Life Lessons

The world renowned instructor on the Faldo years, the magic of Seve, illegal drivers for amateurs, why a World Tour is overdue, the curse of a dodgy grip and the opening of his latest academy at JA The Resort Golf Course.

- Kent Gray

My grandfather was an osteopath and he was blind. He had a really good feel for what he did and I don’t know whether some of that has been handed down to me but my instincts are really good. Even back in the day before biomechanics was fashionable, I had an instinct about how the body should work so I was lucky in that respect. I do things that are very much off the cuff, it’s not strict technique from a purist standpoint. It’s instinct with me.

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I’ve learned an awful lot about how the body works and how the mind works but in a sense, it hasn’t changed a tremendous amount [his coaching philosophy]. I wrote a book called ‘The Golf Swing’ in 1989 and if I look at that book, 95 percent if it is what we do today. The wrapping may be a little different, and I can get the message across quicker.

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When I started working with Faldo, he said ‘how long do you think this is going to take’ and I said, ‘well, you want to put your trust in me and you really want to do what you’re going to do, it’s going to take a couple of years’ and we probably weren’t too far off that, it was probably a month off two years. You couldn’t do that today. Today there’s too much riding on it, whether it be top 50, sponsors or whatever.

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Nick was my greatest student because of the fact, he and I went at it together, he had a goal, I had a goal, we were driven and the energy levels were such that we knew that he was going to get it somehow, in same shape or form. We had no doubt and he stuck at it through hell and high water.

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It was very special.