Our best coach is in dire need of help
THIS past weekend was a typical one for Europe’s best golf coach Pete Cowen and his Rotherham-based academy. On Friday, a party of 20 disabled kids visited, including a gifted autistic player who has a decent chance of representing Team GB in the next Paralympics.
On Saturday, more than 100 kids took their first steps towards taking up the game, hitting balls on the range. And then, on Sunday, a gang of thugs broke in through the roof and basically, in Cowen’s words, ‘trashed the place’.
It was the sixth such burglary in six months. And it’s left Cowen wondering what on earth is the point of carrying on.
For some time Cowen has been badgering his local council to do something about a derelict car park at the bottom of the academy that would help secure the premises but, as the whole country has learned recently to its horror, unfit for purpose happens to be this council’s specialist subject.
Still, they’re not alone. Cowen can’t get help from anybody.
Imagine in tennis if they had someone with his track record? Imagine an academy that produced players as good as Danny Willett, who currently leads the Race to Dubai, and Matt Fitzpatrick, the only Englishman in the last 100 years to win the US Amateur Championship?
Picture a British tennis coach so good he pulled off the equivalent of tutoring the top three the last time The Open was staged at St Andrews. This is a man whose teaching skills are so respected 11 of the 12 players who contributed to Europe’s Ryder Cup victory at Gleneagles last year were coached or asked for his help at some point. The untold largesse the Lawn Tennis Association would lavish in his direction.
In golf? ‘I’ve been in touch with the various bodies but when you ask for help it falls on deaf ears, unfortunately,’ says Cowen. ‘I’m not looking for any massive handouts. I don’t think you produce great sportsmen and women that way. But we do need a helping hand.
‘My fear is golf is dying at grassroots level. If places like mine are forced to close, what hope is there?’
Cowen wrote to the minister for sport, Helen Grant, and local government minister, Eric Pickles, without reply. But he was cheered slightly by a response from the Prime Minister’s office.
‘The letter said David Cameron shares my concern, which is a start, perhaps,’ said the Yorkshireman.
If truth be told, everyone should share his concern. The Pete Cowen Golf Academy might just be the most successful sports academy in Britain. It is located in a part of the country that desperately needs some help. And it might close?
Is there not somebody of influence in golf or politics who can’t see the blindingly obvious here, and why this simply must not be allowed to happen?