Born in Christchurch, Rodney started playing golf at the age of 7 and had an outstanding amateur career, representing Canterbury at both the Junior and Senior level, as well as the New Zealand University team, which travelled to Thailand in 2008. As a 16-year-old he set a course record at the Templeton Open of 8 under par off the blue tees. Several years ago, as a radio promotion with Jason Gunn for 92.1FM that involved attempting to have a hole in one on our old No 3 hole, Rodney hit the perfect shot in his 4th try – Jason finally holed out 5½ hours later after hitting hundreds of balls!

Rodney’s amazing work as a golf coach has been recognized over the last 3 years when he has been runner-up for New Zealand PGA Professional Golf Coach of the Year award and last year, he was runner-up for Community Coach of the Year. This has been well deserved and our club and its members have benefitted from his outstanding efforts. He is innovative, passionate about the game and works extremely hard with his team to provide a service second to none in the country. It is difficult to restrict to an article for a newsletter all of his achievements and coaching advice as these could easily fill a book!

The most rewarding part of what Rodney does at Russley is seeing the development of our golfers from a young age, usually watching them pick up a golf club for the first time and working with them down their golfing pathway.

It has been most rewarding for him to have worked with so many talented young golfers over the years and watched many of his players develop their skills and go on to achieve great results.

Many of the first generation of young golfers that he started out with are now studying in the United States on College Scholarships to pursue their dreams – to date there have been 8 who Rodney has worked personally with. He feels very confident that his present group of exciting young golfers will achieve similar success.

It is an amazing fact that the Golf Learning Centre, which Rodney has the responsibility for, provides from 70 - 80 plus hours of coaching on average each week. His team are all highly skilled and extremely passionate PGA members who all share the same vision and goals as Rodney. It will be wonderful this year to have Hillary O’Connor as the 4th professional with her knowledge and skills in the coaching team as a trainee Professional, to cater for the increasing demand of services.

Rodney has created a brand with the Golf Learning Centre that works extremely well. Each coach in the team has created their own unique skills so there is no competition between coaching staff over clients.

• Rodney specializes more in the high-performance area and works with long-term players who are willing to put in the hard work and time to develop their skills.
  
• Tom Hardy specializes in junior golf, running most of the junior programme which has been extremely successful, as well as servicing our members who are looking for help in certain aspects of their game.
  
• Jess Reid specializes in ladies’ golf, Learn to Play programmes and golf clinics.

Rodney feels that he continues to grow as a coach every day and as an individual in order to keep up and also stay in front of his peers, in what is now a fast paced and ever evolving industry. Being innovative is very important to him and he feels most fortunate to have a great team around him who have helped build an amazing culture and golfing environment at Russley.

Rodney manages our successful junior programmes which continue to introduce new young golfers to the game and helping them work down a development pathway into golf – between 70 - 80 young golfers are involved in these coaching programmes each week.

Russley Golf Club has been the leader in our region for junior golf for at least the last 15 years. Last year the coaching staff teamed up with New Zealand Golf and their FUTURES Strategy to widen our reach to kids and help more young golfers get into the game.

The coaching processes, programmes and services available to our members, are helping them to enjoy their golf more and as a result this is helping the retention of members which is vital to any golf club.

In recent years Rodney has arranged a fun and entertaining initiative of a Pro’s vs Members challenge where Jess joined him each time to take on two members or two clients of theirs over a 9-hole match. The two-ball worst ball format created an even playing field and the result of each week’s match was included in the next week’s newsletter and they felt that they were giving something back to the golfing community.

Rodney and his team members believe that they have found the formula in which they are able to not only help grow the game, but also help create more fun, excitement and enjoyment for our golfers.

They have found it exciting and fun to see the engagement as they connect with others in the golfing industry world - wide via their social media platforms. Some of their clients travel hours from outside of Christchurch to come and see the team for their golfing needs.

One recent world junior champion, an Australian Junior Open champion and one recent International amateur champion, national age group champions and multiple club champions, have inspired an army of junior golfers as well as our members, to also work towards achieving their golfing dreams.

Rodney sees this play out through the eyes of the golfers in his development and coaching programmes, be whatever goals each individual has, his team are passionate about helping golfers get there.

To achieve this success, the coaching team feel that they are most fortunate to have such great facilities at a central location. With the continued increase in foot traffic through their Golf Learning Centre, they are planning to re-design and upgrade the driving range and short game facilities. A fully equipped indoor simulator located in the golf shop has just opened and this provides state of the art technology to assist all golfers.

The New Year has brought many interesting challenges already amongst the global pandemic we are in. In January alone, our Golf Learning Centre has been receiving 3-4 new inquiries on average each day, which is keeping all the coaching team very busy.

As an example, Rodney currently has a three-month waiting list of clients who want to use his services. Trying to find a balance between his teaching schedule, club fitting and other golf duties is proving to be challenging for him, but he is enjoying all the hype that there is around golf currently! Thanks to all the members who have supported the club as sales of equipment have reached record levels as the interest in the sport has gathered momentum.

During the year his team want to continue to grow the game of golf and make the game more enjoyable for our golfers, which in return, they believe that golfers tend to play better when they start to understand that golf isn't all about your 'score' at the end of the day.

Being recognized over the last 3 years as a finalist for New Zealand Golf’s PGA Coach of the Year and Community Coach award last year has given Rodney fuel and drive to continue putting in the work towards achieving more in the years to come. Our club is most fortunate to have someone with the vision, energy, knowledge and passion to lead our capable coaching team.

He has spent the last 12 years developing and fine tuning his processes and systems to assist ALL golfers achieve their golfing dreams – whether you are a beginner looking to get into the game, an avid golfer looking to cut a few shots off your handicap, or an ambitious golfer with big dreams – Rodney is your man! It may be a few years before his book is written and released but it will be well worth waiting for.