David Patrick: Grassroots the key to female participation in golf

16/07/2024

PGA Professionals are used to multi-tasking here and spinning plates there and David Patrick has plenty to keep him busy at Bruntsfield Links. But there’s always room to shoehorn in a few more jobs, tasks and duties. Well, almost.

“Taking on the role of coach as Scottish Golf’s women’s national team will mean I’ll have to juggle a few more things,” he said. “But that’s part of the fun and the challenge.”

Patrick’s new position is not what you’d call a step into the unknown. The Edinburgh man worked with Scottish Golf, the amateur game’s governing body, between 2014 and 2020 as coach to the girls’ and women’s squads.
His expertise and experience, as well as his familiarity with the domestic scene and the workings of Scottish Golf, made him the ideal candidate.

With Patrick’s Fellow PGA Pro, Colin Fisher, also being appointed as the girls’ national coach, the Association is providing Scottish Golf with two knowledgeable, dedicated and valued experts in their field.

A Walker Cup player in 1999, Patrick joined the paid ranks in 2001 and travelled the world as a touring professional for seven years. The 49-year-old did make a breakthrough with a play-off victory in the European Challenge Tour’s Skandia PGA Open in 2005 but he couldn’t establish a toehold on the main European circuit and his personal and professional life began to move in another direction.

The PGA offered a fresh route for Patrick. After years of competition, coaching would slowly take over. “I still played for maybe seven years while coaching and doing my training,” added Patrick.

Bruntsfield Links, the fourth oldest club in the world dating back to 1761, finally admitted female members in 2018 as the winds of change continued to blow through golf.

Patrick has helped drive both junior and female participation at the Edinburgh club but, with Scotland’s rate of female membership still low, he is well aware of the work that needs to be done to bolster those numbers.

“Our percentage of female membership is pretty much dead last in Europe,” he said of a figure that sits around the 12 per cent mark. “But we have revitalised the juniors. It’s full and thriving and with that we of course offer coaching to girls.

“That’s the way clubs like this are going to grow, through juniors. There is opportunity there to grow participation, especially for females. If someone has a passion about anything, you want them to have as many opportunities as possible and that can start from a young age.”

Dealing with recreational golfers as well as elite performers, Patrick works across the spectrum, and he knows how important building the game at the grass roots is.

“We’ve all been in teams, whether it’s golf or football, etcetera, and you are still mates with those people you grew up with,” he said of those binding ties that golf and sport can create.

“On the female side, they can often be more isolated at golf clubs. They may be the only female in some cases and so you have to make sure, at club level or national level, that they feel included and feel that they have peers that are visible to them.

"All that translates to the national programme as the bigger the base is at the bottom, then the better is it at the top. The whole of golf benefits.

“Every golfer has different needs. My experiences of being around elite players and club golfers has been really valuable.

“Every lesson you walk into is very different. You will always be challenged, and I love that. It’s often easier to see the enjoyment from a beginner. Their face lights up when they get the ball in the air for the first time or get out of the bunker. Golfer's just want get better and enjoy golf that bit more and we as PGA Pros are there to help them in any way we can.”

Those same PGA pros are also on hand to help each other too. This all for one and one for all approach is, in Patrick’s eyes, a treasured attribute of the Association.

“The strength of The PGA is in the group,” he said. “When you are part of an organisation like this, people tend to be more open about sharing ideas and knowledge.

“The more ideas we share the stronger we all get. That makes you better and hopefully makes the people you teach better and in turn it makes the club better as a business.”