Rick Shiels reflects on how his PGA Qualification laid the foundations for YouTube stardom.

Rick Shiels has developed the most successful YouTube channel in the golf sphere, playing the finest courses in the world and collaborating with some of the finest players.

The PGA Qualification represented the starting point of his journey, and he holds the knowledge that he picked up along the way from other PGA Professionals as crucial in his development as a coach-turned on-screen presence.

From teaching juniors golfers at Mere in Knutsford to Trafford Golf Centre in Manchester, Shiels retains immense pride at being a PGA Professional and has made sure his qualification has stuck to the end of his surname during every development of his career.

Shiels describes how becoming a PGA Professional provided a base for him in the early stages of his career, and how other PGA Professionals can evolve into a variety of roles in this day and age.

How did becoming a PGA Professional open doors for you at the start of your career?

It just professionalised things. I am really proud to be a PGA Professional. It was a real ambition of mine, when I went to college from 16 to 18 years old, and it was drummed into us with the pathways of golf and I realised very early doors that I wasn’t going to play as a professional golfer. I wasn’t good enough, but I wanted to still put my golf shoes on every day and call it a job.

I loved helping people. I loved to be able to help juniors or new golfers or more established golfers, so when I got on to the PGA course and with going to The Belfry once a year, I met loads of great friends there, people I still keep in contact with now. I learned so much working as an assistant professional at Mere Golf and Country Club at the time, learning again from PGA Professionals.

It really set me up for life and it gave me the foundations to build a career on.

Would there be any PGA Professionals at the start that acted as a mentor?

100%. I’ve got several! Natalie Adams from Mere, she’s at High Legh now. Natalie was the first teaching professional that I had been in close contact with. Seeing how she built her business and knowing that there was potential and a pathway to build a business on coaching that I didn’t really know before that, seeing what she did with junior development and ladies’ coaching. I was like, ‘This is amazing, I want to do that please!’

Pete Styles, who’s at Trafford Golf Centre. I really love chatting to Pete, we share a lot of knowledge together. We used to coach for 12 hours and we’d be there in the car park at 10pm at Trafford Golf Centre chatting for another hour about the future, and business and all of these other things.

At the end of the day, you’re almost in the same boat. We were weirdly competitive with each other, as we wanted to almost out-coach each other, but you’re also working together. And then Gareth Benson, who was my first-ever golf coach. He is at Hillside now. He used to teach me, and he was my first pin-up professional that I knew. He used to be in all of the golf magazines.

I used to think, ‘That is pretty cool, how do you do that job? That’s awesome!’ When I started coaching and building my own coaching career, I took a bit of information from everybody. I loved how Gareth promoted himself as a busy golf coach.

If anything, that was almost what started my idea of marketing myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the best response from all of these golf magazines, as I didn’t have anything to offer, so I turned to YouTube. If I can’t be on the front of golf magazines, could I be on the front cover of a YouTube video?

I could control my own narrative then. I have worked with many golf magazines since that. I learned the business side from Natalie Adams, the intelligence and the communication skills from Pete Styles, so I kind of blended everyone’s strengths and then forged my own path.

Are there are any parts of your PGA qualification that you still use or fall back on today?

First off, it’s still in all of my names: Rick Shiels PGA.

It’s PGA because I’m proud to be a PGA golf coach. I still pay my subscription every year, I’m very fond of being a PGA Professional. As much as I don’t coach anymore, I’m still very passionate about coaching. I still try and give advice when I can. I’m proud to be in that collection of professional golfers who all have the same ambition of growing the game and helping people get better at golf.

Do you think people outside of the golf world appreciate the value of a PGA Professional and what goes into becoming one?

I think over the years, the PGA Professional has become a lot more involved in other aspects of golf, to directors of golf, general managers and not only coaching. The knowledge that a PGA Professional has – it might be teaching. There are PGA coaches teaching on other tours. That’s unbelievable, what a dream job for a PGA golf coach!

But it is PGA golfers who are now running huge venues around the world like in Dubai, Australia, Singapore, and South Korea. PGA Professionals are everywhere and it’s certainly not the stereotype of the Mars Bar seller now! There are so many more strands of business that you can go into.