From pioneering club-fitting studios to helping reshape golf’s rule book through EDGA, Tony Bennett’s half-century as a PGA Professional has been defined by innovation, education and inclusion.
Tony Bennett has enjoyed a phenomenal and varied career and this year he celebrates 50 years as a PGA Professional. Among a collection of achievements, Bennett is the current President of EDGA (European Disabled Golf Association), has been the Director of Education & Membership for the PGAs of Europe, was the Head Coach of the Portugal national team, has completed a PhD at Durham University, focusing his evidence-based research on coaching and golfers with disabilities, and is now a Professor in Practice to the Sport and Exercise Science department at this UK top five university.
For the past 30 years he has lived and developed golf in Portugal and it was a presidential honour here that prompted Bennett into being awarded Master Professional status, a designation his father, Howard Bennett, had been previously awarded.
“I was relatively late to start to play the game. I started when I was 12 but my dad was smart as there was always a golf club in the house that was about the right size for me – so when I did eventually pick it up, it was the right length.
“He started at Dewsbury & District as the head greenkeeper in the morning and Professional in the afternoon before moving to Shaw Hill in Lancashire and I would spend all my time there in the holidays and weekends. I was used to seeing him bringing clothing and golf equipment home and my mum putting tickets on everything and my dad would do the books so I grew up with it.”
Pictured: Tony Bennett
Bennett represented Lancashire Boys and attempted to qualify for European Tour events and The Open – narrowly missing out in a play-off at Littlestone one year – as well as playing on the Sunshine Tour in Africa.
He then settled into life as a club professional and the lessons that he learned in his early days remain as relevant today. Bennett is hugely affable and entertaining and the personal touch is something that he has relied upon throughout his career.
“It's all about understanding the person that you've got in front of you,” he says. “It doesn't matter whether you're teaching them golf or whether you're teaching them to be a good sales assistant – it's all about relationships.
“It's making sure that you try and find out what it is that the person that's in front of you wants and what they're prepared to invest in terms to time and effort. Then you can work with that person.”
Bennett is full of stories and memories from a career well spent but two stand out from his club professional days. The first was when he was one of the first pros to install a fitting studio in the mid-1980s along with an indoor putting green.
“We had a swing analyser that was run by three computers. There were three Amstrad 250 computers, just to run this one swing analyser. It was so basic by comparison to what you get today but it was better than anything else you could get and, at the time, we were right at the cutting edge of things.
"We were already working with Ping because they were probably the number one club-fitting company at the time and then Petron came along and we started working with different shafts and other parameters. The indoor putting green was so funky – we built a wooden-based platform with four or six holes and it was just carpet. We cut some holes in it and then we had a labyrinth of tubes underneath it so that the balls all came out at one end.
Pictured: Tony Bennett in a club fitting centre in 1986
“We'd sell three sets of golf clubs a day every day so it would be a more than a thousand sets of clubs a year.”
The second abiding memory involves a scheme whereby anyone who bought a set of clubs was encouraged to sign a service agreement which included a change their grips free of charge in the 12th month of their ownership. It was a no-brainer.
“We could re-use those grips on all the trade-ins as they were only a year old which put the value of the trade-ins up. But the beauty was that when the second year came around, after the next 12 months, the person came in and said, is it time to change my grips again?
We got them used to the idea that they should be changing their grips regularly. We had a client base that would change their grips more often than pretty much any other golf club in the country. Effectively, we educated our clients, something I feel we have been good at over the years in many respects,” he said.
When asked to single out his proudest achievement in golf, Bennett cites his work with EDGA and how he and others have changed the narrative of how the rest of us and the rule book now view golfers with disabilities.
"We helped bring the modifications of the rules into the rulebook. So now golf is one of very few, where the rules for the whole sport are covered in one set of rules. Now the rulebook includes everybody, including people with disabilities. Rule 25 is a game changer.”
“It's all about understanding the person that you've got in front of you. It doesn't matter whether you're teaching them golf or whether you're teaching them to be a good sales assistant – it's all about relationships” - Tony Bennett
EDGA has also encouraged PGAs around the world to make access to membership and training for people with disabilities more possible.
“There are many examples of players with disabilities who can contribute a great deal to the overall profession,” said Bennett.
“For example, in the Netherlands there is a woman who plays from a wheelchair to around 19 or 20 handicap. Before taking up golf, she was a seven-time World No. 1 in disabled tennis and a multiple gold medallist in the Paralympics. I am sure that she knows a lot about elite performance, coaching and athlete development. In the PGA, there are now several players with disabilities who are PGA Members and many others now going through their training to join the profession.
“Now with an evidence-based playing ability criteria that takes into account some of the imitations that these players may experience, it is possible for them to pursue a career in professional golf.
“I see this as success, and a part of wider systemic change that now means golf is more inclusive than ever before,” said Bennett.
