Lansberry’s TikTok success attracts juniors from across the globe into golf

17/02/2023

Aaron Lansberry (Stonebridge Golf Club) has been shortlisted for the Participation and Development Coach of the Year award in the 2023 England Golf Awards, set to take place on Thursday 2nd March in Manchester.

A combination of extensive social media reach and quantity and quality of lessons delivered over the past year puts Lansberry in a strong position for the award.

With a TikTok account that’s just eight months old, having been started by Lansberry in June 2022, and now boasting over 14,000 followers, nearly all of whom are junior golfers from across the globe, Lansberry is increasing golf participation in a modern and novel way.

He explains: “My purpose is to create as many lifelong golfers as possible, which is what I’ve always tried to do with my coaching and my business.

“In person, I can only contact the kids that I see every week at the golf club, so I’ve been exploring other avenues of how I can increase that. I set myself a goal to get to 5,000 followers on my social media platforms across the board by the end of 2022, and I thought, all the kids are on TikTok so by starting up a TikTok account, I can speak to them directly via the platform.”

Lansberry is not only creating content that’s useful for juniors all over the world, but also involving the juniors he teaches at Stonebridge, who love being a part of the action.

He continued: “I do all sorts of videos. Lots of them are purely for entertainment, so hopefully kids see them and think, ‘I want to go and play golf!’ Some of them are more instructional, but all based around kids - some of the tips actually come from the kids themselves.

“I take a lot of the videos during my sessions - a lot of the kids come to the session and say ‘can we make a video for TikTok?’, so I think, ‘why not?’ They love it. They’ll send it around to their friends, save it, talk about it… For the other videos I do, I just pop to the club half an hour early, create a few videos, and then edit them when I get home later on. It used to take me a long time to edit them but now I’m much more efficient with that!

“I also do TikTok Lives, where I go online for about an hour a week and I’ll have kids from New Zealand, Canada, the USA, all round Europe, and they’ll ask me various questions. I usually have around 30-40 kids on during the TikTok Live, and I’ll try to answer as many questions as I can get through in an hour.”

Lansberry can see the effect his TikTok advice has on juniors, whether they’re existing golfers or not. “I get quite a few messages from kids,” he said. “For example saying that I’ve helped them lower their handicap, encouraged them to get their clubs back out again, or even that I’ve gotten them into golf as they didn’t realise what it was like before.”

Closer to home, Lansberry coaches 190 juniors per week at Stonebridge and his philosophy is simple: “About two thirds of the kids play on the course, and around half of those have a handicap, so that’s something I’m always trying to grow, to create as many lifelong golfers as possible - that’s the most important thing, rather than performance.

“Some days it might be about helping them improve, some days it might be just about ensuring they have a great laugh with their friends.”

Lansberry’s passion for growing golf participation is clear, and he is looking forward to this year’s England Golf Awards ceremony, having tasted success back in 2019 when he was named England Golf's Coach of the Year.

“It’s really nice to be recognised,” Lansberry added. “It helps me feel I’m on the right track, and re-affirms that what I’m doing is good and people value it. I’m happy just to be shortlisted, so it should be a fun evening and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.”

Follow Aaron Lansberry on TikTok at @ignitegolfjuniors

CLICK HERE to find out more about the 2023 England Golf Awards, which take place on Thursday 2^nd March.