Keeping Busy...is the key says Gary Boyd

Keeping busy in lockdown

Bunker ambassador Gary Boyd on sticking to the plan

The thing that I learnt from the first lockdown is to have a plan in place and to try and stay busy. I’m quite disciplined when I’ve got my head in the right frame of mind and I have an end goal and that makes things a lot easier – like most people I need something to work towards otherwise you are just hitting balls for no reason.

This time of year I’m normally doing fitness stuff and I can still do that at home. So I’ll do 30-45 minutes a day and I’ll do that at least three times a week along with a mobility schedule. Then I’ll hit balls for maybe an hour a day and do some putting for an hour, it depends what I’m working on and how cold it is! I’ve had a TrackMan for the past seven years, you always try and invest in yourself and that’s been a great investment particularly when you can’t get to the practice ground.

In the next week or so the Challenge Tour schedule will come out so I can then start to plan my year. From March onwards there will be five events on the MENA Tour and then there should be enough time for the 20-23 events on the Challenge Tour. I won’t get in the first three in South Africa but my season should get going around May time. It was nice to play in some one-day events in 2020 but it’s not quite the same as having a tournament for three or four days.

Understandably Callaway’s focus has been on the main tour so I will hopefully get fitted at their headquarters in Leatherhead in February for the new season. I’m quite simple when it comes to changing clubs, I’ve had the same shafts in my irons for the last seven years. I’ve changed my driver shaft but it’s always still in the same kind of area and, while my swing has altered a bit in the past 12 months, that might change a few things but, generally, I’ll stick to what I know works.

That’s not always been the case with my putter. I go and see Nick Soto once a month and he always asks, jokingly, whether I’ve got the same putter as I used to chop and change a lot. But, for the past 18 months (other than a few weeks when we did part company), the Toulon Las Vegas has been in the bag full time.

I do keep some old clubs in a golf room at home and I’ve still got a lot of my old Ping stuff from my best year on tour in 2010. They hold some nice memories and, sometimes, it might help to trigger something when you pick up an old putter. Otherwise I’ll read a bit, a lot of Rotella, or look online to have a bit of a refresher for things that have worked in the past. 

It’s such a difficult situation at the moment and there’s no doubt that we can socially distance when playing golf, and we’d all love for courses to be open, but there’s a reason behind the government’s thinking and we just have to get on with it.