Ian Clark

Location: World of Golf

Ian has over 20 years of experience and he has now opened his own academy at the World of Golf facility in London. The Advanced Fellow of the PGA has made it a lifetime vocation to learn from the best instructors, and has studied personally under the likes of Jim Flick, Mike Bender, Lynn Blake, Jim McLean, Chuck Cook and Martin Hall.

Most common advice:

The student must use feedback, no guessing. I encourage all my students to use the camera on their phone to video a swing in practice, I give clear instructions as to how to do this so they get the correct angles, I want to see aim sticks on the ground for aim and ball position. I have a quote that I rely to students which is ‘they must become extraordinary at the ordinary things’, the ordinary things being aim, ball position and grip.

Most common problem:

Time management. Lots of people are time poor, so when they have time to practise I like to make sure it is structured, so I have 20, 30, 45 and 60-minute practice schedules that I will give to my students, so they can use what time they have correctly. The schedules will include some random and block practice, some drills, as well as some skill transfer material to help them take it onto the course.

Teaching philosophy:

Being a TrackMan user, I work a lot off ball flight. I will ask the player what they want the ball flight to look like and make sure we have enough pieces in their swing to do that. For example if the player wants to hit a draw, but has a fade set-up, then we need to put more draw pieces into the set-up. I like to have the player know enough about their motion that they can do some self correcting if it starts to go wrong.