Teaching the reality of golf, not the illusion
Ian Butcher is a PGA "AA" Teaching Professional based at Kings Acre Golf Course, just south of the Edinburgh City Bypass. He has been coaching there since 2003, and in that time he has worked with a European Tour winner, a Scottish Amateur Champion, internationalists, club champions, junior champions, and a great many players who simply wanted to stop wondering why their golf never quite held together.
Most of them arrive with the same problem. Not a flaw in the takeaway or a number on a screen, but a set of ideas about what they are supposed to be doing that has never been examined. They are swinging the way they think they should swing, based on something they were told, something they overheard, or something they saw on television. They have no external view of what they are actually doing. Golf, more than most games, is a game of illusion, and the delay between intention and action fools the eye.
Ian's job is to remove the illusion and replace it with something that works.
Where the approach comes from
Ian turned professional to pursue the technical and teaching side of the game rather than to chase his own results. That distinction matters. The best teachers are usually the best observers, not the best players, because teaching requires an external and objective view of another person.
He became a key member of Bruce Davidson's team at the King's Links Golf Centre in Aberdeen during its heyday, at a time when the centre was one of the most prestigious instruction venues in the country and counted Paul Lawrie and other emerging professionals amongst its students. Bruce Davidson is now Director of Golf at River Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas.
Ian has since coached at the Open Championship and on the European Tour, delivered junior programmes and area squad coaching, and given many thousands of individual lessons at every standard from complete beginner upwards.
How he teaches
There are no quick fixes and no ready made swings. As Ian puts it, the approach does not offer a shortcut, but it does promise to change your golf swing from one that doesn't always work into one that can.
That begins with the person in front of him rather than a model. Ian works out how you see things, how you take on ideas, what you are physically capable of, and what you are genuinely doing as opposed to what you believe you are doing. He is known for asking good questions, and for putting things in terms that make a golfer suddenly recognise their own situation.
Underneath that sits a blueprint. There is a way the golf swing can work, proven through decades of observation and results. It does not mean everyone is taught the same thing, because styles differ enormously and always have. It means you are guided along lines that hold up over time, with one move leading into the next, rather than handed a collection of separate parts and a set of drills that fall apart the moment you play.
Lessons take place in a private, heated indoor bay at Kings Acre, so weather is never the reason a session gets cancelled. Ian is a V1 Pro Coach and uses the V1 Pro system for video analysis and side by side comparison from face on and down the line. The video is not there to generate numbers. It is there because you cannot see yourself, and an honest external view is the fastest route out of the guesswork.
Who it is for
Ian coaches all shapes, sizes and standards. Beginners who want to be taught properly from the start rather than picking up habits that take years to undo. Club golfers who have been going round in circles and want to know why. Low handicappers and aspiring professionals who need someone who can actually see what is happening rather than describe it back to them.
One student went from a handicap of 21 to 11 and shot a 74 along the way. Another, a golf professional himself, wrote after a session: "I played Royal Troon today and hit some irons better than for 20 years."
If you want to be told what you want to hear, there are easier options. If you want to understand your own golf swing and own it, get in touch.
Ian Butcher, PGA "AA" Teaching Professional and V1 Pro Coach Kings Acre Golf Course, Melville Mains, Lasswade, EH18 1AU Telephone +44 (0)7958 080 024 Email ian@ianbutchergolf.com Lessons can also be booked at Kings Acre reception.