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Home / Sport / Golf

Golf: Tongue to chart new course overseas

By Martin Davidson
8 Nov, 2005 11:38 PM6 mins to read

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Mal Tongue

Mal Tongue

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A production line which has delivered a succession of New Zealand's finest golfers is about to grind to a halt.

Celebrated coach Mal Tongue has revealed his days grooming amateur talent for the professional circuit are numbered.

Ahead of next week's release of his autobiography, The Mal Tongue Story, he
told NZPA he planned concentrating his energies on those in the paid ranks.

"As of next year I will finish with the amateurs outside of my own small stable and will concentrate on the guys who have turned pro," Tongue said.

"New Zealand has been really good to me but I think I have paid back my debt to the country. I have no career left here outside my elite players and my corporate work."

Tongue has been the guiding influence behind many of this country's best players for the past 15 years, most notably reigning US Open champion Michael Campbell, who has penned a foreword for the autobiography.

He and Campbell severed their teacher-pupil relationship in 1997, due in no small part to Tongue's commitment to his clients and players in New Zealand which prevented him from being at Campbell's side.

Any number of others have benefited from his tutelage, among them Stephen Scahill, Gareth Paddison, Tim Wilkinson, Eddie Lee and Mahal Pearce, to name but a few.

Now, with two of the next generation of his players, Brad Iles and Mathew Holten, about to seek their Asian Tour cards, Tongue feels the time has arrived to cut his ties with the amateur side of the game.

He intends travelling extensively next year with Iles and Holten, while also assisting others like Lee and Pearce, who are based in Asia, as well as Wilkinson, who has just come off a highly satisfactory rookie season on the Nationwide Tour in the United States.

As well, he and Wellington entrepreneur Dean Eggers have established U Management to provide practical assistance to young players wanting to make a living from the game.

"It's named for the players. It's all about them succeeding," said Tongue, who hoped the firm would have three players on its books by January.

Tongue and Eggers will work to solicit investors to bankroll players for a period of three years.

That will enable the players to concentrate solely on their games, without the constant worry of meeting their travelling and accommodation costs as well as normal living expenses.

"We are approaching individual backers. It's rather like owning a share of a racehorse, but in this case it is a golfer.

"Our dream is to have eight players who can compete consistently on the world's tours, and I think in time we can get that."

It is all part of Tongue's answer to a problem which has plagued New Zealand golf for the past decade.

Many players have left the paupers' ranks with much fanfare and promptly disappeared from view. The cossetted existence they led in the amateur game invariably left them ill prepared for the harsh realities of life as a touring pro.

He will continue to take responsibility for his current amateurs -- Josh Geary, Riki Kauika, Perry Hayman, Aaron Leech and James Hamilton -- but once they graduate to pro status or drift out of the game, Tongue will effectively withdraw himself from an amateur landscape he has dominated since emigrating from England in 1988.

With a bold-as-brass personality, an intuitive eye for talent and a rare ability to impart technical knowledge, Tongue did not take long to command an audience.

The emergence of Campbell and Scahill quickly gave him credibility and New Zealand Golf (NZG) administrators wasted little time before appointing him national coach in 1994.

He remained at the very centre of NZG's coaching advancements until March last year when Tongue resigned as the national director of coaching, as did his five assistants, in a show of solidarity.

Newshounds are sure to immediately turn to the chapter in Tongue's book detailing his very public divorce from NZG.

The chapter concerned was a potential legal minefield and was rewritten close to 10 times, with one-third of the original text not surviving to see the light of day.

It was a particularly difficult time for Tongue as he found himself caught in the crossfire of petty politics which had infested NZG's head office and boardroom in Wellington.

Tongue said a lot at the time and is sure to expand on his reasons for walking, a departure followed within days by then NZG chief executive Peter Dale.

Tellingly, NZG has not sought to replace Tongue nor his assistants -- Shane Scott, Murray Macklin, Brian Boys, Bob McDonald and Simon Thomas.

Instead, it has opted instead to leave the guidance of its elite Academy members to their individual coaches.

A similar path was taken seven years ago by New Zealand Tennis, which has since admitted it erred in bringing in an individual rather than national programme for junior development.

Tongue thinks NZG has missed a trick.

"Tennis abrogated its responsibility to young players by its poor coaching programme. Golf is doing the same thing," Tongue said.

"I don't want to see golf go down the gurgler, but that's what is happening."

For now, Tongue is happy to say that is the concern of others.

He has plenty of other matters to keep himself busy, including a a million-dollar NZ Golf Academy project nearing completion at St Peter's School in Cambridge.

Tongue has lent his name and support to the development and will continue to pop in regularly as a consultant.

Meanwhile, three of his former national assistant coaches -- McDonald, Macklin and Thomas -- will be based at the college.

These three, plus Tongue and Brian Boys and Shane Scott, spent the early days after their split with NZG developing their own computerised golf teaching system called Nine Lines.

Tongue said it was a world class concept and one the group owned the intellectual property rights to.

"New Zealand Golf will never again get six diverse coaches to work together like we did -- and we still do," he said.

- NZPA

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