‘Guiding elite players to The Open and club golfers in their monthly medal

15/07/2025

Andy Gorman’s distinguished coaching career in the short game department took an exciting twist when his student OJ Farrell qualified for The 153^rd Open at Royal Portrush.

Having worked with Farrell for just over a year, it all came together at Burnham & Berrow where Farrell came through Final Qualifying to book himself a spot in Northern Ireland.

A PGA Professional for over 35 years, Gorman trained and worked at The Belfry before building a coaching career in the Midlands. He also enjoyed a five-year stint in the Caribbean.

He became invested in short game coaching and devised the ScorZone system which helps players like Farrell and club golfers improve around and on the greens.

Ahead of The Open, Gorman described his career path and how he founded the ScorZone approach.

First steps into coaching and following the short game route

I started my training at The Belfry, I played at Drayton Park for my junior golf, and then I went and worked at The Belfry. The Belfry didn’t have a position available for me at the time, it wasn’t the operation it is today, so I went to work for John Reay at Coventry and spent four and a half years there with John. I moved to Swingers Academy at Lichfield.

I was there a little while and I got it in my head that I wanted to go and coach overseas, so I spent five years in Jamaica, and when I came back, I wanted to build my own academy. I started to build a short game area at Becketts Farm near Kings Norton, and really wanted to get into the short game. I wanted to be able to coach the short game as part of the package.

I didn’t want to be just known for just have a driving range academy and just be a driving range professional. I wanted to help people from tee to green. It was about 20 years ago, I discovered the cure for my own yips.

I had yips for about a decade, and it was a case of, ‘Oh my word I’ve been liberated. I want to preach this to the world’, and share how I overcame that and I have helped over 200 people to clear themselves of the yips over those 20 years.

I gained some traction. A few more professionals started to see me. I did work on the European Tour and then ultimately - I contacted Alan Partridge at Wishaw and said, ‘Is there any chance I could come over and do some coaching?’ He said, ‘Yes, but you can only do putting and short game’.

He said I haven’t got a facility for you to do swing coaching, and I thought 60% of my lessons are long game! But I thought if I’m going to do it, I should do it now, so I said, ‘Have you got any problem with what I charge?’ He said to charge whatever I wanted.

Working across the spectrum from club to tour level

I work with a few of the Legends Tour players. I’ve had Steve Webster and Anthony Wall in. I’ve done remote coaching with some DP World Tour players and I’ve coached Charley Hull before. I also have a couple of girls who are going for their Ladies European Tour cards this year.

I have a few Clutch Pro Tour players now, and I also coach the European No.1 junior Ben Bolton. We look after competitive golfers, but I’ve also got an 86-year-old who is trying to beat his age at the minute. He’s a member at Coventry and he’s just so keen to learn and so into the practice. He shot +5 in a bogey competition a few weeks ago, and went on to win.

The recreational golfer is where so much of my business from. I’m equally stoked when they drop a shot in handicap.”

We launched it just before OJ came to see me and I introduced him to it, and he was blown away by the simplicity and he could really start to see and feel and understand reads more clearly

- Andy Gorman

Meeting OJ and how it clicked at Final Open Qualifying

OJ reached out. The conversation with him and his dad around the time was he’d exhausted a number of options. His dad was online and having a look and said we need to give Andy a call.

He came in and spent half a day with me to start with, we went through every aspect of his challenge, and then ultimately, he came down for stroke mechanics, green reading, of which I have my own green reading system, which is the ScorZone system. That has really started to get ramped up.

We launched it just before OJ came to see me and I introduced him to it, and he was blown away by the simplicity and he could really start to see and feel and understand reads more clearly, and even down to the fact he could accept there was more break than there was.

He just started to get confident with it, we’ve gone through changes more subtly as he was competing last year and trying to compete and retain his Hotel Planner Tour card.

“He went away to the Middle East and spent some time in Morocco in April and put some good scores together and started to trend in the right direction. He did a little calibrating on the green reading and about a month ago and it all fell into place for him.

The ethos behind ScorZone

ScorZone is a system I’ve been coaching and developing for the last decade. ScorZone is everything inside 100 yards and that’s the area of expertise that I have. It is the area that is low hanging fruit where the recreational golfer can learn to be as good as a tour player.

It takes strokes gained data and applies it to someone who is playing off a 10 handicap, and they can really improve their game. I do performance coaching on the course and in playing lessons and show folk how they can improve around the course.

“The ScorZone is about how you can lower your scores by improving your strategy around the shorter shots.

"The big deal for me is the ScorZone GRS – the Green Reading Simplified System. This is the ability to read a green clinically well and then learn how to hit the ball on that line as you’ve learned those skills on putting. But the crucial bit for me is posture.

“You need to make you’re in a great place to be able to execute that move, so posture is critical. Once you’ve gone into good posture, you can learn how to move correctly and then you can go through the skills, the training programme and what I call the PASS – the putting and short game skills.”