Graeme Fish is a PGA Fellow Professional who has always twinned his Continuing Professional Development with his varied career. Originally from Leeds, Fish was the Head Professional at Vienna Golf Club for 12 years and he now works for Premier Golf.
Based in St Andrews he helps organise, coordinate, entertain, play with and coach overseas golfers on some of the best courses on the planet in Fife.
Alongside that, he has always continued to develop his skills and here he explains how he balances both.
How do you prioritise CPD around your busy schedule?
I’m generally rammed through the summer so it’s more of a winter project for me. In the summer I’m busy for 12 to 14 hours every day, often seven days a week, so when I get the chance to do other things, I’ll do those in the winter.
When I’m busy, I’ll seek out articles or maybe a 40-minute webinar or something shorter. Then in the winter and shoulder months I’ll attend things like masterclasses with Ian Rae. We’ll meet up at a golf club and he’ll have three or four speakers with presentations. They’re excellent and they hold them at superb facilities.
It’s not just what you’re actually listening to and discovering or rediscovering, as in some cases it might be going back to basics, but you’ve got the networking in between. There have been a few regulars there and we’ve made good friends with each other. It’s useful for business too.
What’s your motivation to staying committed to CPD?
I’m always afraid of getting bogged down in such a way that I become stagnant. I love going back to basics and it might be just reading a book on how to play golf. Things have changed over the years since I qualified back in 1999 and some things that I’m learning now will be completely opposite to what we learned back in the day.
You’ve got to keep on top of stuff. For example, if you get a client coming for a swing lesson and you’re telling him to keep your head still, it’s just not doing it. I think it’s really important just to keep up with what’s going on.
I’m always keeping up with what’s coming out on the market because everybody’s going to turn around and say, have you seen the new driver or have you seen this? And if you don’t know about it, you look a bit of an idiot when you’re supposed to be a professional of the game. I just think if you’re a professional, that’s what you should be. You should be as good as you can possibly be. Otherwise, what’s the point in joining in the first place?
Pictured: PGA Fellow Professional Graeme Fish
How do you balance what’s going to be useful for your work and what interests you personally?
I specifically chose to be a PGA Professional and not a PGA coach or PGA Manager. So, with the CPD, I’ve gone down the professional side and that has opened up so many avenues and I’m open to anything.
Because I’m working in an office-based environment, I’ll look at things like the business management section.
Who knows how long I’m going to be doing golf travel for? I’m certainly not looking for a different role but you never know what’s around the corner. Somebody might offer me something a job coaching at a golf club and so I always want to be up to date as far as coaching and teaching is concerned.
What would you say to Members who feel like they are too busy to find time for CPD?
Back in the day we thought that you worked your socks off, got your qualification and then you could sit back a bit. But you soon realise that it’s a game that’s still progressing. If you’re not at the top or as good as you can be, then what’s the point? It’s an ever-evolving game and you can’t just think ‘right, now I’m a Professional, that’s it’.
If you’re not doing anything after qualifying, then you’re just stuck in a rut.
The game’s totally different to what it used to be. It’s a lot faster moving than it used to be. Technology’s taken over just about everything there is now in the game and you’ve got to stay with it.
Also, the PGA training PGA qualifications are so more advanced these days. The next generation will be more qualified than those of us who came through the system 20 years ago.
“CPD is more of a winter project for me. In the summer I’m busy for 12 to 14 hours every day, often seven days a week, so when I get the chance to do other things, I’ll do those in the winter” – Graeme Fish
Have you always thought this way about CPD?
I’ve always done CPD of some description. We didn’t even know it as CPD when we were starting off but we would read books and watch god knows how many VHS tapes. These days you’ve no excuse now because you’ve got everything there at your fingertips and it’s free. You can look up anything online.
Explain what you have gained from staying engaged with CPD
It’s helped me become more structured away from the actual CPD. I now do a weekly blog, every Tuesday morning, which is on all sorts of different things. I started that in Covid and I thought, I’ll build myself a little website and I’ll start doing a blog.
At first, it was to give me something to do and I thought that there was a basic knowledge missing in a lot of golfers. It also got me back into discovering maybe things that I didn’t know too much about, like the history of the game.
It’s taken me all over the place and I’ve really enjoyed it going out. It’s all free, there are no pop-ups and I’ve now got an average of about 5,000 readers a week. It’s a worldwide audience so it’s just grown and grown.
I’ve just learned so much more stuff and you get inspired what others are doing out there. I write about what I’m interested in and I’m learning online and social media skills.
Through one of the PGA courses I met Ellie Skoog (Putting with Ellie) from Sweden. We were just sharing each other’s posts and she then helped me with one of the projects.
So there’s always motivation to write the blog because you’re getting praise out of it and you’re learning out of it. It’s not costing you anything to do it and it takes you places where you’ve probably never been before.
I would suggest that all PGA Members get involved with PGA Learn.