Bentley spreads the word for Prostate Cancer UK

25/07/2025

The PGA Member and specialist putting coach from Yorkshire was diagnosed in 2022 – and now helps to publicise the charity through his high-profile role with QHotels

When Mark Bentley was diagnosed with prostate cancer in February 2022, he wouldn't have imagined the outcome would have such a positive effect on his career.

Now thankfully all clear after undergoing a successful prostatectomy, the specialist putting coach was scrolling on his phone when he read that content creator Hannah Holden had just played 100 holes to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK. Bentley commented, the charity noticed that Bentley was a PGA Member and got in touch with him.

The Yorkshire professional has since appeared in PGA Monthly as well as being part of the Big Golf Race launch at Pitch Golf in London.

"I was sitting on a stool next to the swimmer Duncan Scott OBE, who has eight Olympic swimming medals, and the former Scotland rugby international Kenny Logan. The room was made up of about 80 people from the golf industry and one of the questions was how it affected my work situation.

“I work at Forest Pines and mentioned that QHotels had been really good to me. In the audience was the Group Director of Golf at QHotels, Keith Pickard, and he came up and thanked me for saying what I did,” explains Bentley. 

Now, as official PGA Partners, Bentley hopes both QHotels and Prostate Cancer UK will find ways to work together to help raise the profile of the charity and the importance of getting tested – Bentley recently gave a speech at the last PGA Partners meeting on behalf of Prostate Cancer UK.

Bentley came to professional golf in his forties when he realised that he wanted to specialise in coaching and when he Googled 'putting coaches in the UK' only two names appeared.

"Since qualifying, I’ve never given a paid long-game lesson.

"The local PGA Professionals I know had more swing knowledge in their little finger than I would have in my entire body because there's no substitute for experience, so I decided that I wanted to specialise in putting," he said.

Two things in particular helped shape Bentley's putting credentials. Firstly, he got an attachment with Raa Putters where he worked with the Quintic Ball Roll technology.

"I used the Quintic technology and it filmed your stroke and the ball coming off the putter face and it blew my mind, because I was launching my ball at five degrees in the air with 45 revolutions of backspin, which explained why my distance control with that particular putter was shocking.

"I opened a putting studio at home fitted with a Quintic system and I custom-fitted Raa putters for about six years. I learnt an awful lot from Paul Hurrion at Quintic. Working with Paul, I built up an enormous amount of knowledge about how the putter works and how different putters work with different people and how different people work different putters. I learned on the job for about 10 years thanks to Quintic,” said Bentley.

The other huge part of Bentley's education was becoming an AimPoint coach 10 years ago.

"I'd like to think people would look at AimPoint professionals as coaches who really are experts when it comes to putting. There are only 12 AimPoint Certified Instructors in the UK so it's a select group of specialist coaches.”

Bentley is one of the best-known instructors in the country and second only to Jamie Donaldson in the UK and regularly gives lessons and clinics across Yorkshire and Lincolnshire on how to use AimPoint green reading system.

• Learn more about Prostate Cancer UK and check your risk here (https://prostatecanceruk.org/)