Alex del Rey hasn’t started the year in the best way. It wasn’t a good week at the Dubai Invitational. The man from Madrid isn’t one to sugarcoat things either. He finished in 46th place, far from where he aims to be in tournaments, although the good news is that his performance improved as the event progressed. He ended the weekend with a solid five-under-par, a result that would have placed him in the top 10. The problem was in the first two days.
Alex’s feelings weren’t entirely bad. “I played better than the result suggests, but, something unusual for me, I was very poor with the wedges and didn’t quite adapt to the grass around the green for recoveries. It was very challenging. I’d hit three identical shots, and each would react differently. It was crazy,” he explains.
The man from Madrid has closed the chapter of the Dubai Creek and has already opened that of the Emirates Golf Club, a course he likes, although he frowns at some of the fairways. “For my taste, there are too many doglegs that leave you with very narrow fairways. There are some like those on holes 12, 13, 16, or 18 where you have very little space. That said, it’s a course I like and a great tournament,” he notes.
His winter has been somewhat unusual. Since finishing the Alfred Dunhill Championship, he hasn’t played a round of golf until the first round of the Dubai Invitational last week. It’s been almost a month. The thing is, in Madrid, he hasn’t played a round, but he’s worked intensely on the practice range. He’s hit many balls and even had a remote lesson at the National Centre with his coach Dave Philips. Alex is working on some small swing changes to gain consistency.
Del Rey explains to Ten Golf as we search for his second ball hit from the tee on the 14th hole, a sharp dogleg to the left. He’s gone out to play nine holes, from 10 to 18, starting at four in the afternoon. We can’t find the ball. “What a sport,” he starts. The first was a bad swing and is perfect in the centre of the fairway 80 metres from the flag, and the second we lose… Oh well,” he comments with amused resignation.
The change he’s involved in is significantly shortening the backswing. At least that’s his feeling. “I used to drop the club in the movement, and now I’m doing it shorter than ever in my life. It’s about avoiding my big miss to the right. I feel much better,” he points out. The other change has to do with posture. Phillips has insisted he seeks a more athletic, upright stance in front of the ball. “Sometimes I look like an old man playing golf,” he says, mimicking the gesture of having slumped shoulders over the ball. In short, the goal is to be shorter than ever in the backswing to maintain the same distance (averaging 323.91 yards this year).
The reality is that he’s hit the driver very well in the nine practice holes he’s played. Centre of the fairway on 10, fairway on 12, fairway on 13, fairway on 14 (even if it wasn’t a good swing), and he finished slightly worse on the shots on 16 and 18. You know that 17 doesn’t count. It’s the short par 4 where you aim for the green in one, although it’s almost impossible to reach. Even so, he’s hit two good drives. By the way, on holes 10 and 13, two par 5s, he had a 6-iron and a 7-iron for his second shots. In both cases, he putted for eagle. Not bad at all. Perhaps with the irons, he was slightly more off, making more draw than necessary.
By the way, you’ll never leave a golf course without discovering one last gadget that could blow your mind. Alex is training and played the entire practice round with a putter that has two rubber stoppers incorporated on its face, making the contact surface much narrower. The aim is more precision and consistency when hitting the centre of the face, as if you miss slightly, you hit one of those stoppers, and the ball goes wherever it wants… Green things, my friend Sancho…
