarve courses Laguna, Millennium and the esteemed Old Course, which have staged finals of The Gazette Matchplay in recent years.

Rick Daniels, Myerscough College and University Centre’s Golf Performance Director, said: “We’ve completed over 30 development camps in the last 15 years and again our players followed an intensive programme of coaching and playing.”