Both Sides of Par: Golf Podcast for Every Handicap

Think custom club fitting is only for good golfers? Think again. This week Ross is joined by Aaron Ellis (@golf_specs) from SGGT (@sggt_uk) to bust some of golf's biggest equipment myths and explain why the right clubs can make a difference whether you're playing off scratch or 25. With Colin representing the higher handicappers and Ross at the other end of the spectrum, Aaron explains why the fit...

Colin and Ross are back together after a wee break, and the handicaps are behaving for once. Colin is down another stroke to 22 after a cracking front nine on the Jubilee Course at St Andrews, where he found two thirds of the fairways, outdrove a single figure golfer by 20 yards and holed more 15 footers than he has any right to. (A windless day, a borrowed spanner on the second tee and some Scott...

This week Colin swaps Ross for a guest he's known his entire life: his dad. Duncan Gray started out as a greenkeeper at Gatehouse of Fleet, spent years at Lahinch, ran the Ayrshire municipal courses, then moved into designing and consulting on courses before building his own, the Pines Golf Centre in Dumfries. He's also been playing for 65 years, which is roughly 60 more than Colin has been any us...

Instagram - @bothsidesofpar What happens when one of the world's most recognisable names in Formula One and automotive engineering decides to enter the golf industry? In this special episode of Both Sides of Par, Ross sits down with Neil Howie, CEO of McLaren Golf, to discover the story behind the brand's arrival in golf and its ambitions to challenge conventional thinking in golf club design. Aft...

Follow the podcast: @bothsidesofpar Can you really find a Vokey wedge for £1? Apparently you can. Colin walks into a charity shop, digs through a bucket of mostly forgettable golf clubs and somehow comes out with a Titleist Vokey SM6 52° wedge for the price of a chocolate bar. Ross explains bounce, grind and why Colin might have landed on an almost perfect setup completely by accident. There’s mor...

Ross opens Episode 30 by trying very hard not to talk about the 84 he shot at the weekend, his worst round in three years, before Colin gives him sixty seconds to explain himself. The consolation, as Colin points out, is that it's reassuring to know scratch golfers have those days too. From there it's straight into the gear, and this week that means golf bags. Ross has just picked up a Ping Hoofer...

Follow us on Instagram - @bothsidesofpar Former DP World Tour player Peter Whiteford joins Ross this week to talk about a very different way of getting better at golf: stop assuming you know what's costing you shots and actually go out on the course and find out. After nearly 20 years travelling and playing professionally, Peter's career was cut short by hip problems, eventually leading to a repla...

The nights are drawing in and Colin is feeling a bit wistful about the end of the golf season, while Ross, basking in 21 degrees down south, cheerfully reminds him that medal comps run all winter at Farnham. Consolation duly not provided, the lads get into gear, and this week it's Ross with a new toy: the Strike Wedge. Colin assumed it was an actual wedge (Ross did just buy three, after all), but...

Colin's got a new toy and he's not even using it for what it's meant for. This week he unboxes the Shot Scope Pro L2 rangefinder and cheerfully admits the main use so far has been checking whether the group ahead is out of range so he can smash a few extra practice drives. Ross, playing the sensible one for once, weighs in on lasers versus GPS and why chasing precision to the yard might matter les...

Normal service resumes after a few weeks of summer holidays, and the lads have somehow managed to golf Scotland from top to bottom between them. The main event this week is Royal Dornoch, which both Colin and Ross played within days of each other, narrowly missing an actual meet-up but successfully completing a 550-mile wedge handover via the pro shop. Ross marked his 50th birthday with an early m...

Colin's flying solo this week, and by solo we mean putting on a repeat while Ross plays Royal Dornoch and Colin nurses his jealousy after a consolation trip up the coast past Brora, Tain and Golspie. So it's back to one of the early episodes, recorded when there was five inches of snow on the ground, which is either quaint or cruel depending on your current heatwave situation. The episode itself i...

Ross and Colin are back with a proper mixed bag this week. Colin's been living his best golfing life at two very different Scottish gems, the windswept championship links of Western Gailes and the quirky Old Tom Morris charm of Cullen, though the Gailes part of Western Gailes lived up to its name and cost him somewhere north of thirteen balls. Ross, meanwhile, is preparing for an Open qualifier by...

Big news opens the show: Ross has made it back to scratch for the first time in roughly 16 years, and the lads pick apart exactly how he got there. It turns out most of the battle was in his head, with old handicap barriers (that stubborn 0.5, the dreaded jump from 6 to 5) doing more damage than his swing ever did. The fixes were refreshingly human: their weekly chats keeping him accountable, thre...

Ross is off the grid this week, so Colin holds the high handicap fort alone and brings in a guest who sits at the other end of the spectrum: Coleman Rollins, better known online as Coleman Golfs. Coleman is a near scratch software engineer who got so fed up with launch monitor prices that he did the only reasonable thing and built his own, an open source unit called OpenFlight. The two quickly dis...

Follow us at @bothsidesofpar and grab the newsletter here . Episode Summary Ross very nearly gets to scratch this week - painfully nearly. He talks through a round where one missed short putt on the 18th left him sitting at 0.5, along with the classic golfer’s curse of knowing you should stick to process while your brain quietly screams, “go on then, make history.” Colin, naturally, offers sympath...

This week, Ross takes us through the highlights of playing the iconic Wentworth West Course, diving into his five favorite holes and what makes the experience special. The boys also tackle a deep dive into modern golf trolleys, sharing tips and insights for anyone considering an upgrade. Then they discuss whether you should take advantage of the WHS rules around using whatever tee suits you in com...

This week Colin and Ross catch up on a productive stretch of golf, with both of them quietly sliding down the handicap charts. Colin is dropping into the low twenties and threatening more cuts, while Ross casually drops in a one under round that takes him to 0.7, the sort of update only a low handicapper can deliver with a straight face 😆 Before any scorecards come out, there's a proper gear nerd...

Colin's riding high this week after slashing his handicap from 28 down to 24, the result of a 19-over medal win at his home club. The secret? Putting the driver back in the bag, hitting five iron off every tee, and committing to the kind of smart, course-managed golf the lads have been preaching for months. Ross is on his own quiet roll too, knocking in four birdies across a casual nine-hole round...

Colin and Ross sit down with Scott Fawcett, the brain behind the DECADE Course Management System and the man who caddied for a then unknown Will Zalatoris when he won the Texas Amateur and the US Junior back in 2014. Scott has worked in some capacity with roughly a third of the PGA Tour, holds three quantitative degrees, and once played pro golf himself, which is how he discovered the unromantic b...

We'd love to hear your feedback - what can we improve about the show? What do you want to stay the same? Email us at: hello@bothpar.com This week on Both Sides of Par, Colin reports back from a lads' golf trip to Portugal, where he tackled three courses near Cascais including the stunning Oitavos Dunes, a links-style track with greens so fast they left everyone slightly traumatised. Despite scores...

Colin and Ross are back with a spring-in-the-air episode that finds both of them actually getting outside for a change (Scotland hitting double figures apparently counts as tropical). Colin, flying the flag for the high handicappers, reports back on the swing drills he's been grinding through at home, specifically the towel-under-the-armpits connection drill and the now-infamous chair-behind-the-b...

In this episode of Both Sides of Par , Colin and Ross bring in a special guest, Bruce, for a deep dive into golf from every angle of the handicap spectrum. What starts as a casual catch-up turns into a fascinating journey through golf-mad childhoods, living on top of legendary courses, and the bizarre paths that lead players from early obsession to scratch (and beyond). They swap stories about gro...

Colin and Ross are back with a practice-heavy episode that covers everything from AI assisted swing diagnosis to the ongoing plague of slow play in modern golf. Colin kicks things off by sharing his weekend project of rigging up a massive monitor in his shed so he can actually see his launch monitor data while hitting balls. He then walks through the results of feeding all his swing data into Clau...

As the weather finally turns and the golf season edges closer, Colin and Ross dive into the excitement (and frustrations) of getting back on the course after a long, wet winter. They chat about early-season conditions, upcoming competitions, and the reality of shaking off rust. Ross shares insights from a recent lesson and opens up about the challenge of managing emotions on the course - highlight...

In this episode of Both Sides of Par , Ross takes Colin behind the scenes of a visit to the European headquarters of Srixon. From walking into a building covered in a giant image of Shane Lowry to seeing signed tour bags from Hideki Matsuyama, the experience felt like a golfer’s version of Willy Wonka’s factory. Ross shares what actually happens inside a professional custom-fitting facility: how s...