Golf has always been a game of wildly fluctuating fortunes. Scott Borrowman knows all about that.
His ambitions of establishing himself as a touring professional a few years ago were suddenly shattered when he developed the yips. Every cloud has a silver lining, though.
A fine amateur as a youngster – he was the Scottish under-16 champion and a winner of the Scottish Youths’ title – Borrowman, who didn’t turn pro until the age of 28, was struck by the yips, a shattering golfing affliction which ended his hopes of gaining a foothold as a playing professional.
“It was at a European Tour (now DP World Tour) qualifying school stage a few years ago at The Roxburghe,” recalled the 37-year-old.
“I was playing pretty well through nine holes and then on the 10th, I hit five balls off the tee. It was the yips. That was it. Game over. I came back in about 50 shots. I couldn’t hit a ball. After that round, I sat in a lay-by in tears in complete shock. I didn’t know where to look. Was it technical, was it mental? I was so terrified playing golf.
“I knew it was coming in every tournament. It was like a jolt of lighting when I was hitting a shot. Nothing could stop it or control it. I could feel the anxiety building and then ‘bang’. My entire life had revolved around sport and golf and at the time I was thinking, ‘what do I do now?’.”
Thankfully, an opportunity arose at Linlithgow Golf Club under head pro Kenny Monaghan – who is now his boss at Stirling – and Borrowman found salvation within The PGA.
“Kenny had advertised a job and one of my friends sent me a text message to say, ‘have you had a look at this?’,” said Borrowman. “I thought I’d give it a go. And here we are. That gave me the opportunity to stay in the game. I still couldn’t compete due to the yips but as a PGA Pro you can do various things out with competition, and I felt I had to find my niche.
“I could still hit the ball a long way, so I started smashing some drivers and it kept going and going and I really got into speed and development. It’s now been seven or eight years that I’ve been doing this.”
While he delivers lessons in all aspects of the game, it is the power and speed aspects that really get Borrowman’s juices flowing.
“When I’m properly going at it, there will be lots of 370-to-400-yard drives,” said Borrowman of his Bryson DeChambeau-esque endeavours which generate a ball speed in excess of 200mph “On a golf course, I’d expect to be 330-yards plus.
“Lots of people want to do this. It’s instantly measurable as in, ‘am I faster now than when I walked in for a lesson?’. You can see it in the numbers of club head speed and ball speed. It really gets the adrenaline going. I do all sorts of coaching in all areas of the game but when I see a booking come in for a speed development class, I really get excited.
“In the group lessons, there’s a bit of friendly rivalry in the collective goal of getting faster and further. And everybody wants to hit it past their friends, don’t they?”
