Cistercian College’s Director of Golf, Mr. Bobby King, has been awarded “Fellow” status by the Professional Golfers Association, making him one of the only PGA Fellow Coaches in Ireland!
“It’s a fantastic honour to be recognised by the PGA as a Fellow Coach, it really means a lot to me that all of our hard work has not gone unnoticed! We were the first school in the country to set up a golf academy and it has gone from strength to strength over the years!”
“It’s hard to believe it all started from an innocent conversation between myself and Flor O’Brien in Roscrea Leisure Centre about 10 years ago”, Bobby joked. “I used to see Flor in the gym there around the same time every day so we both had the same question for each other, “What do you work at to be able to be here at this time?” and it just went from there! Flor told me he worked in Cistercian and that Director of Sport, Brendan McKeogh, was always keen to explore new sporting opportunities so we met for a chat a few weeks later and organised the first of our outdoor sessions with 2 groups of 8 boys out under the old oak tree. Fast forward to September 2024 and we now have over 100 boys signed up to one of golf programmes and a waiting list of a further 20, there just isn’t enough hours in the day for the amount of golf the Cistercian boys want to play this year and I love it!” Bobby laughed.
“It’s amazing to have a team like we do in Cistercian, everybody here has always been so encouraging and open to ideas, none more so than Director of Sport, Brendan McKeogh, who has has always been on board with my outside the box, or more so, my outside the tee box way of thinking! Brendan is always open to having a chat about ways we can add to the programme and the academy itself. The school motto is “A place to grow” and that is exactly what this place has been for me.
“I am a PGA Fellow Coach now as well as a certified Strength & Conditioning Coach and Elite Performance Coach, about to start into my Master Performance Coach training and I don’t plan on stopping my further education any time soon. I work with golfers who are trying to get better all of the time and if I don’t do the same I’m not really doing them justice.”
“As a school we have had some golfing success in the past with past man Justin Kehoe turning professional and playing in The Open in 2007 as well as past man Sam Murphy winning the Irish Boys Championship in 2020. Sam is currently playing golf in Grand Canyon University in Phoenix Arizona and is the older brother of current 5th year student Luke Murphy who qualified for the Senior All Ireland Schools Championship last year as a 4th year! I hope to add to this success year after year as we continue to gain momentum and build our academy into a golfing stronghold in Ireland.”
“I have been coaching online through the Skillest app for a while so that I can work with golfers from all over the world and keep in contact with our boys during school breaks and it has been fantastic. I see my name trending beside some of the biggest names in the golf coaching industry like Sean Foley, former coach to Tiger Woods, and Cameron McCormick who is Jordan Spieth’s coach and it makes me feel like I’m doing something right! I plan to stay using the app in the future so I can keep up to date with the boys who are heading to golf college in America and maybe one day to the tour, it will be nice to say it all started in CCR.”
