'It's just like a dream job, being asked to help people with their golf, what a privilege'

29/10/2024

Stuart Brewer has been a PGA Professional for 43 years. In that time he has worked under some of the very best coaches on the planet and absorbed knowledge from some of the greatest brains in the game. He recently helped Alice Hewson to victory in Switzerland on the Ladies European Tour and he now spends his time as a PGA Coach.

What does it mean to say that you're a specialist coach?

All I do is teach, that's all I do. It's my specialism and it's a choice, I have three places where I work from and I just give golf instruction. I never work in a shop and I literally just run my own diary, it's fantastic. I've always been fascinated by coaching and the game in general. It's just like a dream job, being asked to help people with their golf, what a privilege.

How can coaches become specialised in one area?

Anyone can decide to do it, whether that is being a manager or coach or retailer, whatever you want to do. But to back it up, you need to make sure that you're good at what you do. When I worked in Sweden, I worked for an English guy who was quite big on education. He showed me pathways and spoke about coaches, so I always had it in the back of my mind that even though I was a club pro, I was a coach.

I wrote to David Leadbetter in 1991, at the height of his fame, and he actually wrote back and he suggested that I went to see two of his associates, Denis Pugh and Dennis Sheehy. I would see them for years and they really helped me. I would go for a lesson and they would both sit with me for two or three hours and talk to me about swings and structure of swings and mechanics. I'd be looking at Nick Faldo, Nick Price and Ian Baker-Finch videos, who Leadbetter was working with, and they would really run it through me to the point where it just became so understandable, so easy. And that was basically it.

I then moved then to a guy called David Whelan, who was a European Tour winner and he was down at Chart Hills in Kent as well as Andrew Nicholson up at The Wynyard but it was always around the Leadbetter framework. I decided that I'd better get Leadbetter certified and so I did all the qualifications. Fast forward to today and I’ve done all the courses; The Golfing Machine, stack and tilt courses, all sorts. I don't just have one system; I have lots of different things to pull from and I can use that information to benefit most types of golfers.

The key piece is education. When the PGA brought out the Professional Development Programme years ago that was also a massive thing. I was always into learning but that just fuelled me and it gave me more and more and a wider spectrum of people to see. I'm also an ambassador with a company called Jacobs 3D, which is based in New York with a guy called Michael Jacobs, who was a golfing machine man, and his associate Brian Manzella. Padraig Harrington is currently working with Michael so I get quite a lot of information through that as well. I've always got my head in a book and I'm a member of the British Golf Collector's Society, I'm absolutely obsessed with it.

What does it mean to you to be a PGA Fellow Professional?

I think among my fellow pros, you have a certain status. I did it through APAL, obviously now we've got PGA Excel, which is a great way for employers and golfers to better recognise and understand your expertise.

Part of it was almost an accumulation of different successes throughout my career. I had coached the British PGA champion, Dan Greenwood, in 2013 and I had lots of county champions. So there were a lot of good results and I've worked on the Ladies European Tour since 2009. I've worked with a lot of different players such as Sophie Walker, Trish Johnson, Whitney Hillier and now Alice Hewson who won recently in Switzerland.

I'd like to get my Advanced Fellow status and I'd be extremely happy with that and I think that's very achievable now through PGA Excel. As pros we are having more influence in golf club management through the certifications that are offered and the new PGA Excel designations mean that we are more easily acknowledged.

In what other areas do you think you have contributed?

I've spent a lot of time on the Lincolnshire PGA committee and I've done a lot of stuff with that to try and make it better for every other golf club. I won the Lincolnshire Open in 1994 and I've won my share of PGA events so I think people know that I was a pretty decent player in my day. I think that carries a little bit of clout too and it's also something that you should be proud of as a golf Professional.

What advice would you give to a young Professional starting out?

I would say read, read, read. I wrote to the best coach in the world and he wrote back, now that says a lot an awful lot about our world, doesn't it? I think that's just incredible. Denis Pugh was working with all the Aussie players and Colin Montgomerie and I would be speaking to him pretty often.

I've known Pete Cowen for a while, I decided that I was going to book a lesson with him in 1994. The lesson was booked for 2pm and I got there about quarter to one. I went up to the pro shop and Pete was in there and he told me to sit myself down in the back. He made me a cup of tea and told me that I was going to watch a bit of Ben Hogan. So I sat and watched Hogan videos for that hour and 15 minutes before we even went out. Pete's an amazing character, so dedicated and prepared to help with information. He had a big friend called David Jagger, who was a successful tour player and I used to play club matches against David and he was amazing with me as well. So I've had a total charmed life with these experts around. I've had the pick of some of the best brains in the industry so, if I couldn't pass that information to a half-decent level, it's pretty poor, really. If you dare to reach out to people, it's amazing what opens up.

What's the difference between coaching elite and club golfers?

Hugh Marr has always said that you should never mess with people's leisure time and that has always stuck with me. An amateur's leisure time is precious so you make sure that you're totally committed. You give them all your attention, you make sure that you don't answer your phone during a lesson and you have no distractions whatsoever. You give everybody 100 per cent and that's the way I work. Everybody gets the same determination, dedication and attention every single time – obviously the skill levels are very different, but the same thing applies.