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'I Just Wanted To Get A Couple Of Starts' – Robert Rock Set To Sign Off Tour Career

Robert Rock never really intended to make a career of playing on Tour - now he's ready to call it a day after 465 starts

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At the recent Dunhill Links the DP World Tour said goodbye to one of its most unlikely, and certainly one of its most unique stars, as Robert Rock signed off with a closing birdie. 

It would be at his favourite course on the planet, the Old Course at St Andrews, but unlike Jack and Arnie and the Swilken Bridge, it would be on the other side of the course at the 9th. There would be grand statements and no fanfare, just the way he’d probably like it. There's half a chance that he might tee it up in Portugal in a couple of weeks but then that will be that.

Rock’s like might never be seen again; a PGA Midlands pro who had managed to get a start at The Belfry through the regional order of merit in 2002. He had previously played in one Challenge Tour event in 1999, which had gone ‘horrendously’, and now he had a seven-month wait to tee it up on the European Tour for the first time.

He came to his 36th hole, the 9th on the Brabazon, needing a par to make the cut with a wedge in his hand.

“All I had to do was carry the front bunker and avoid the water and two-putt it. Instead I mishit it, a bit squeezy and thin, and it buried in the face of the bunker. I wasn’t very good at bunkers so I got it out to 35 feet and three-putt it. After months and months of preparation, and 35 holes of hard graft, I thinned a wedge and that was that,” Rock says of his closing double-bogey.

The following year he was back at The Belfry but this time he would make the cut and, three starts later, he tied for 4th at the Forest of Arden .

“I just wanted to get a couple of tour starts. I couldn’t see myself doing it through the school and it never even entered my head to do it through the Challenge Tour so my main option was to do well at regional level, get a couple of starts and see where that took me.

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“Going into 2003 my biggest cheque was about £5,000, within two months I had won over £120k. That was unheard of. After the Forest of Arden I remember paying my mortgage off at the time. In 2002 I didn’t pay my affiliate entry fee, the following year I qualified for Wentworth as well and I was told that I might get into some other events. I didn't have the £2,500 entry fee but Paul Casey gave me some good advice to do it. I really just wanted to do it to see myself on the money list and, even if I finished 200th, at least there would be a record of me playing a little bit on the European Tour."

Fast forward to today and there are 465 starts next to Rock’s name. 

In the past 20 years Rock has done things his own way which has been a very welcome distraction to the automaton nature of the modern tour pro. While the majority of tour pros will shoehorn various sponsors across themselves Rock has kept things simple. There haven’t been many equipment deals over the years and most of them have ended with a few regrets as he’s stuck with a policy of playing the clubs that best suit his game and a Titleist ProV1 ball that will always be in his bag. In an unpredictable game he likes his constants which makes it easier to decipher whether it is pilot or equipment error.

The swing is a thing of beauty and something that was picked apart and put together again in his early days on tour. One lightbulb moment came about after spending some time with Mac O’Grady, otherwise it’s based on an exhaustive knowledge and interest in how the body moves with a club in hand. His favourite swingers would still likely be Sam Snead and Ben Hogan and his teenage years were spent mimicking the likes of Faldo, Woosnam, Price, Seve, Couples, Norman and Crenshaw. 

As for his lack of a baseball cap and THAT hairdo his outlook is equally as straightforward.

“I get asked about the lack of a baseball cap all the time. It's pretty simple, I wore one as part of a deal with one manufacturer and hated it and a hat deal has never interested me since. I like being self-employed and to not be told what I should be wearing every day. The other reason is I’ve got a big shaped head and they don’t tend to fit or suit me. My hair’s thick so it would be like wearing a woolly hat. I get the visor, I’ll occasionally wear a flat cap and I even get a straw hat but baseball caps have never made sense.”

As for the biggest no-no in the game and golfing fashion's most heinous crime, the white belt, Rock has always been way ahead of the curve.

“Your white belt that should be permanently attached to your white trousers, at the back of the wardrobe, and the trousers should only come out if it’s roasting hot. I'm not sure that either item of clothing should ever have been invented. You would never wear white trousers out of the house, imagine going for a meal with your other half and wearing some white trousers. I’m not sure there should even be golf trousers, just trousers.”

For all the talk of the swing and the style Sunday January 29, 2012 will always be the date that Rock will be best remembered for. In Abu Dhabi Rock went off in the joint lead with the player he had watched from the pro shop when he was an assistant pro on £200 a week – Tiger Woods. To that point Rock had only played in six majors, Tiger had won 14 of them.

“It wasn’t about trying to win, if it was anyone else I would just be thinking about that, the bottom line was that I wanted to enjoy it just for my own pride. And I just wanted to play OK and not tell the story that I panicked and shot loads and thankfully I didn’t.

“I had six months where my iron play was really good for me. My chipping and putting weren't great but I was hitting it close enough to score well so Abu Dhabi came at the right time. I enjoyed all of it right down until the 72nd hole when I realised that I could mess it up – then I thought that I could win and it started to fall apart. Another hole and it would have been interesting and, by the end, I actually had to ask Peter Hanson whether I had won or not.”

A huge part of Rock’s charm is his ability to be normal in a not very normal world. For a few years in a different lifetime I would ghost write his column in a magazine and there was never any need for any managers to get in the way. He would always try hard with it, never wanted anything in return and he would often ring to say thanks for how it turned out.

More recently I managed to persuade him to share some of his stories on Instagram for no other reason than people would find them interesting. The only proviso was that he didn't want to come across as self-promoting.

Like many others I’ll miss forever scrolling up and down a leaderboard for a peek of his name and the little knot of excitement when he goes on a bit of a birdie blitz and, conversely, I’ll always cherish when he gave me a shot-by-shot breakdown of his closing 10 in India which remains some of the funniest minutes of my life.

In more recent times Rock has helped turn around the careers of many of his peers, including Lee Westwood and Matt Wallace . Wallace first started working with Rock in the middle of 2017 and it kickstarted a run that nearly got him into Europe's Ryder Cup team in Paris the following year. 

"I would see Rocky coaching some people each week on tour. I didn’t know him from Adam and I went up to him in Ireland and introduced myself and asked if he wouldn’t mind having a look at my swing," explains Wallace .

"That was the Wednesday, I played Thursday and he asked how it went. I said it wasn’t great so he said he’d see me on the practice ground at 7am the next day and he wasn’t off until the afternoon. I thought that’s pretty cool, we did some stuff and I started birdie-birdie the next morning but still missed the cut. But I knew from that moment that everything was going to be pretty good."

In the years to come Rock’s legacy may well turn out to be away from his playing and coaching exploits and rather his junior tour which he set out to create something for kids who aren’t club golfers.

“I think it’s part of your job as a golf pro to do it. Maybe it’s part of coming from a PGA pro background, someone took you on at some point and you became an assistant. When you become qualified you feel a duty to pass things on. 

"I’m inspired by people like Paul Lawrie and Stevie Gallacher, the amount of work they do is incredible and I’d feel that I wasn’t doing a proper job if I didn’t attempt to do something similar. Lawrie is your model golf pro as far as I can see, he does what he can and more."

Mark has worked in golf for over 20 years having started off his journalistic life at the Press Association and BBC Sport before moving to Sky Sports where he became their golf editor on skysports.com. He then worked at National Club Golfer and Lady Golfer where he was the deputy editor and he has interviewed many of the leading names in the game, both male and female, ghosted columns for the likes of Robert Rock, Charley Hull and Dame Laura Davies, as well as playing the vast majority of our Top 100 GB&I courses. He loves links golf with a particular love of Royal Dornoch and Kingsbarns. He is now a freelance, also working for the PGA and Robert Rock. Loves tour golf, both men and women and he remains the long-standing owner of an horrific short game. He plays at Moortown with a handicap of 6.

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Robert Rock is having newfound success on the European Tour—as a swing instructor

ANTALYA, Turkey — Robert Rock isn’t part of the 75-player field at the $7 million Turkish Airlines Open, the sixth of eight Rolex Series events on this season’s European Tour. But golf’s most famous head of hair is still to be found on and around the picturesque Montgomerie Maxx Royal course this week. Known also for the quality and efficiency of his full swing that at its best helped him knock off Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy down the stretch to win the 2012 Abu Dhabi Championship, “Rocky” has become a unique figure on the Old World circuit. Still exempt after finishing 108th on this season’s Race to Dubai, the 42-year-old Englishman doubles as one of the most sought-after swing coaches.

“I like to consider myself an old-style golf pro,” says Rock, a two-time European Tour winner. “I’ve always taught people. I started as a club pro and never really thought I’d be playing tournaments. So I’m just returning to that, an area of the game I’ve always enjoyed and where I feel like I can make a contribution.”

Rock’s most high-profile client so far has been rising English star Matt Wallace, No. 28 in the World Ranking, but that might change. Ten-time European Ryder Cup player Lee Westwood is the latest recruit to a growing stable that numbers nearly two dozen.

“Rocky and I have grown a lot together,” Wallace says. “I love the way he teaches. And I love the stuff he tells me that has nothing to do with the swing. When I played with Tiger at the Open this year, [Rock] gave me so much great advice about how to handle that. He has taken me to the next level, really. When he tells me what will work under pressure, he really knows. And he can get inside my head better than someone who is just a swing coach.”

Part-time psychologist Rock may be, but his main focus is on the full swing. It is a subject in which he is well-versed.

“It’s nice to be known for my swing,” Rock says. “I’ve worked hard on it. I have always tried to eliminate extraneous movement. I like efficiency. I’m not a naturally good golfer, so I’ve learned the game bit by bit, eliminating the problem bits in my swing and the bad shots along the way. I’ve had to do it that way. I’ve never been a great putter. You can’t afford too many sloppy shots if you are not making too many putts.”

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Interestingly, Rock’s coaching career started with two Ladies European Tour players, Amy Boulden and Kelsey MacDonald. European Tour player Oliver Wilson was next, the former Ryder Cupper coming to Rock in 2014 and winning the Dunhill Links Championship almost immediately. These days, the players Rock works with (alongside two associates) include Pablo Larrazabal, Nino Bertasio, Matthias Schwab, Wade Ormsby, Jason Scrivener, Thomas Bjorn and Bradley Dredge.

That list contains a wide and diverse range of actions, proof enough that Rock has never been tempted to create swings and players in his image. He retains a somewhat old-fashioned approach to his second job.

“Aesthetics are not that important to me,” Rock says. “A really good swing tends to look quite nice, but it doesn’t have to. If you are careful and organize the bits that matter, you can make just about anything work. Plus, I don’t want to be the sort of coach that uses endless devices to help a player. TrackMan doesn’t have ears, which is why I like to work out what players are doing. I like to watch. I like to listen to the strike. I like to make sure shots sound as if they are coming off the club properly. That is something that only comes after years of paying attention. OK, shots often look similar. But if they don’t sound crisp, the player isn’t going to be too consistent, especially under pressure.”

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What Wallace also appreciates about working with Rock is that he doesn’t necessarily take himself too seriously. “He’s older than me. He’s uglier than me. But he does have great hair,” Wallace jokes. “I can’t imagine what he has lost in hat endorsements.”

As for his playing career going forward, Rock is sanguine but realistic. He recognizes that the potential “black hole” that can engulf so many in their mid-40s—no longer competitive on the regular tour, too young for the senior circuit—is getting closer.

“I’m going to play as long as I am exempt,” Rock said. “This year I’ve played 20 events. I’ll do the same next year. As I’m going to be on tour anyway, I might as well play. That actually helps me help my guys. I can relate exactly to what they are seeing and doing, which is not to say many players couldn’t do what I am doing. Guys out here know more than they think they know. But people get a little bit scared by coaching. They think you have to know loads—and I suppose you do—but I can think of plenty who would have a lot to offer as coaches even as they are still playing. Right now, though, I’m the only one.”

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Final Qualifying: Shot 69-66 at Walton Heath Golf Club (Old and New Courses) in England on May 20

Despite being officially retired from the professional tours to focus on instruction at this Robert Rock Academy, the Englishman managed to post 9-under 135 in a 36-hole final qualifier at Walton Heath Golf Club in England to earn one of the nine available spots. This will be Rock's third U.S. Open but first since missing the cut at The Olympic Club in 2012. Rock joined the European Tour (now DP World Tour) as an affiliate member in 2003. His breakthrough season came in 2009 with three runner-up finishes. That included the Irish Open when he lost a playoff to amateur Shane Lowry in a playoff. Rock registered five professional wins, two of which came on the European Tour. He captured the 2011 BMW Italian Open and the 2012 Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship. Rock decided to retire from professional golf in 2022. Last year, he won the Merseyside Open on the European Players Tour. He now is a golf instructor.

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Robert Rock is a progressive and intuitive golf professional from England. A contemporary of his fans and peers, Robert is multiple winner on the men’s European Tour with a world renowned classical golf swing.

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Natalie is a PGA Golf Professional at Morley Hayes, East Midlands Golf Academy. As well as managing the operations of The Robert Rock Junior Golf Tour, she teaches all levels of golfers and offers individual and group lessons.

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Robert Rock Junior Golf Tour provides a fun environment for young, aspiring golfers from all over the UK to compete in events. Young golfers can play against their peers on different courses, have fun, improve their technique, add character building values, learn the rules of golf and the correct etiquette. Whilst doing so, they can […]

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Player Blog: Robert Rock 

Beating Tiger Woods in Abu Dhabi in 2012. Starting his journey in golf as a local club pro. Making the wrong choices for his game. Coaching over 20 players on Tour. Robert Rock relives the best moments of his career and talks about the tough times in this week’s Player Blog presented by Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

As the years go by, you just feel lucky to have played with Tiger Woods. Win or lose you just feel lucky to have played with Tiger in a tournament as a European player. You’re never expected to win that tournament, so I was just happy to have played with him. He plays in Europe very rarely and so you have to play your way into facing him which is quite hard to do. For a normal Tour pro like me, just to get the chance was pretty cool. I get asked a lot what he was like to play with and it’s nice to be able to report that he was just a class golfer and a pro and that’s all you can want from the greatest player, isn’t it? It’s nice to be able to say that. 

I took on Tiger in his Sunday red. Going into that day I was just happy just to be in that group and watch him potentially win a tournament. I’d watched most of them, I’ve watched some of them in the pro shop as an assistant pro, I’ve watched some of them in the evenings at home, some of them while out on the road playing tournaments myself and that was the closest you could get to watch, so I was prepared to enjoy it. It became much more than that, though. When you beat that fella in a tournament people don’t forget it. I never will. Even some of the younger guys now. I played with Rasmus Højgaard on Tuesday morning and he asked me about it, he’d have been 11! It’s just brilliant.

My golf hasn’t been very good since . I made some choices about my golf game that I see a lot of my colleagues doing. You reach a certain point where you play your best and you want to get better, which is right in its idea but how we go about it is really a big decision. I got it wrong for a year or two and I’ve played ok since but I probably spoilt the run I was on. I should have picked and chose where I played and just made the most of my game as it was, rather than try and make everything great because it already was good. I didn’t get to play long enough with it, I probably played for a year with my best golf and I reckon I could have got as much as I’d of wanted out of it if I’d made the right choices. I was obviously over-achieving and to just maintain that would have been wise. I could have taken the tension off my long game and really started working a lot harder on my short game, but I didn’t enjoy it back then and I really, really do now. It’s weird. I’m now more content with my long game and I enjoy learning and practising, pitching and chipping. My putting now is so much better than it was during that period. I never thought I’d be a good putter but now I’d class myself as quite a good one, I’ve got a good understanding of what I’m trying to do and that’s surprised me coming right at the end of my career. You spend twenty years as a pro and really struggle with putting, you’re almost right to think that you’ll not be a good putter at any point but I found something and with the help of somebody else I now feel good at it, I could have done with learning that a long time ago and it might have saved me a lot of graft but you don’t find it unless you’re looking for it.

The 60 in Ireland saved my whole year last year. That was an amazing day! It came out of nothing really, I mean I had been putting good and there were a lot of tournaments where I’d been putting quite well, but to have a chance for a 59 that day was awesome. I guess that starts to come when you believe you’re a better putter, that would never have happened before. That round saved my whole year last year. I played very averagely and took most of April off because my son was doing his exams at school, so the early part of the season didn’t go great. I made a ten on the last hole during the third round in India when I was going well. Then I did very little through until Ireland and just had a great week. After that I got in The Open and played poorly there, really hurt my thumb on holiday and I did nothing after that, so without that week in Ireland I’d be gone.

This is my 19th year on the European Tour. The last couple of years have been frustrating really. I had a problem with my back just through travelling and sleeping funny and I’d managed that for a season, but it stopped me hitting loads of balls. Then last year after Ireland I felt really good but hurt my thumb and couldn’t hit any balls, so I tried to play the rest of the year without any practice, which I hated, and then only from December onwards I’ve been able to hit balls again, so I’ve hit loads since. But, having that period where I wasn’t able to practice when I wanted to, that just makes you keener. I didn’t like it when it was happening, but it’s done me some good.

My amateur career wasn’t great, so I knew I was going to be a coach one day. My background was in coaching, I started off as a club pro, and during my amateur career I felt there wasn’t anything there that showed I could be a professional. I knew I could win money in smaller events but doing it on this stage for twenty years, I’d never have thought that, so my plan was to be a coach because I’d always worked on my own game and always studied. I wasn’t in county golf squads or getting England coaching, so your choices are paying for lessons, which for a young pro are expensive, or you learn it yourself and that was the only option really for me. So, I learnt as much as I could, through books, watching, listening, then I got to play out here surrounded by the best coaches and best players, so I kept my eyes and ears open. 

Before I came out on Tour I’d only had a couple of lessons. I had one or two from local pros growing up but the people you want lessons from, your David Leadbetters and Butch Harmons, was just unrealistic. They’re busy and expensive. So, I learnt through the best way I could – just for my own benefit. I also thought it might help my teaching, which I was doing at the time, and then some of the pros started to trust my opinion after seeing the work I put in over the years. Sometimes as a golfer you get a little confused as to what you want to work on and you want to be able to ask somebody, so I guess I was the fella who was around who would give an honest opinion and it’s gone from there really.

Now I coach 20 players. It’s a real mixed bag and that’s the beauty of it. There’s those with so much experience and then there’s the younger lads who have their whole careers ahead of them and I can hopefully help them avoid the same mistakes I’ve made, keep them working harder, give them a plan to stick to so they don’t go off on tangents. We haven’t had to say no to people because of Liam James and Benn Barham who help me so now we’re near 20 players. Matt Wallace, Matthias Schwab, Jason Scrivener, Wade Ormsby, Pablo Larrazábal, Thomas Bjørn, Lee Westwood to name a few. I’ve learnt a lot from them too, Larrazábal and Bjørn in particular have helped me with my short game. That’s the nice part about having a group of players, as I can say to one player ‘he’s good so let’s watch him’ and they can bounce off each other. I can have a pool of thoughts after seeing how they all tackle certain shots.

I don’t use Trackman. I have my own method. Trackman is probably one of the reasons that sends players down the wrong route and stops them from playing their best golf. It’s a new piece of technology and you’re left to interpret it how you choose because it doesn’t come with a set of instructions. I’ve learnt to trust my own judgement of what I see and I think I’ve been around enough good players to see good golf shots, you can see them, hear them, tell people when they’re in the right frame of mind and when their swings are in order you can see it clearly. But, the game has changed and that is a massive part of it now, hitting it a long way. I was talking to Bryson the other day; we get on well and he tells me what he’s been doing all the time. When he first came out to Abu Dhabi in 2016 as an amateur, I just about knew his name and he was right behind me on the range hitting balls. I didn’t look round, but he was just machine-gunning these three woods, like ball-after-ball, his caddie was popping them down and the strike just sounded awesome. So, I turned around to see who it was, interested in his style after seeing his clubs and just watched him hit balls. We’ve been chatting ever since. Back then he was a normally built young fella, but I saw him the other day and he’s massive now. He’s increased his ball speed from 180mph to 200mph which is a huge increase and to think you’re capable of doing that in your early twenties! If I’d known the way the game was heading, I would have probably geared my game slightly differently.

The game in my opinion is ruined. The R&A and everyone else were way too slow at doing anything about it because you assumed there’d be some sort of distance limit and that accuracy would always be a primary part of golf but it’s not and they’ve let it go out of control. It’s too far gone now and the game in my opinion is ruined. I don’t like this type of golf but it’s what we’re facing and that’s what we’ve got to learn to manage, it’s tough but it’s twenty years too late. I used to hit my driver as hard as I possibly could all the time and I was good off the tee but thought this couldn’t possibly last, I’ve got to be better at the rest of it as well. I used to hit it 300 yards, but I can’t anymore so that’s the way everything’s changed and it’s disappointing. For the young lads now, they’ve got to plan for the future which is endless distance, so why not get yourself super ripped and have 200mph ball speed.

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