30 ME AND MY GOLF
A pair of PGA pros – Piers Ward (below, left) and Andy Proudman – who have created a global instruction business based on their Youtube teaching videos (202 million views and counting).
There are hundreds of golf coaches on Youtube. But Andy and Piers have taken their teaching to the next level, developing coaching plans, subscription-based lessons, a range of training aids and sponsorship deals with the likes of Taylormade and Audi. They also coach PGA Tour star Aaron Rai and have their own podcast, featuring more than 125 episodes with some big-name guests.
Piers:
We shot our first video in 2011. It was a Rory Mcilroy swing analysis. We posted on Youtube… and got excited when we realised it was being watched by people who weren’t our relatives. We can remember it getting to 10,000 views and thinking it was amazing. Today we have around 850,000 followers on Youtube, 440,000 on Instagram and 600,000 on Facebook.
Piers:
Our original concept was to create a series of training aids that would be different, our own design, and to place some video coaching alongside those. But while we were readying prototypes, we soon realised there was a massive thirst for online coaching. We had seen the influence the fitness industry was having – how many people they were helping around the world – and we thought maybe we could do a bit of that.
Andy:
For the first two years, we were pretty much answering questions through our videos. The biggest thing was how many people were coming to us with the wrong concepts; there was a limited understanding of a lot of simple things. We asked ourselves how we could give these people the right concepts, the right thoughts in their mind, without them having to come to us. We developed content that used graphics to paint the ideal picture, while keeping things simple. We wanted content that was only going to help people. And there was a lack of content that was doing that.
Piers:
In 2012 we made a decision to commit to doing online content for as long as it took. We shot two videos a week, committing to consistency. As we put more content out there more and more people discovered us, social media arrived. We began building a presence on Facebook in 2013, and as the others came in we wanted to ensure we had a presence on all of them. The social media platform content became mostly concepts while our website was allowing a more personalised experience, where we could go into another level with coaching plans.
Andy:
Whatever our content, we pride ourselves on keeping it simple. We are fortunate now to get to spend time with the best players in the world, and that’s exactly what they say to us. There is too much that is confusing. It can work for some, but not for the average golfer. The better the player, the simpler they seem to keep it. We’ve just come back from a session with double DP World Tour winner Aaron Rai, and we worked on alignment and ball position.
Piers:
Have we influenced people to look online for their coaching? Probably. Youtube is that search platform where you go for help and our presence has been heavy there for a decade, so yes, we definitely have had an influence on that. We still want people to go for a golf lesson in person, but in the meantime we want to put out the best content possible to help people approach shots with the correct concepts in their heads. If you need more personal detail then it’s more of a face-to-face approach. If you’re smart you can do it in a healthy way.
Andy:
It’s hard to say if we have influenced the way coaches coach. There are two camps; coaches who are against it and those who accept it. We have a lot of young coaches asking our advice on best practice on how to do this; younger coaches definitely seem more involved, almost to the point that it has to be a part of what they do.
I guess when we started, online tips were a new thing and there were only a handful of coaches that were doing it. There was a lot of scepticism. Now it’s almost strange if you’re not doing it. Everyone has a profile somewhere: it’s almost the way of the world now, with social media a part of everyone’s life. The response we’ve had to our content will surely have played a role in that.