Golf coach in it for the long haul
Coaching is in the blood for life-long golfing coach Kevin Smith — winner of the Professional Coach of the Year Award at the National Golf Awards — who has been mentoring and advising players ever since he left school some 40 years ago.
The award is presented to a professional coach who demonstrates professional excellence or innovation through their coaching activities, and under whose guidance prodigies are able to perform and achieve at the highest levels.
Smith has been playing golf since he was 14.
Several years later, when considering potential career paths, whilst still at high school, Smith’s father, a rugby coach, suggested the Wellington teenager might consider a golfing career as a professional. He tossed up the idea, but instead mooted that he wouldn’t mind being a golf coach.
Smith subsequently applied for a job in the pro shop at Heretaunga Golf Club, now the Royal Wellington Golf Club, and the rest is history, with Smith recently receiving his 40-year membership recognition certificate from the New Zealand PGA. The organisation’s trainee programme provided the framework for evolving a career in coaching.
Over the ensuing decades, the Class AAA NZPGA teaching professional, after moving back to Wellington, he created his own hybrid training programmes, at the Manor Park Golf Club and then for a short time Royal Wellington.
It was at one of those coaching clinics Smith was procured to privately coach a talented 12-year-old Daniel Hillier, who subsequently, under Smith’s guidance, went on to become the New Zealand’s youngest amateur champion as a 16-year-old, and once again at the age of 18.
Smith continued to influence Hillier’s evolution into a two-time Challenge Tour winner, which propelled Hillier to the DP World Tour, where he won the 2023 British Masters.
Smith remains as Hillier’s swing coach but divides his professional coaching time between the Ō taki and Paraparaumu Beach Golf Clubs, where he runs group and individual lessons for kids and beginners, all the way up to pennant-level players.
He defines his coaching style, as more of a ‘building coach’, aiming to equip players with more long-term strategies, and the goal of them being able to manage their own games, as best they can.
However, some golfers do come for quick fixes to help get them back on track with their games, from time to time.
Sharing his teaching tips, Smith wrote a golf training manual called The Complete Guide to Good Golf — Golf Steps from Beginners through to Advanced Players.