Gary Smith

Location: Sutton Green Golf Club

Gary is a PGA Master Coach who has delivered over a hundred short game seminars to more than a thousand professionals and coaches across the UK and Europe. He was an England EGU Men’s Elite Squad Coach for 14 years and worked with many of today’s world stars, including Tommy Fleetwood, Chris Wood, Andrew Johnston and Justin Rose. 

Teaching philosophy: 

For the long game, I don’t coach methods or fads, I focus on the student’s needs based on their goals, physical limitations and opportunity to practice. I encourage my students to regularly ask questions if they are confused and for them to get involved in the process of change and improvement in partnership with me. Honesty and realism are vital when assessing a student’s potential, but often their games can be taken way beyond where they think it can go.

Students learn best when...

They are having fun and can see a clear path with their game improvement process. If the student doesn’t experience real progress fairly soon, then as a coach, I’m not doing my job. Ensuring simple, clear and fully understood coaching input is a must.

Most common problem:

Every golfer hates it when they hit great drives and decent approaches but then consistently duff their chips, fail to get out of bunkers and generally mess up around the green. It’s my passion, together with my groundbreaking Linear Approach to Short Game, to improve players' skills around the green. Generally, long game improvement can be limited by age, physicality or inflexibility, but anyone and everyone can learn to love their short game given the correct information.