Steve Robinson named England Golf's Coach of the Year
08/12/2021
PGA Professional Steve Robinson has spoken of his pride at being crowned Coach of the Year at the England Golf Performance Awards 2021.
The Yorkshireman picked up the accolade after coaching the England women’s squad to their third European team title in six years with a thrilling victory in the tournament staged at Royal County Down Golf Club back in July.
England entered the event as underdogs. In the final, after coming through the stroke play qualifying and beating Scotland and the Czech Republic in the knockout stages, Robinson and his team overcame a Sweden side rated as one of the strongest ever to be assembled at elite amateur level.
Robinson – national women’s performance coach and based out of Sandburn Hall Golf Club in York – said: “I’m hugely honoured on behalf of our whole performance team.
“As coaches, we’ve gone through a really tough time in the last two years and the support we’ve had from England Golf has been first class.
“I’d like to thank Jenny Henderson who was captain at Royal County Down – we prepared better than any other team there.
“I knew the course and while we got there late, we walked the last four holes and knew they’d be crucial.
“We sat up one evening cutting up greens maps until 11pm and stapling them together by hand.
“It’s one of those marginal gains we had that other teams didn’t.
“We were aware going to Northern Ireland that we were likely to be the only English team playing in the Europeans (due to uncertainty over foreign travel) and we wanted to put on a good performance.
“We started to believe more and more we could beat anybody and to play Sweden in the final was the match we wanted.
“We believed that if we got something out of the morning foursomes we could win and we managed to do that.
“Every woman had the belief they could win. Most of all I’d like to thank the team – they battled.”
Robinson was not the only award recipient at the online ceremony. There were four other awards voted on by the England Golf performance department led by Nigel Edwards, performance director.
Rob Kedzlie from the Midlands region was named Volunteer of the Year and Durham’s Chris Pascall was honoured for her contribution to coaching excellence.
Thames Valley was named Girls’ Region of the Year while the boys’ regional title went to the West Midlands.
