Rock readying himself for future coaching role

Robert Rock tells Steven Carpenter how his passion for coaching is set to play a big part in his life when he brings down the curtain on his time on the European Tour.

Hitting the age of 40 can be something of a concern for many adults. It can ignite a mid-life crisis for some and leave others pondering what the future holds. One man seeing it as just a number and making plans is PGA Professional Robert Rock.

The two-time European Tour winner is still trying to mix it with the best at a host of events around the world. But the 40-year-old knows his time as a competitive player is nearing its end and is already making plans.

“I’m trying to keep an eye on what I’m going to do when I’ve finished playing and hopefully coaching will be some of it,” said Rock, who was an affiliate member of the European Tour back in 2003 and has been a member ever since.

“Realistically these days it’s hard to compete when you’re beyond 40. You certainly don’t stay on the European Tour until you’re 50 unless you are one of the legends of the game.

“It’s easier to start it now rather than when I stop playing and then thinking, ‘right, what am I going to do now?”

Rock took up golf as an 11-year-old and his passion for the sport came from watching his idols Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros on TV. In addition, reading about the likes of Ben Crenshaw and his coach Harvey Penick, not only shaped him as a player but also made him want to become a coach.

“You learn about why they were so good; what bits did they do and then you try to pursue your own career and you’re trying to better your own swing.

“This was way before access to videos, so you were forever looking in books at pictures and at what others players do, what do I have in common? You try to find some middle ground somewhere.”

After becoming a PGA Professional at his local club, the Staffordshire-based golfer, known to his club mates as ‘Rocky’, entered local pro-ams which gave him the confidence needed to take his game to the next level.

But it was his grounding and coaching as a PGA Assistant under the wings of Richard O’Hanlon that helped shape his career.

“You’ve got to have a boss that plays because he encourages the assistants to play.

“Richard was very tough with me when it came to my golf because he had standards on how he played and performed. He wanted his assistants to do well and not going out and shooting 80s. I understood that.

“When I look back, he taught me how to play and that was a really good start.

“You can easily be working for a pro who doesn’t play, has no interest in playing and doesn’t want you to play either.  Then your golf career is over, so I was lucky I found a job that offered me that.”

Rock joined the European Tour as an affiliate member in 2003 and has remained a member ever since. However, he had to pay his dues the hard way.

“I was playing in the region doing pro-ams and stuff, really just following what the better pros in the region were doing.

“I reasoned if I learned how to shoot good scores in pro-ams then I’d be able to make £500 here and £1,000 there. I started to do that to see if actually playing golf could be a viable business, but I had to get at least as good as these other pros first.

“I made it a challenge to finish in the top four in the region at the time as that gave you invitations to play in the Benson & Hedges event at The Belfry.

“The year I tried to do that I finished second so I played at The Belfry. The following year I came second or third in the region and played at the Forest of Arden.

“That gave me a taste of what the Tour standard of golf is like. I missed both cuts but I missed one only by double bogeying my last hole. So I thought ‘I’m not far off here, maybe next year I can make the cut and bring home a nice cheque’.

“The following year I won the region’s Order of Merit and I got into those events again and there was one at Wentworth. too.

“The intention was then to play in those, hopefully have my money count for the European Tour order of merit, because you had to pay the members’ affiliation fee, and I won enough to keep my card.

“I wasn’t expecting that to happen and I’d gone from playing one-day events to travelling all over the world to playing four-day events – I didn’t have a clue what I was doing!”

Rock’s breakthrough season came in 2009 when he managed three second-place finishes and was ranked inside the top 30 in the Race to Dubai.

Two years later Rock finally won his maiden European Tour title at the BMW Italian Open in Turin; the second followed in 2012 when he became only the ninth player to chase down Tiger Woods in the final round of a tournament and win Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship.

“For ten years I tried to work out how to play golf and how to beat the best players in Europe and I was getting a bit disheartened before my first Tour win.

“I began thinking that I wasn’t good enough to win tournaments and maybe I had to start accepting that, make as much as I can out of it and just be happy at that.

“I managed to get a little bit better over the following years and I had a good run of probably two or three tournaments and got my card early on which meant that I was able to play without a bit of pressure after that and that helped loads.”

Having made his mark as a player, Rock set about furthering his affinity for coaching and the Robert Rock Academy was set up at a driving range on the fringe of Lichfield in his home county.

“I think the interest in coaching came from looking at a lot of different swings just for my own benefit, then being able to test what I thought I knew on friends and then on people having lessons.

“Having done a lot of coaching during The PGA training I then left it for a good while as I was playing on the Tour.

“I was still working on my own game myself because I never really had a coach. Some of the other players realised that and thought I’d be a decent person to ask during weeks when there weren’t many other coaches about.

“The first step at the golf academy was to increase the numbers on our junior programme because it used to be really busy but had tailed off.

“We reformatted all of that and were quite successful. Then I thought I might as well start doing a bit of coaching here and there, as and when people ask and it’s gone alright.”

One his Rock’s proudest achievements was helping 2008 Ryder Cup player Oliver Wilson to success in the Dunhill Links event in 2014.

“I probably got as much out of that as one of my wins.

“When you’re coaching you’re really only a minor influence on somebody’s results. You’re a little part of it as you try and steer someone in the right direction, but they’re doing all of the shots, they’re making all of the decisions.

“It’s nice when people say they can see an improvement and you can tell that they’re actually genuinely happy about it.”

A second Robert Rock Academy opened at Silvermere Golf & Leisure Club in Surrey where he has called on the help of Chris Gane, a fellow PGA Professional.

“I picked Chris because I’ve known him for such a long time.

“There’s a difference between being a PGA pro and being one who has been playing tournament golf for ten years. You get a different perspective of it all.

“I wanted coaches in my academy that have seen all the great players and who really know what it takes to travel the world to take part in tournaments and understands it.”

Although Rock is looking to the future, he remains competitive as a player and, as he states on website, robertrock.co.uk, his immediate ambition is ‘to win more tournaments’.