Meet the award-winning Scottish PGA pro making a big impact at two venues combining golf and business
Kenny Monahan opens up on wearing two hats and feeling equally excited about both roles
If you’re ever feeling disillusioned about golf, you should pick up the phone and call Kenny Monaghan. You’d get him at either Stirling Golf Club, where he’s the head PGA professional, or Strathclyde Park Family Golf Centre, which he owns, and I’ll guarantee that he will have something to say that creates a positive feeling about the game.
“I have been very fortunate as I enjoy the business element,” he admitted, having done just that in a chat with this correspondent, of being a PGA professional in the first instance but also someone who has embraced how the role has changed and now requires real commercial nous and forward-thinking, too. “But it’s also in the game that I love, so the two of them compliment each other well.”
Monaghan, a Lanarkshire man who did his PGA training under Alan McCloskey at Bothwell Castle, celebrated the eighth anniversary of his arrival at Stirling earlier this year following a spell in Dubai. He’s made a big impact at the club that sits in the shadows of Stirling Castle and is now doing likewise in his home patch.
Strathclyde Park Family Golf Centre has been transformed over the past 18 months since he bought it, having practised there as a “kid” and revealing that he’d had his eyes on it for some time. “My wife, Amy, tells the story all the time about how we go to the gym across the road and once said of the golf centre, ‘if that place ever comes up for sale, we need to go for it’. In the summer of 2024, I kind of caught wind of it that Willie Walker was moving on and, listen, I am absolutely delighted to get it as it’s been amazing.”
It was a masterstroke, albeit a fairly simple step, adding the word ‘Family’ into the name of the facility, as was putting Toptracer - the ball-tracking technology - in the bays and, as part of an entire internal refurbishment, adding a Birdies Cafe facility as well.
‘58 kids signed up to weekly coaching’
“A year ago, we had no juniors, but now we have 58 kids signed up to weekly coaching through Stuart Kerr and Kirstin Scott, another PGA pro,” added Monaghan, who was in Madrid last week along with Amy as the centre won Toptracer Newcomer of the Year in the EMEA region covering Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
“Parents come in and have a coffee and it just makes it a nicer place for people to come. It kind of fits for all. On the boundaries of Strathclyde Park, you’ve got walkers, cyclists, runners etc and a running club come here every Saturday for a coffee once they’ve done their run. It just adds to the flow of it.
“I did nine years a mile up the road at Bothwell Castle with Alan McCloskey. It’s been great that I have been able to reconnect with Lanarkshire given that I have been through at Stirling for the last eight years. People are catching wind from people saying ‘remember Kenny, the assistant pro at Bothwell Castle?’ and they are now coming down to the range. That’s been absolutely brilliant. Loads of golfers and golf clubs are always looking for a facility like this.”
While he may now be running two businesses, there is no danger of him taking his eye off the ball at Stirling, where Monaghan played a part in the creation of a new academy facility for both members and the local community that opened in 2020 and is now the driving force behind a 36-hole Tartan Tour Pro-Am in May being sponsored by FES, with the proceeds going to a clubhouse project.
“When I arrived at Stirling, we refurbished the shop, which was a traditional old-school pro’s shop that was a bit run down and needed a freshening up, and put in an indoor studio,” he recalled. “To then bring the services part of it - club-fitting, coaching, good pros like Scott Borrowman- I think was the big thing.
“Stirling is looking ahead. We are looking at a clubhouse project just now and, whether we build a new one or knock down part of the one we’ve got, the club is forward thinking and I think that’s how Stirling has done really well.”
‘It’s just adding to things all the time’
As Monaghan has done in carving out a reputation as a putting coach. “I’ve probably helped 50-60 pros with their putting over the past three or four years,” he said. “That’s guys from DP World Tour level down while I also work with complete beginners through introductory Aimpoint classes.
“I think we were the first Scotty Cameron fitting facility in Scotland and now I’m on the elite leadership advisory staff for Titleist, a position that only eight guys in the UK hold, and I was out with them at the PGA Show in Florida earlier this year. It’s just adding to things all the time.
“With the putting, I always felt from my own golf that I never really did enough. I remember going to do some training with (top putting coach) Phil Kenyon eight years ago and doing his certification. I remember him saying at one point that if you want to be serious at this, you need to be really good at green reading, so I decided to go down the Aimpoint route and I think there’s maybe two or three of us who are Aimpoint-certified in the country.”
On the back of a feelgood factor at the club, Stirling currently has two Scotland internationals in youngsters Thomas Kelly and Erin Huskie while it is staging one of the Final Qualifiers later in the year for the ISPS Handa Senior Open at Gleneagles.
“People at the Strathclyde Park range sometimes ask me ‘when are you going to chuck Stirling?’” he admitted, laughing. “That won’t be happening because I love it there and love going to my work there.”
See, I told you he'd make you feel good about golf!
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.