Golf: NZ coaches in mass resignation

3.00pm - By MARTIN DAVIDSON

Six leading coaches today resigned en masse from their New Zealand Golf Association (NZGA) contracts.

The collective walkout is the result of differences between national director of coaching Mal Tongue and NZGA chief executive Peter Dale dating back 18 months.

Matters came to a head last month when Tongue said he felt he no longer had Dale's confidence and he had no option but to tender his resignation.

His team of five assistants -- Shane Scott, Bob McDonald, Murray Macklin, Simon Thomas and Brian Boys -- also issued letters of resignation which landed on Dale's desk alongside that of Tongue's today, giving the NZGA two months' notice before they take effect.

The five assistants had no direct dealings with Dale, but they resigned to demonstrate their support for Tongue, who came to prominence more than a decade ago as the mentor of Michael Campbell.

Dale told NZPA he had received but not accepted the resignations and he hoped the situation could be resolved so that Tongue and his assistants remained in their positions.

"Mal has been told by someone that we were going to sack him. That's absolutely not true. I will try to get him to reconsider.

"I might have offended our national coach and that's not my intention," said Dale, who has approached an intermediary -- a person from outside of golf -- to talk to the coaches on his behalf.

"I can be a bit rough at times but I am not a mean man. I am devastated. If it's something I've said then I withdraw and apologise," Dale said.

"We've been stung by it and will do our very best to recapture the situation.

"I think some people have been talking out of turn and it hasn't been any of our coaches."

Dale said he hoped to have the situation resolved in a matter of days.

Tongue said the decision to resign had been the most difficult thing he had ever had to do.

"It is the saddest thing I've ever had to do because it has always been the job I wanted the most. The motivation for me doing this shows that it is incredibly serious."

It means Tongue, 46, and his assistants will no longer have any official involvement with the NZGA's Titleist Academy, which grooms New Zealand's best amateurs before they invariably turn professional. They will continue to prepare their individual stable of players.

Tongue, first contracted to the NZGA as a technical director in 1994 before being named national coach in 1995 and director of coaching in 1998, told NZPA that his working relationship with Dale had deteriorated to the stage where he felt he needed to cut his official ties with the NZGA.

Tongue believed it was a case of him walking before he was pushed.

He said he was called to a meeting with Dale in Wellington on February 12 in his capacity as a member of the NZGA's high performance committee.

He said Dale told him he had "no vision or strategy for New Zealand golf" and considered terminating his contract.

Dale relented, saying "in the interests of the players in New Zealand I'm not going to do it at this moment".

Tongue said he was shocked.

"What got to me as well was him saying that I was too much I. I found that pretty disappointing because I have always endeavoured to do my best for the development of New Zealand golf," Tongue said.

"My reputation, success and results are there to stand.

"He never mentioned anything about my coaching ability; this was purely to do with another situation which we (the high performance committee) were asked to give an opinion on."

Before leaving Dale's office, Tongue said he was told he was no longer to report directly to Dale but to Graeme Scott, who had been appointed high performance manager in an NZGA head office staffing reshuffle.

Tongue left the meeting unsure of his future but decided to stay on, saying he had always taught his players to show courage and he felt he had to do the same.

"Even after that, as distasteful as it was, I still wanted to prove him wrong."

However, the final straw came less than a week later when Tongue said he received information which further underlined the tensions in his relationship with Dale.

As a result Tongue said he contacted his five assistants and told them he had decided to resign.

All five assistants -- Dunedin's Thomas, Boys, of Hamilton, Macklin, of Wellington, Scott, of Christchurch and McDonald, of Auckland -- told NZPA they had no hesitation to resign once they learned of Tongue's decision.

Macklin said the five assistants had learned a great deal working alongside Tongue.

"He has done stuff for me as a coach that I never thought I'd be able to do, and I'm still miles away from him in terms of his standard of coaching," Macklin said.

"We all recognise as a group that while we have all come warp speed in coaching ability in the last couple of years, he remains a quantum leap ahead of us."

Scott said he doubted some New Zealand golf officials fully understood just how good Tongue was at his job.

"We haven't been brainwashed or anything. The fact is that he is the most gifted coach we've got and the most gifted coach we can probably get as far as knowing what New Zealand needs."

In 2000, NZGA operations manager Phil Aickin underlined the deep respect Tongue had earned.

"We know he's technically brilliant," Aickin said.

"His technical skills are absolutely right up there."

The NZGA sought to harness precisely those skills when establishing the director of coaching role in 1998, in essence to streamline coaching methods throughout the country.

In 2002, they decided to appoint five assistant coaches to work with Tongue.

The NZGA effectively wanted the coaches to sing from the same song sheet, in the hope the consistency in teaching technique would lead to a consistency in player performance.

Dale has been the NZGA's chief executive since August, 2001, when he left a similar role with the Hillary Commission, a Governing sports funding agency which has since been moth balled.

Formerly a competitive canoeist, Dale had limited practical knowledge of golf.

He played the game at a social level only, but he brought to the job an intimate understanding of the inner workings of sports bureaucracy and Government agencies in Wellington.

- NZPA