It’s been a whole different ball game for Spencer Henderson over the last few years. “If you put a picture of Tiger Woods up in front of the kids in Azerbaijan, they wouldn’t have had a clue who he was,” said the 42-year-old. Given Woods has been missing in action for months with a gammy back, there are some seasoned golf scribblers who probably wouldn’t recognise him either.
Henderson has travelled full circle. Having departed his role as the national coach for the Scotland under-18s squad in 2010, he stopped off for a stint with the Turkish Golf Federation that lasted two-and-a-half years before venturing on to Azerbaijan for 18 months. Now, armed with the experiences of developing golf in countries where the game was very much in its infancy, he’s back where it all started in his homeland.
“When I first went to Azerbaijan, there were maybe five kids playing golf and hardly any adults,” he said as he reflected on his time in Baku. “If Turkey was a challenge then Azerbaijan was doubly challenging. There was zero golf culture there. They had one course and one golf academy in the whole country. By the time I left we had introduced over 1000 kids to golf. It was very rewarding.”
The call of the auld haunts o’ hame proved hard to ignore, though. “Turkey and Azerbaijan were great experiences but at the end of the day, they’re not home,” added the Cupar resident. “I wanted to get back and I hoped I would get the job.”
While he deals with the nation’s emerging talents in the amateur ranks, Henderson is well aware that among the professionals on the main European Tour, Scotland doesn’t have a male player under the age of 32. “I don’t want to be here in 10 years saying ‘we’ve not got anybody on tour under 30’,” he said. “But it’s hard work for our players. You have to want to do it. Look at Jason Day? He once said that if Tiger Woods gets up at six in the morning then he had to get up at half five because he’d never catch him otherwise. It’s easy to say ‘I want to be a tour player’ but how many are really willing to make the sacrifices? We are trying to guide them and help them. If they don’t want to listen to me or their parents then you show them somebody like Jason Day working for hours each day on his short game. That work ethic is hard to instil.”
In this fickle game, you just never know who will strike it rich. A few years ago, Henderson was fortunate to see at first hand the talents of a certain Jordan Spieth when he was just 16 competing in the Spirit International, a major amateur team event, in Texas. It was something of an eye-opener for Henderson. “I went along and watched him on the range and thought ‘oh well, he’s so, so’,” he admitted. “I followed him on the course though and thought ‘ah yes, now I see why they are all raving about him’. He was fantastic, his course management, his short game, his putting. It was all there. But you probably wouldn’t have said that in five years he would have been world No 1."
Improving Scotland’s future fortunes in the pro game won’t be solved by a quick swoosh of a magic 5-iron. A magic putter may be better given the toil and trouble various generations of Scots have had on the greens. It’s a tough, tough existence on the tour and Henderson knows that. “Richie Ramsay came for a clinic with the young lads,” he said. “I think his short game is good so he knocked a few to eight or 10 feet and turned round and said ‘right boys, what do you think of them?’ The lads said ‘yes, that’s good’. He said ‘no, that’s b****y unacceptable. If I was playing against Luke Donald he would have hammered me'. That’s Richie’s will to win, he’s a real competitor. He spoke to the boys for two hours and was brutally honest with everything. You think you’re doing well but you’ve got to work harder.”
For Henderson, helping to nurture a new generation continues to drive him on. “In Azerbaijan, seeing all the kids turning up on a Saturday was great,” he said. "But seeing guys here like David Law progress or someone like Bradley Neil winning the Amateur Championship and then playing in the Masters hit it home and made me think ‘god I want to be back in top amateur golf again’. You miss that kind of thing.”
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