The Skillest Podcast

Steve Astle joins Baden and Clappy for an unscripted, end-of-season riff on where golf coaching is headed. Steve is one of the most influential figures in the industry, and his influence is especially pronounced in how coaches build and scale their businesses online, not just his track record coaching in person. He's the founder of Golf Coaching Business, has been working with Skillest for nine to ten years, and has spent well over a decade helping coaches turn scattered one-off lessons into structured, recurring revenue. Steve traces his own journey from a public-course teaching pro filming students on VHS to becoming what he calls "a lighthouse in the industry" during COVID, when he built a 1,000-coach Facebook community almost overnight and started running weekly business-development calls for coaches. That period is also where he met and mentored Clappy, helping him move off charging £30 a lesson and into a subscription-based coaching model.
The conversation covers why hybrid (in-person plus online) coaching is now the norm, why subscription-based programs beat one-off lesson packs (Steve calls this his single biggest influence on the industry, shifting coaches from "six-for-five" pricing to committed programs), and why personal brand and social presence have become non-negotiable for growing a coaching business. A major thread is AI: how tools like Claude and MCP integrations with Skillest are letting coaches automate lesson prep, pull player stats and Arccos data, and surface previously hidden information, while all three agree AI should add value to a coach's business rather than replace the human relationship at its core. Steve closes with his "5 Rs" framework for a durable coaching business (recruit, results, relationships, retention, reflection) and argues that despite every technology shift, people still buy from people.

Ryan Hager, Director of Instruction at Plainfield Country Club in New Jersey, joins the show to talk about his path into coaching, his time training under Jim McLean, and what it's really like teaching at one of the Northeast's elite private clubs. Ryan shares the story of his mentor Wes Mensing, whose sudden death shaped his decision to go into instruction, and breaks down what makes McLean's six-month certification program so demanding: rigorous critical-thinking training, legendary Monday morning meetings, and a curriculum built to produce coaches who can actually teach, not just demonstrate.
The conversation moves through Ryan's own coaching philosophy (built from a "toolbox" of 40+ influences rather than one rigid system), what separates coaching from teaching, and why he believes a swing doesn't need to look perfect as long as it's repeatable and pain-free. He also opens up about building a 100K-follower Instagram audience without chasing clickbait, why simplicity beats technical complexity in content that actually helps people, and how he balances that with a full teaching schedule at a private club. Along the way: golf in the Northeast vs. the rest of the world, why he'd rather play Scotland than anywhere in the US, and the seasonal rhythm of a coaching year that runs from a spring/summer sprint into a well-earned winter reset.

Alex Buckner didn't fall in love with coaching, he fell in love with winning. In this episode, the tour coach behind Marco Penge's breakout three win 2025 season opens up about reverse engineering an entire career: from a failed playing career and three jobs just to fund tournament entries, to becoming an "OG" Skillest power user documenting thousands of in person lessons, to reinventing himself again and again, short game specialist, long game coach, and now full service performance manager for elite players.
Alex breaks down exactly how he turned Marco Penge from a player who "twatted" every driver into the tour's most accurate off the tee, why he coaches almost exclusively on the golf course instead of the range, and the real story behind Marco's equipment switch to Mizuno on the PGA Tour (including the sole design mistake nobody talks about). He also tackles the steep vs shallow short game debate head on, explains why "free swing analysis" is a waste of everyone's time, and shares the decision making framework he's used since his early 20s to bet on himself, going a full year on the DP World Tour before he even knew if he'd get paid.
If you're a coach, an aspiring tour player, or just someone trying to figure out how much intention it takes to build the career you actually want, this one's packed with it.

Jerome Theunis was a golf pro himself — a Challenge Tour player who represented Belgium in the World Cup — before he became one of the most sought-after (and quietly under-the-radar) coaches in the game. It started with his roommate on tour, a young Nico Colsaerts, who got sick of finding golf technique books in the bathroom and Sharpie diagrams on the hotel TV. "I think you're pure psycho," Nico told him. A few years later Colsaerts was in the Ryder Cup, and Jerome had found his calling.
Since then he's worked behind the scenes with players like Adrian Meronk and Thomas Detry. In this episode, Jerome unpacks the parts of coaching nobody puts in a swing manual: why he flies across the world to consult other coaches on his own players — and why Sean Foley called that "the biggest proof of trust" a coach can give; the four things that actually happen when you bring in outside expertise, and why it almost never backfires; the concept of "novelty salience," and the parking-lot debrief with a PGA Tour player that ran 50 minutes over because reframing one piece of technical data changed everything; why touching a tour player's technique "de-skills" them — and how Tiger Woods rebuilt his swing three times without ever disappearing from leaderboards; the grip Jerome refused to fix on a world number 11, because some flaws are load-bearing; Randy Smith's audacious fix for a player who "swings it beautiful" but couldn't close — shaping shots on Sunday, from a 50-yard slice down to dead straight; and why Jerome believes storytelling and emotional framing — not swing data — are the one thing AI won't be coaching any time soon.
Equal parts skill-acquisition deep dive and behind-the-curtain look at how tour-level trust actually gets built, this is a conversation for anyone who coaches, teaches, or just wants to understand why the best in the world can shoot 65 on a course that's "long, tight, and high rough" and make it look easy.

What actually separates the coaches building thriving online businesses from everyone else?
In this episode of the Skillest Pod, Baden Schaff sits down with Mark Govier and Alex Clapp to unpack what great modern coaching really looks like — and why simply being a great instructor is no longer enough.
They dig into how Mark and Alex structure long-term player development, create clear roadmaps for their students, use content to extend their coaching beyond the lesson, and build the kind of high-touch relationships that keep players engaged for years.
But the conversation goes much deeper into growth.
How do you go from 1,000 followers to your first 15 subscribers? What should you actually post? How do you turn content into conversations? Why can a game evaluation be more powerful than a “free lesson”? And why do coaches need to be willing to do the unscalable work at the beginning?
Mark shares why consistency matters more than going viral — including the years he spent creating content when almost nobody was watching. Alex breaks down exactly how he uses social media, DMs and game evaluations to bring golfers into his world. And Baden explains why starting just a handful of genuine conversations every week can completely change a coach’s business.
The big takeaway?
You’re not selling online lessons. You’re building relationships.
And the coaches who understand that are building something far bigger than a lesson diary — they’re building an academy in the cloud.