In the second of our monthly series Forest Park golf professional Mark Winterburn teaches reporter STEVE CARROLL a lesson.

Mark's Top Tip Number 2: The address position

WITH your feet shoulder width apart, stand upright holding the club at about belt-buckle height. The shaft should be parallel with the ground.

Keeping your legs straight, bend forward from the hips - trying to maintain a straight spine position - until the golf club touches the ground.

Flex your knees to remove the tension in the muscles in the back of the legs. Your weight should be placed more on the balls of your feet. You are now in the correct position to start your golf swing.

:: AFTER five consecutive rounds in the 80s, golf, I assumed, was an easy game.

But if life's a bitch, golf is its mother-in-law. In the last few weeks I have suffered a reverse in form so bad, if my game were a business it would have gone bust.

So Mark Winterburn's pledge to get my handicap down from 23 to 15 in just eight months had taken its first serious knock.

In my last round, I couldn't chip - I was thinning wedge shots so badly they were frightening wildlife. I couldn't hit an iron on target and, most importantly, putts of seven feet or less were giving the hole a very wide berth.

If Mark was concerned, he did little to show it, chuckling audibly as he led me to my golfing nemesis - the driving range.

I hate the range like people hate spiders. If people complain that golf is pointless - walking around hitting a little white plastic thing is how my girlfriend describes it - then the driving range is the cherry on top.

Shot after shot in the same repetitive, mind-numbing, fashion is enough to convince me that it's time to give up.

Mark doesn't like the way I cut across the ball, giving all my iron shots a slight left-to-right fade. I was actually quite proud of this shot.

"Monty has a fade", I tell Mark. "Monty's never won a major", is his reply. Game, set and match.

He says my hands don't turn enough through impact, so I slide across the ball, giving it this "ugly, weak cut".

"You want to hit it with a slight draw, it'll go a lot further", he says. After an hour of practising, the rabbits are still running for cover.

But on the course, I hit nearly a dozen greens in regulation - all iron shots arrowing to the target with a slight draw.

Updated: 10:25 Saturday, May 22, 2004