Tips from Tim Clark help Jason Gilliver take his golf to next level
The 'young gun' has eliminated the 'big misses' and has a renewed focus for the game.
A few tips from Tim Clark helped Jason Gilliver (20) win the Maritzburg Open at Maritzburg Golf Club last Sunday.
It was a maiden win on the KwaZulu-Natal Golf Union ‘tour’ for the Selborne Park player who has recently returned from a three-month stay with Clark in Arizona in the United States.
“Tim is a good mate of my dad’s so we arranged for me to go over for a while to get the swing right,” he said.
At Golf Club, Gilliver shot 71 and 71 to win by two from Jason Broomhead (Durban Country Club).
“Honestly, I didn’t expect to win on that score, not after there were two scores of 69 posted in the morning,” he said.
And especially not after he double bogeyed the 18th in the first round.
“Hit it behind a tree, duffed it out and then eventually three-putted,” he said.
He felt he would need to go four or five under in the afternoon to win, so wasn’t overly upset when he finished his round with a bogey on 18 – it’s a tough finishing hole, he said – for a two under total for the day.
“Putting was difficult, it has to be said,” he conceded.
Gilliver arrived back home from the States with so much hair on his head he may have been mistaken for Samson of biblical legend. Or someone wearing a wig.
Even at Golf Club it looked odd under the cap. “You should have seen it before I had a haircut,” he laughed.
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Fortunately, it did not decrease his power. He’s a long hitter, and came fairly close to making the country districts team this year.
He just needed some fine-tuning, which is what Clark seems to have added.
“We worked on minimising the misses, taking one side of the course out of play. In my case, the left hand side,” he said.
He’s now hitting it straighter, with fewer ‘bad’ misses. “At one stage I was missing it two ways, now it’s more under control,” he said.
Speaking of Clark, he’s been off the US PGA with injuries.
Gilliver said Clark had been working hard to find a way to swing despite the issues.
“We had a social round at Scottsdale Silverado and he cruised around in 7-under par, after having hardly touched a club for 18 months. Unbelievable,” he said.
Golf fans in KwaZulu-Natal would love nothing more than to see the ‘Umkomaaster’ make a return.
Gilliver, meanwhile, will be concentrating on his own game, playing as many tournaments as possible, and hoping to bang down the door for a place in the provincial team next year.
And working on his hairstyle, no doubt.
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