Celebrating 25 years of golfing tuition at Ombersley Golf Club
By Graham Glenister – Head PGA Professional & General Manager
Seems like only yesterday I celebrated my first Head Professional role. And with the appointment, launched my very own Ombersley Golf School. Much has changed since August 1991 including the name. Now The Glenister Golf Academy boasts three fully qualified Professionals and another one in training. The academy has a superb reputation in the locality for expert tuition and first class facilities.
I qualified as a PGA Professional in 1987 after the four year training program and was delighted to achieve a distinction for teaching. I strongly believe that one of the main reasons I achieved a 97% pass mark in my swing exam was because I never took a lesson before turning Pro. My dad gave me a few tips when I started and I spent hour after hour hitting balls to improve.
My golf course was 22 miles from home so summer holidays were spent practicing in a local park until the weekend came and Dad took me to the club. My practice bag was a Wilson holdall full to the brim with balls. I would hit over 1000 shots every day as well as many more “casual chips” to gather them round. I got better. But I certainly had my own “style”. These days, I don’t really like that style but it works…??
Having become good enough at the game to turn Pro, I then had to go about learning how to teach the game. This literally meant from the beginning. I read the teaching manual from cover to cover…many many times. I treated the manual much the same way as my practice. I knew it inside out and back to front. I also contacted the coaching kings of the day and asked them what made the best coach and what their “special ingredient” was. I asked many questions of many coaches but the two I always came back to were Alasdair Barr and John Jacobs. They both agreed that set-up should be perfect and that a players style should be a combination of understanding a perfect swing alongside perfecting their “own swing”. Jim Furyk is a perfect example. Consistently good for many years, you will not find another swing like that one. I’m not a gambling man but if you asked me to place an each way bet to make money on the next tournament, Jim’s my man.
Another significant development in my coaching career took place when I taught an NLP practitioner. Neuro Linguistic Programming is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California, United States in the 1970s. I began studying the subject in 1994 and continue to do so. NLP taught me to switch on to a person’s best learning mechanism faster. We all learn best in different ways. Some people like words, others like pictures. Some like to be shown how and some like to be moved and “feel” the change or difference. Ultimately, coaches use a combination of all of these learning structures but the very best coaches are the ones who recognise the signs quickly and communicate this to the pupil to create “their style”.
Good Practice + Good Knowledge + Good Communication = Best Coaching
Simple Is Brilliant
