THE PROFILE
ROBERT ROCK
The one-time Teaching PGA Pro, two-time Tour winner and eternally stylish swinger has established a pathway for juniors to follow in his footsteps and get the very most they can out of the game
For someone who has gone toe-to-toe with Tiger Woods and beaten him, it is surprising to learn that Robert Rock's idea of a golfing idol would be more along the lines of a Paul Lawrie or a Stevie Gallacher. Rock loves the idea of a pro's pro: someone who just gets it, sees the bigger picture and puts something substantial back into the game.
For the past seven years the Robert Rock Junior Golf Tour has run to give juniors a chance simply to get into golf. From the age of six up to 21, juniors, who might otherwise not get the chance to play in competitions or visit incredible courses at very affordable prices, can now make a fun and inclusive start in the game.
ROCK ON…
BEING A PGA PROFESSIONAL
As a club pro, you are relying on somebody taking an interest in you, somebody giving you a job, somebody bothering to train you up and teach you things.
The pro is capable of loads of stuff while maintaining a decent standard of play himself.
The pros I was lucky enough to work under were really particular about those types of things.
So I didn’t have any choice, I wouldn’t have had a job if I didn’t latch on to their ideas of professionalism early enough.
Timekeeping was about having a job at the shop. The shop opened early – you were the person who opened up, and loads of members relied on you being there on time.
The shop had to be opened, and the phone had to be answered. You can’t run a lesson diary by being late or overrunning.
If you are a professional, you have to have certain standards, I think.
I always struggle to play golf in shorts because I don’t think it is professional.
If I wasn’t a PGA Pro and I was just playing on the Tour, I would probably find that dead easy because I wouldn’t feel like I had been in an area that had set certain standards earlier.
THE EARLY DAYS
Rock's first steps in golf came in unconventional circumstances – he would play a 9-holer next to a power station, an unlikely breeding ground for one of the most decorated swings of the past two decades.
"It was a 9 o’clock tee off on a Saturday morning for juniors, which you wouldn’t get anywhere else. I would guess there were 20 or 30 kids, we'd put in a couple of pounds and the winners would get some balls. That was my first intro to playing little competitions, and I was terrible to start with, but it couldn't have been better. There were par 3s and very short par 4s, so it was a good length course to start and that's probably why we decided to do our mini tour," Rock said.
"It showed me that there is more than one way to actually begin to play golf and to turn out being alright at it. All you need is to be playing golf somewhere – it doesn’t matter where – among people who are welcoming and encouraging."
The mini tour is the starting point for those juniors who are new to the game. The par 3s are a maximum of 110 yards, the 4s 220 yards and the 5s 300 yards over the nine holes. From here, you can graduate to the 18-hole events and beyond – it's a brilliant starting point in a game that can seem impossible at an early age.
"Once you can go round the nine holes in less than nine over, and you are making some pars and bogeys, then it will be time to move back and see if they can make a par off the red tees. I always remember when I first started playing, getting a par was years away, and we are miles off in the UK in how courses are set up. Even at some nice clubs, you get a token gesture of a tiny junior tee. I've lost count of the places where I’ve suggested putting in a proper set of junior tees, and hardly anywhere does it.
"Generally speaking, the tees get worse the further you get away from the white tee, but they should all be the same. The red tees are always in the same place, and then the junior tees are somewhere along the pathway to the fairway stuck in the corner somewhere. It's not very inviting for kids."
Other common-sense measures are a lack of any speeches and no need to hang around all day for presentations. The juniors tee off in category groups and, once that is concluded, the prizes are handed out and photos taken in an informal manner.
"We aren’t keeping parents there any longer than they really need to be because it is quite a commitment for the parents, and some of them might have driven three hours for their child to play nine holes. We're very aware that junior sport doesn’t work without parents willing to do it.
"We don’t force any speeches on kids. That really used to ruin my day if I was close to doing well. I actually didn’t mind coming second because I didn’t want to make a speech in front of a load of people. We did do one event when we just made it optional and loads of kids loved it. I think that was because it was more optional rather than saying 'you have to go and thank the greenkeeper' and all that rubbish."
“The end goal is to create a better pathway to keeping on playing.”
THE ROBERT ROCK JUNIOR GOLF TOUR
While it is Rock's name above the shop, it is Natalie Haywood who runs the tour on a daily basis. Haywood is the PGA Head Professional at Rotherham and, from the first single event in 2016 at her old course of Beeston Fields in Derby, she has been driving everything forward.
"It is basically Natalie’s tour. She has taken it from one event to an international junior tour. I did go to as many events as my schedule allowed before, and now I go to more, but it wouldn’t exist without Nat. All I have done along the way is to source some prizes and give us access to some courses through people I know," he said.
"At that first event we had 40 to 50 kids and a good split of boys and girls because Nat was coaching quite a lot of the girls at the club, and she got a lot of them started. TaylorMade gave me a set of junior clubs so one kid won a set of clubs, and he was buzzing. I do remember thinking ‘we have overdone it here, we can’t keep giving a set of clubs out for an event that has cost £20 to enter’!"
The tour is now almost unrecognisable from those early days. It is now affiliated with the Faldo Series and in 2023 they held a co-branded event at Carnoustie, Panmure and Monifieth, which was a resounding success. This year the schedule offers 15 one-day events, including four Majors, and three 54-hole events: the European Masters at La Manga; the Abu Dhabi Championship at The National Course; and the Midlands Challenge at Whittington Heath, Sutton Coldfield and Little Aston.
And, while some leading professionals are struggling for world ranking points, these three-day events now offer the juniors points on the World Amateur Golf Rankings, which, as well as providing the thrill of gaining points on a global scale, also helps to raise the status of someone hopeful of pursuing the game at college.
Like his former colleagues, Messrs Lawrie and Gallacher, on the DP World Tour, Rock and Haywood are doing plenty to try to ensure that more youngsters stay in the game and maybe even end up working in it.
"I hope that we are sending a lot of kids to join golf clubs. We know that we have started a lot from the mini tour as it is now seven years old and some have now almost grown out of it and are deciding whether they start the PGA training programme or go to college or work at a golf club in a different area. They have stayed with it long enough to still be playing golf at 18. We won't keep everyone like that, but we certainly have plenty of good kids who have had a good grounding in tournaments and have got on well with a lot of different people, which is the ideal."
ROCK ON…
GOLFING PATHWAYS
The end goal of what we are attempting to do is to create a better pathway to keeping on playing.
In golf, a lot of organisations are really protective about their own thing that they have managed to build. All these scattered things that are supposedly growing the game aren't really. You don’t grow the game if all you are doing is keeping a kid on the driving range or hitting a ball in a school. Because it only lasts so long.
Nobody from the school or a driving range pro will take them to a golf course. I am hoping that we can sit as a feeder for higher standards but also somewhere that can capture all these scattered grass-root projects.
Somebody, somewhere, needs to tell these kids that they can enter a fun competition without joining a club and without having a handicap; that they can go and play another course for a minimal green fee and be part of a competition with similar kids that haven’t joined anywhere yet and to start a progression to actual golf.
Once you have had them for a year, they are more than good enough to play golf on a course. They should have already played on a course but lots of times they haven’t.
If you keep going to a driving range every week, you get bored, and then you might stop golf altogether.
THE ROBERT ROCK JUNIOR TOUR IN NUMBERS
7
Years since it began
6
The youngest competitors…
21
…and the oldest
15
One-day events in 2024
3
54-hole events in 2024
ROCK ON…
RICKIE FOWLER’S GENEROSITY
At the Open at Portrush, I asked Rickie for a signed hat, which he did straight away. Then the next day his whole wardrobe was washed and pressed and next to my locker, with a note saying 'take all this for your kids for prizes'. We had maybe 30 shirts and hats, and they absolutely loved those prizes, it was awesome. A friend at Silvermere, Terry Sims (EuroSelect Golf), is a respected figure in golf retail, and he put us in touch with Adidas Golf, who have agreed to be our official clothing and shoe sponsor, which is amazing. Adidas are really on their game with junior stuff. We went to their headquarters, and they had a full presentation for us about what they would like to do to support our tour, and we just welcomed every bit of it. Callaway and Ping have also been so supportive in putting forward a variety of prizes, which makes it all very special for the kids. In the early days, it was just down to whatever I could get my hands on from the tour trucks. We all remember as kids what it was like to get something like a new bag, so we're now in a great position with all our prizes.
“We don’t force any speeches on the kids - that really used to ruin my day when I was doing well ”
IN MY OWN WORDS
My earliest golfing memory
Hitting balls on the local football field with some clubs that I found in the shed.
First Major I remember
Sandy Lyle winning at Augusta in 1988 in the Adidas trousers and shoes, which were really cool.
Jack or Tiger
Definitely Tiger.
The last book I read
Ruud Gullit: How To Watch Football – I’m trying to educate myself.
Favourite ever swing
Ben Hogan.
My proudest moment
Playing on the Tour for 20 years.
Open or Masters
Always The Open.
My favourite golf course
At the moment it’s Little Aston.
My perfect weekend
Relaxing at home with the missus and a pub lunch and glass of wine.
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