Player Blog: Ross Fisher

Ross Fisher writes this week's Player Blog ahead of the Omega European Masters, and discusses his love of fast cars, playing his son on FIFA, and the equipment changes that have helped him enjoy such a fine season so far...

I’ve had my best season or spell since 2009, when I finished fourth in the Race to Dubai rankings. I played very well in the WGC events this year (Two top fives in the WGCs) – I kind of like them to be honest, but it’s difficult to put my foot on where my resurgence has come from. One big factor was when Nike dropped out of the equipment market, which gave me the freedom to try whatever I wanted to try towards the end of last year.

Using the Pro V1x ball has helped me a lot too –I went back to it after using it throughout my amateur career, and it’s made a massive difference. Putting the Titleist Vokey wedges back in my bag has helped as well. Late last year I’d stuck with the Nike irons because I really like the irons, but over the winter period I did a lot of testing to make sure I had the right equipment, testing all the TaylorMade and Titleist stuff. It was a last minute thing when I was at The Wisley Golf Club that one of the players there, Josh White, asked me if I wanted to try out some Mizuno irons. I immediately liked them and was hitting them great in the swing studio so asked my management team to contact someone at Mizuno to see if they could send me some irons to try.

I haven’t practiced at Wentworth since 2009 –I’m now a member of Wisley so I practice down there. My coach Dennis Pugh is there and the facilities are fantastic – it’s also 30 minutes away from I live. I’m also a member at somewhere two minutes from my home at a place called Cuddington Golf Club, so if I just want to go out and play golf then I go there.

I love cars, but I haven’t bought a car for a long time now –I still use the same one which I bought back in 2009, a Nissan GTR R35 – I've had it for eight years now. Although there’s still a lot of tournaments left this season, and I feel I still have a win in me, so if I do that then I might add to my collection. I've always been into my cars and where I live in Cheam is very close to a place called Romans International, and they get some top end cars in there, so I’m always doing a bit of window shopping or browsing for cars on the internet. I’m a bit of a car geek, so I’m always thinking if I win a big tournament, or if I do really well then I might treat myself. But there’s other things on the mind now that we have two kids to spend money on and look after. I’m also fortunate enough to lease a car from my sponsors, BMW – we’ve had an X6, an X5, but now we’re onto the X4 and that acts as the family car – which is great.

I like football and I follow Brighton -which comes from quite a funny story actually. One of my daughter’s friends, who she used to go to school with, her dad is David Stockdale, who was then their goalkeeper. So he was at Fulham before, so I used to watch out for him at Fulham, and then when he left there to sign for Brighton I went to watch quite a lot of matches through David. I started going a few seasons ago, and then watched a lot of their last season when Brighton got promotion to the Premier League. I’ve never had a season ticket though and I wouldn’t say I’m a hardcore fan, but I’m always checking their scores on Twitter and trying to follow them on Sky Sports.

Unfortunately Dave has now left Brighton to sign for Birmingham, so I got a lot of stick from my mates saying ‘well are you going to support Birmingham now?’ – but I still follow Brighton and keep an eye on my mate at Birmingham as well. Although it’s a shame because him and his family have had to move up to the Midlands.

My son Harry's very competitive and we brought him FIFA 17 last year –he likes all sports including rugby and golf, but he really likes his football, although he’s not too sure who he supports yet. He likes Chelsea but then he likes Ronaldo at Real Mardid, Messi at Barcelona and Stockdale at Birmingham… Whenever I’m at home I play on the PlayStation with him and sometimes my daughter gets involved too.

It’s hard leaving my kids at home when I go play at events –on Monday when I said good night to them before getting an early flight the next morning, my daughter told me she didn’t want me to go, but now they’re back at school it’s nicer for them as they have something to look forward to, and on the Sunday I get to see them again if I’ve done well and made the cut. I then spend the next day with them, take them to school and pick them up, so it’s quite nice. They sometimes travel with me as well – they came out to the Masters with me earlier this year which was really fantastic for them. It was such a shame they didn’t get to experience the Par 3 because they were really excited about that, and I was gutted too. But they’ll be coming to Dubai this year with my mother and father-in-law, because it will be my mother-in-law’s birthday and mine and my wife’s 10th year anniversary that same week, so it will be really nice to celebrate those occasions in Dubai.

The Rolex Series has been a great edition to the European Tour –I think it needed a bit of a shake-up. Now with the eight events of the Rolex Series featuring both big prize money and big world ranking points, it makes you want to make sure you play in those. Unfortunately scheduling is still quite difficult so I played the HNA Open de France, but missed the Irish Open, as I didn’t want to do a run of four weeks, but I’ll definitely try and play as many of the Rolex Series events as I can. The European Tour is where I started and I see myself playing there for many, many years. I think what Keith Pelley and his team have done has been great for the Tour and you can see that with the likes of Jon Rahm and Patrick Reed coming over to play events – and I think we’ll see more of that over the coming years. It just shows how much stronger the European Tour is, and long may that continue!

Generally when at events I tend to do my own thingbut it all depends on tee off times and it depends on who you see. It’s a bit weird on the European Tour because you can be in the same side of the draw as someone, and then at the end of the round you ask them if they fancy dinner, then the next week you might not see them at all because they’ll be on the completely opposite side of the draw – so it all depends on the draw.

You can follow Ross on Twitter -@RossFisher