Donal Scott’s passion for coaching is infectious, whether you are a club golfer, an elite amateur or professional, he gets a kick out of seeing people improve and succeed at all levels.
PGA Professional Scott is a high-performance coach based in Dublin and after more than a decade of experience in the game, he has become one of Ireland’s most renowned coaches.
Scott does some incredible work with Golf Ireland and has overseen several of their High-Performance panels, including running the rule over Lauren Walsh, Aideen Walsh and Kate Lanigan to name but a few.
“Over the winter we have three players at home on the High Performance Panel, Kate (Lanigan), Aideen (Walsh) and Rebekah (Gardner) and a good chunk of our panel are abroad in the United States.
“For the homebased players it’s about ensuring they have a good structure around them to help them develop and to try and provide an environment that enables them to get the most out of themselves over the winter.
“We do a training camp in the US over the Thanksgiving period which sets the platform for their offseason then it’s about staying in touch and giving them support from home and helping them as individuals to get the best out of their potential.
“At the elite end it’s about getting the best out of their skills available. From the younger side we want to develop skills and talent.”
Scott’s coaching style is to nurture the player and build the foundation for improvement around their strengths and what works for them. Rather than come in with a ‘fix it’ mentality and try to impose his philosophy on his players, he tries to get them playing golf that reflects their personality.
He continued: “Everybody is so different. At elite amateur and professional level the big thing I've found is that you have to meet everybody where they are and you have to get to know them and their styles of play, philosophies and how they have progressed over the years.
“The biggest thing is keeping it focused on themselves their skills and what they do well and believing in those skills. There’s no one way to do it, they all have things they do really well and maximising them.
“I want to try develop their strengths to set them apart from the field. One of the challenges in the culture of golf coaching is a need to fix it mentality. I try and promote people’s strengths and develop their own style of play which ties in with their identity and focus on that. If you try focus on weaknesses you’ll only be as good as the average players but if you focus on your strengths you can go through the levels and be one of the best amateurs in Ireland and go further.”
