For sure, Olympic golf will bring enormous growth potential. I think it will change everything and I hope we are able to harness the wave of energy to lift ourselves out of the current commercial doldrums. Sport relies on its elite performers to motivate and feed the market factions. The 2008 Olympic Games witnessed the incredible effects of the American swimmer Michael Phelps. No sooner had he stepped onto the podium than a tsunami of demand was unleashed across the United States, as millions of children scrambled to enroll at their local swimming academy.
Sports need its heroes to energise and generate the essential inertia that fuels participation - in golf this has been renamed the "Tiger" effect. The same logic translates into the coaching and education markets.
The Olympic spirit
Was golf on the mind of Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin when he was putting his master plan together for the modern Olympic Games? He was certainly an interesting chap, and one who was prepared to go that extra mile, and to swim against the tide. Having refused a military career planned for him by his family, as well as renouncing a promising political career; by the age of 24 he had already decided the aim of his life: he would help bring back the noble spirit of France by reforming its old-fashioned and unimaginative education system.
For Coubertin, sport would be the catalyst, and the vehicle to announce this new paradigm would be the modern Olympic Games.
Coubertin's definition of ‘Olympism' had four principles: to be a religion, i.e. to "adhere to an ideal of a higher life, to strive for perfection"; to represent an elite "whose origins are completely egalitarian" and to promote "chivalry" with its moral qualities; to create a truce, "a four-yearly festival of the springtime of mankind"; and to glorify beauty by the "involvement of the philosophic arts in the Games".
Golf already has these vital ingredients. It summons up a valuable maxim: ‘Lessons in Golf and Lessons in Life' but golf has to break out from its traditional packaging; it needs to reach out into culture and education and make really significant changes to people's lives and society.
The sports coach
I'm not a PGA Professional, but I certainly know quite a few, and it troubles me to hear the negative or despondent comments about the world's various PGA bodies. My perception is limited, but for sure I have only met and dealt with totally professional people in these organisations, who are equally frustrated with the general attitude within their membership, but even so, they are highly motivated to facilitate the changes required to equip the teaching pro with the vital attributes to transform them into a ‘sports coach'. Golf has to become seen and known as a sport, and for this to become a reality we need to look at the attributes required for the golf coaches of the future. What will the ‘golf sports coach' need to know in order to produce a golf Olympian?
For golf to mature into a sport, it has to stop contemplating its navel. In short, we've wasted far too much time getting hung up with the bats and balls! Gary Player was the first super hero who raised awareness to the roll athletics would play in developing the golfer of the future. He was also living proof and testament to this fact. With 99% of golf's participation not reaching the required standard, one can be excused for thinking this sport is therefore fundamentally broken. Maybe we are looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
We asked this question some four years ago when setting up the Zenjin Golf Sport Science programme at Sheffield Hallam University: what are the essential ingredients of an elite golf training regime? How can we get the golf coach to embrace all that sport science can offer this profession? I was surprised to see that the formula is actually pretty simple: take your talented athlete and measure and profile their performance in four key areas: Mental, Physical, Tactical and Technical, then tailor and synchronise a programme of training to optimise execution at a given date.
There are commercial benefits from elite golf coaching. There are numerous examples of an education or coaching ‘hero' making waves in the marketplace, one of whom is Kevin Merry at The Grove, near Watford. Here is someone who is definitely ‘walking the talk', and the results are that golfers are positively forming a queue to pay him to share his knowledge. Because of his initiative and determination this guy is a hero in my book.
