World renowned South African golf coach Robert Baker used to operate out of his custom-made studio on Broadway. Not only did he give New York Mayor Michael R Bloomberg his regular lessons on how best to hit a little white ball, but the odd billionaire tycoon and a string of wealthy Manhattan city bankers dropped by, paying top dollar to have their swings fixed.
Now Baker - or Bakes as his partner and fellow South African Grant Hepburn calls him - is based between Majorca and Hamburg in Germany, where the many ingenious training aids are manufactured which the two men use to coach the rich and the famous.
This particular week, though, Hepburn and the suave, smooth-talking Baker are at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland. The pair have since the tournament’s inception been teaching their very successful Logical Golf method to the celebrities and famous sportsmen and women who play in the Links pro-am each year.
Their clients over the years have included movie and TV stars like Hugh Grant, Samuel L Jackson, Jamie Dornan, Andy Garcia, Kyle Maclachlan and Matthew Goode, as well as music legends Don Felder from the Eagles, Ronan Keating, Huey Lewis and Bon Jovi drummer Tico Torres. Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sylvester Stallone and former US vice-president Dan Quayle.
“Hugh Grant’s actually a pretty good golfer and he works hard on his swing. He can do well in the pro-am if we can get him to bed reasonably early every night,” reveals Baker, referring to the actor’s habit in past years of spending a few too many hours entertaining all and sundry either in the Old Course Hotel bar, or popular university student haunts like the ever-buzzing Ma-Bells.
Baker was a Western Province amateur champion before heading for America to play college golf, earn a business degree and try the pro circuit for a couple of years after that. But, with his life-long fascination for maths and physics, he got hooked on the mechanics of the golf swing, and turned to teaching.
After a spell with two of the world’s finest instructors, Chuck Cook and David Leadbetter, Baker and Hepburn (who had also been working fo “Lead”) sat down together to give structure to their combined knowledge with the intention of going into business on their own. They came up with the concept of Logical Golf which is a very simple teaching system, based on body dynamics, physics and the principle of cause and effect. Once the golfer ‘sees’ the picture and understands what’s going on, improvement comes much more quickly and easily.
Their success since has been phenomenal. And the method is not only for starters out in golf. In fact, Baker and Hepburn have worked with a bunch of world No 1s - Greg Norman, Nick Price, Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo and Ernie Els. They were on the PGA Tour together for several years, looking after around 20 top players.
”Even the best players constantly need to have their swings checked,” explains Baker who became a close friend of Ballesteros, before the Spanish superstar sadly passed away.
"In fact Seve invited Bakes and myself to his house in Spain for a week, where we videoed his swing and talked golf and he taught us a lot about the short game," reveals Hepburn who says he "owes" Richemont chairman Johann Rupert, the man behind the Alfred Dunhill LInks Championship, for providing the resources that saw him first head to America.
"Then in 1999 Mr Rupert asked me to come back to South Africa and work for the South African Golf Development Board and I've been with them ever since, the last two and a half years as the MD. We've seen about 30 000 youngsters in that time, teaching them golf and, even more importantly, life skills."
Hepburn is a busy man because he is also CEO of the newly-formed body, Golf RSA, which is the umbrella body for all amateur golf - men and women - in South Africa.
“I love what I do as an administrator but the best week of the year for me is the Dunhill Links,” says Hepburn. “There’s a wonderful camaraderie that exists between the celebrities, amateurs and pros.
Robert and I get to teach world-class professionals as well as some interesting amateurs. It’s such a fun week.”
Hepburn has had some funny celebrity experiences. “The best ones are censored but I liked the time OJ Simpson arrived at our Miami base at the time, shortly after his infamous trial, asking to have his slice fixed!”
And then there was the occasion at the Dunhill Nations Cup (which preceded the Dunhill Links) when Baker, Hepburn and their friend, who was Greg Norman’s pro-am partner that day, were on the Old Course. “It was a few months after Norman lost a seven-shot lead to Faldo in the US Masters. And Greg was behaving miserably. At one point he started to say how successful his Greg Norman Holden car was selling in Australia.
The friend of ours, by now irritated, asked him: ‘Is that the one with the automatic choke?’”
Independent Media