Putting specialist joins Oulton Hall coaching team

23/05/2025

Mark Bentley has recovered from a 2022 prostate cancer diagnosis and is now one of the highest-qualified outing coaches in the country

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 putting specialist 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 on it, and the charity noticed that Bentley was a PGA Member and got in touch with him. The Yorkshire Pro would appear 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, 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 our work.

“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.

"He also mentioned that they had significantly invested in a Platform Golf putting green and SAM PuttLab at Oulton Hall and that I should come and take a look. I was also working at Waterton Park but the opportunity to work across two QHotels venues at Forest Pines and Oulton Hall and the new facilities at Oulton was too good to pass up and I started there in April."

“At Oulton Hall, combining their state-of-the-art technology with AimPoint, I can definitely offer something very comprehensive to help with golfers' putting.”

- Mark Bentley

Bentley came to professional golf in his 40s when he realised that he wanted to specialise in coaching and, when he Googled 'putting coaches in the UK' only two names – Phil Kenyon and Andy Gorman – popped up. Now he has a specialist role of his own at the West Yorkshire venue, located just off the M62 to the east of Leeds.

"I've never really given a paid long-game lesson,” he said. “The Professionals I knew had more 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 coaching."

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 75 revolutions of backspin which explained why my distance control with that particular putter was shocking.

"I opened a putting studio at home in my garage with a Quintic machine and I custom fitted Raa putters for about six years and I learnt an awful lot from Paul Hurrion at Quintic. You get annual training with Quintic and you build 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 so I learned on the job for about 10 years with my Quintic machine.

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 coaches as people who really do know their subject when it comes to putting. There are only nine AimPoint coaches in England so it's a select group of specialist coaches. At Oulton Hall, with the new state-of-the-art technology where you can learn so much about your stroke, and combining that with AimPoint, I can definitely offer something very comprehensive to help with golfers' putting.”