How much improvement would one see spending time with your teaching methods?
Massive. I’ve got an academy at home in Sheffield where I employ three staff. I built it myself and its just off the M1 near Meadowhall. I’ve got a place in Dubai where there are three staff all the time. I’ve just been asked to go out to China to the HSBC tournament to look at something there, so why do I need to promote myself? I go on the odd Golf World on Sky and they all know me, and all the people within the game know me. I’m friendly with Butch Harmon, with Leadbetter, all the coaches, but I don’t promote myself like they do, because money is not the important thing to me. It’s the players playing well, and then the players winning. So you don’t need to promote yourself if you know your stuff is good and you know you can change a player. For instance Henrik Stenson four years ago was 600th in the world and he’s now 29th in the world because I’ve worked so hard with the guy. The best players work the hardest and there is no substitute for hard work.
Do you concentrate on any aspect of the game more than another?
Simplicity. There is a simple way to swing a golf club and there are a lot of difficult ways. You try to make it as simple as possible. And as you get older your coaching should become simpler. I’ve seen coaches do it, its a learning process. You try to impart too much knowledge on the pupil because you’re trying to impress them with how much you know, and they scratch their heads.
I hear people go “why did I slice it?”, and you sliced it because A, B, C, then “why did I hook it?”, well you hooked it because of D, E, F, “why did I hit it too high?”, because of H, I, J, “why did I shank it?”, you go S, O, B, whatever. So he’s going A, B, C, D, E, F, etc and its too much information. Instead of saying, “you know when I hit that good shot, what did I do?”. You did X, Y, Z. What’s X, Y, Z? and then you develop it from there and you come up with a constant, and the more constant you get the more consistence you get.
Its not how good your good shots are in this game, its how good your bad shots are. People go for lessons and they don’t realise it’s the bad shots that are getting better but their good shots are looking the same. The improvement is always at the bottom end and they don’t notice it. Its much easier to improve somebody’s bad shot than it is their good shots.
