Since you’re holding this book, the odds are good that you’re a golf coach, or you know someone who is. Now, let’s get one thing straight: The typical golf coach is not like a football coach or a voice coach or a debate coach. The truth is, the typical golf coach doesn’t exist. Golf coaches come in a staggering variety.
You may be a knowledgeable, accomplished player of the game. But frankly, I doubt it. Please, don’t take that personally. I was just playing the percentages. The fact is, among the 36,000 or so golf coaches across America, precious few know much about the game. That doesn’t mean they’re not suited to be coaches. The truth is, it’s not important that you be able to shoot par, or quote the rules of golf verbatim, or name the last 10 US Open champions. What’s important is a more elusive quality—and the fact that you’ve acquired this book means you already have that quality—commitment.
Sadly, commitment was not the distinguishing characteristic of my own high school golf coach, Mr. Cooney, a chain-smoking industrial arts teacher who wore a wrinkled Lieutenant Columbo raincoat 365 days a year, had the personality of an embedded ball, and didn’t know a 5-iron from a waffle iron. He was assigned to me and my teammates, however, because he possessed the one indispensable asset of any golf coach—a station wagon.
Cooney ferried the six of us—two in the front seat, three in the back, and the sixth guy in the way-back with the clubs—to and from our nine-hole matches, where he sat in the club parking lot and smoked for three hours. Sometimes on the way home he even remembered to ask us who won. He was without question the lowest form of life in the golf phylum.
The highest form of life is the author of this book, Bill Madonna. I came to know Bill a decade or so ago when GOLF Magazine named him as one of the top 100 teachers in America. At the time, he was the teaching professional at the Baltimore Country Club, giving lessons 12 hours a day.
But Bill’s commitment to teaching the game went well beyond his well-heeled members. A few years earlier, the National Golf Foundation had asked him to conduct a seminar for 100 golf coaches, mostly high school teachers, in Pensacola, Florida. He had no experience with golf coaches and was stunned when the majority arrived wearing tennis shorts, sandals, tank tops, and an array of other items too ludicrous to mention. Many of these men and women had never set foot on a tee, a green, or anywhere in between.
“They had the demeanor of educators—they were one of the most dedicated, eager, willing, and interested groups I’d ever been in front of.” he says, “but very few of them had any awareness of golf.”
Not long thereafter, Madonna founded NAGCE, the National Association of Golf Coaches and Educators, with the goal of giving the nation’s golf coaches the same information, support, and structure that the coaches of other sports have had for decades. Today, his organization numbers nearly 20,000 members who mentor over 300,000 junior boys and girls. NAGCE has the support of two of the game’s greatest names, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, as well as the USGA and several other golf industry leaders.
Coaching Golf Successfully is the official training manual for NAGCE. For the first time, it brings together between two covers everything a golf coach needs to mold a fine team of golfers as well as a team of fine individuals. It’s a shame that my golf coach—and the thousands like him—never had this book. But on behalf of all the kids out there now, I’m awfully glad it’s here.
George Peper
Editor-in-Chief
GOLF Magazine