New county role for Myerscough Head Golf Professional Craig

Craig Lea will take up the role with the Lancashire Union of Golf Clubs, who oversee the men’s game across the 140 clubs in the county.

Under Craig’s guidance, Myerscough’s golfers have finished as national champions in six out of the last nine years, while a number of former students have gone on to enjoy great success in the sport, including Chris Hanson and Tom Murray, who are on the European and Challenge Tour at the moment, coming through the Myerscough coaching programme, as well as Paul Kinnear, who qualified for the Open in 2015.

Craig is also the author of a number of coaching guides, which have been published in 30 countries worldwide.

Speaking about his appointment, Craig, who will combine the role with his current Myerscough position, said: “The programme which I have installed (at Myerscough over the last twelve years) has evolved with a huge emphasis surrounding scoring and performance-based coaching to stand up under pressure.

“Obviously I don’t want to give too many secrets away, but basically this revolves around implementing technical improvements into a game-based environment to take into tournament play.

“Creating players to deal with one-shot situations under pressure rather than just focusing on swinging the golf club.  Everything I work towards in coaching has measurable results for each individual player, which creates a clear action plan of improvement.”

Phil Harvey, secretary of the LUGC, said: “Lancashire has been very successful over the past decade at the elite level and our county coaching programmes have expanded greatly in the past five years.

“We feel it’s the right time to bring in a new role as director of coaching to help knit all the elements of our programme together and also to keep us at the leading edge of player performance and continuing to develop winning teams at all age groups.

“The existing county coaches will continue to be involved and will work closely with Craig to build on our existing work and develop a new coaching and mentoring environment, which we hope will continue Lancashire’s history of success at the highest levels.

“Craig will bring drive and attention to finer golfing details to the role, creating an understanding of how a player works in the heat of a battle and how to get the best out of them.”