Do you use any of these teaching gimmicks like Dave Pelz?

On occasion. Some of them are good, some of them are useless. I use some of them.

Do you find them more useful primarily for short game of long game?

Short game. But really if people understand the mechanics of how pitching works, bunker shots work, a putting stroke works, it’s not that difficult. It’s how you pressurise the ball, how you hit the sweet spot on the ball and then its repeating, repeating, repeating. You can make yourself good putter. If I knew then what I knew now I would have made myself
a good putter.

You see the pros out of the bunkers and they are just incredibly accurate.

They’ve got fantastic technique and they are perfectly raked, that’s why. People say “I’ve got a bad lie in the bunker,” but there are no bad lies in bunkers because you don’t hit the ball. The sand moves the ball, you’ve got to remember that. The average amateur says “oh that’s a bad lie,” but it isn’t if you’ve got good technique. You’ve got less control with a bad lie but you take that into consideration.

Teaching is a great responsibility. How much pressure do you face?

Well there is pressure because it’s them earning their livelihood. Luckily they’ve all done better than they did before I got them.

Does the blame come straight back to you if something goes wrong?

Oh yes. You’ve got to accept that. You’ve got to have the thickest skin in the world to be a coach. There are people who wouldn’t survive out here. These players would have their coaches in tears. You’ve got to be massively thick skinned and you’ve not got to take it personally. If they’re having a go at you, it’s because they want to get better. And if they start having a go at you, and you start panicking, then you put the wrong information in them. And so it’s the old saying: a great team is built in adversity, not in success. It’s when the adversity sets in that you have to work really hard.

You can’t say:
“Well, it’s you swinging the club...”?

You’d like to sometimes! But I don’t think the players should blame themselves really. If they’re not working hard enough then they should look in the mirror, but if they are working hard enough, and it’s not quite getting there, they’ve got to say it’s not quite working here, something’s not developing.

Are there times when you keep your thoughts to yourself and let them get on with it?

Yes, if the timing is wrong you would never do it. The best thing is to say nothing sometimes and then work it out later. The best work we do as a coach and a player is away from tournaments. At tournaments you’re there almost as a safety valve. I’m there if they need me. The work you do at tournaments is not as productive as the work you would do at your own range. In Dubai every winter we spend two or three weeks with the players and that gets them ready for the season. They work 10 hours a day in Dubai, and they do work hard. And that’s what I demand of them. I’ve got to be as demanding of them as they are of me. How are we going to get this right unless they do the work?

How hard does an amateur need to work to improve their game?

Everybody can improve their golf on 15 minutes a day. The body is the engine room and the arms and the club are the steering wheel. If the engine is working well it is easier to steer. It is a combination of the body, arms and club and if you get it right you play well.

It takes approximately one and a half seconds to hit a full golf shot from start to finish. If you play a round of golf in the morning you only hit about 40 full shots. So in a round of 18 holes you have only done 1 minutes work out on the course on what you’re trying to improve. How many good shots did you hit? Most people say five or six. So you’ve done 10 seconds good work and 50 seconds poor work and its taken you 5 hours to do it! Then in the afternoon you’re on the range for five hours and could have hit about 400 balls. But 400 times one and a half seconds is only 10 minutes work. Again how many good shots did you hit? About half? So you’ve had a full day and you’re worse now than when you started. In you’re morning round you’ve had 10 seconds good and 50 seconds bad, and in the afternoon you’ve had 5 minutes good and 5 minutes bad and you’re not improving. So what are you going to do about it?

The golf swing is an aerobic exercise. When people go to aerobic classes for the first time they all have two left feet and they don’t know what to do. But at 30 minutes a day, after a month they can do it standing on their head. If you keep doing it - it gets better. Rhythm and timing improve through repetition and exercise. Everything you do in golf is controlled in your brain. So if you put the correct information in, it gives the correct information out. Body awareness is so important in golf. On 15 minutes a day of the correct exercises you would improve your golf massively.