THERE are many ways to swing a golf club. Some of you may possess the smooth, nonchalant elegance of a rotation that flows to the tune of the Blue Danube.
The rest of you, meanwhile, possibly display the chaotic, flustered timing of a hurried toilet stop at a dreary motorway service station.
In the on-going quest for golfing improvement, there are all manner of contraptions, mechanisms, devices and appliances that a player can utilise amid the teeth-grinding futility of it all.
Then again, who needs fancy gizmos and gadgets? “If profanity had an influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is,” reasoned the great amateur of yore, Horace Hutchinson.
Perhaps there’s a gap in the market for the ‘Profanity-Pro-Performance-ometer’? This particular marketplace, with all sorts of alluring accoutrements promising golfing fulfilment, is a cut-throat scene but well-kent Scottish PGA grandee Fraser Mann is hoping his new innovation can steal a march in a competitive environment.
After 15 years of careful nurturing, protection and development, Mann is now selling a piece of apparatus called Golf’s Essential Move (GEM), a simple, weighted teaching aid which fits on to a club and makes the golfer move their body along with said club in the correct way.
Aided by his business partners, the former Celtic and Hearts footballer-turned entrepreneur John Colquhoun and two-time European Tour champion DJ Russell, Mann’s inventive endeavours are beginning to bear fruit.
“It came to me by accident when I was fishing and that’s when I had the Eureka moment,” reflected the former Scottish PGA and Northern Open champion. “I got a tip from the ghillie who was helping me with my casting. When my golf went off, it was always the wrong thing of closing the face of the club on the back swing.
“The fishing tip was, basically, a reminder not to close the face. I took that idea back to my workshop and came up with an attachment that was visual but also had weight in it that gave me feel.
“I had loads of scribblings and notes. I’ve always been keen on technical stuff. If I hadn’t been a golf pro, I would’ve been an architect or a draughtsman.
“Over the next 15 years, I kept the swing aid a close secret. In November 2020 I demonstrated it to John Colquhoun, a six-handicapper and lifelong slicer. In the space of a few swings with the GEM attached, John could feel the club release in a different way and when he then hit a ball, he was amazed at being able to hit an unfamiliar right to left draw.
“He immediately became my business partner. We joke that it was like the old shaving advert where Victor Kiam said he had such a good shave with a particular razor, he bought the entire company.”
Manufactured at an engineering firm in Macmerry in East Lothian, the GEM, which has now been brought to market and is retailing at £99, has earned the kind of glowing testimonials that Thomas Edison used to be showered with. “Ian Woosnam is a good fried of mine but he wouldn’t just say it was good just for the hell of it,” added Mann, who has been a member of the PGA for over 40 years. “It genuinely works.”
Former footballer, record-setting sprinter and renowned motivational and after-dinner speaker, George McNeill, will vouch for that.
“In the last year, George’s handicap has come down from 18.6 to 11.2 which is incredible,” added Mann. “I’ve showed the device to more guys in the last month than I have in the last 15 years and the feedback has been incredible. I’ve been sitting on this for so long and I thought someone would have invented something like it by now.
“The hardest bit, funnily enough, has been to explain to people how it works because it is so simple. It basically gives you visualisation of the correct positioning of the club in the backswing and the through swing and the weight gives it feel.”
It seems Mann has had, well, a GEM of an idea. “There was a guy on the range next to me using it and I could hear him talking about how it had helped his golf,” added Mann. “He had no idea I invented it. There was quiet satisfaction.”
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