After 15 years of traditional face-to-face coaching, COVID forced me to rethink how I delivered instruction. What began as a quick adaptation to keep helping golfers during lockdowns rapidly turned into a revelation.
Remote coaching didn’t just preserve my business — it shattered the geographical limitations of my local facility and redefined how I build long-term relationships with my students at My Golf Tribe.
Expanding Beyond the Local Driving Range
When you rely entirely on in-person instruction, your business is bound by a 20-minute driving radius and the health of your local economy. Going remote removes those borders entirely.
My very first online client found me through Instagram from Sydney, Australia. Years later, he is still working with me today.
Today, I coach golfers remotely across the U.K., U.S., Australia and beyond. Scaling to this point came organically by focusing on results, sharing client progress on social media, and building an email list that I own directly.
For coaches hesitant to make the jump, my advice is simple:
- Start with a Hybrid Model: Add remote support between lessons for your existing in-person students. It bridges the critical gap between feel and real.
- Close the Feedback Loop: Golfers practice multiple times between traditional lessons, often exaggerating feel or reinforcing bad habits. Unlimited remote submissions ensure they are executing drills correctly every time they hit the range.
- Sell Convenience: Eliminating travel time for the student creates massive value while keeping them accountable week in, week out.
Building a Dedicated Ecosystem with Onform
Earlier in my remote journey, I used marketplace platforms like Skillest. However, doing the hard work to market myself only to drop clients into a digital marketplace surrounded by hundreds of competing coaches never made operational sense. I wanted an infrastructure that felt like my coaching environment.
Moving to Onform allowed me to bring golfers into a clean, distraction-free space built around my brand. Onboarding is simple: clients download the app, complete a brief diagnostic questionnaire, and follow quick video instructions on camera placement.
A few standalone features in Onform have completely streamlined how my students practice:
- Auto Capture: Eliminates the friction of starting, stopping, and trimming clips. Golfers just swing, and the app records automatically. I encourage students to use a simple tripod, so when you combine that with Auto Capture, we’ve removed one of the biggest barriers golfers traditionally have with remote coaching: actually filming their swing properly and consistently.
- 0.5x Camera Zoom Compatibility: Allows students to capture full swing footage even in tight hitting bays or restricted indoor spaces. It’s a fantastic feature for remote coaching. Someone doesn’t necessarily need a huge driving range bay or loads of room behind them.
- Seamless Communication: Rather than videos being sent through an external app like WhatsApp, the entire coaching relationship is housed within Onform. I can open the platform, see exactly what has come in, work through my coaching and communication each day, and know that nothing has disappeared into a WhatsApp conversation from three weeks ago.
The Blueprint: Coaching Outcomes over Mechanics
My coaching philosophy centers on fixing foundations before touching swing mechanics. Before trying to tweak complex positions, I want to establish a clean setup blueprint.
Imagine placing Usain Bolt on the start line of a 100-meter sprint, but forcing him to start on his heels. Before he can sprint, his body has to make a series of compensations just to get balanced. Golfers do the exact same thing. If we fix their setup, balance, and posture first, the body naturally moves better without needing endless mechanical cues.
Long-term retention isn’t about making a swing look pretty for social media. It’s about lowering scorecards. That’s why remote coaching at My Golf Tribe goes well beyond video analysis:
- Integrated Data: Combining swing analysis in Onform with shot-tracking data from Arccos and course strategy from DECADE gives us a complete performance profile.
- Evergreen Video Libraries: All screen recordings, drill videos, and progress notes remain stored in the student’s account. Years down the line, they can revisit their personalized library to fix old tendencies independently.
Ultimately, remote coaching hasn’t just expanded my reach — it has made me a more effective educator. By combining the right technology with clear, foundational principles, we can deliver world-class golf instruction to anyone, anywhere in the world.
Damon Wood is a PGA-qualified golf coach with more than 15 years of experience working with hundreds of golfers of all levels. He is the founder of My Golf Tribe, and he’s helped everyone from complete beginners to competitive players unlock their potential and take control of their game. Damon started to shift his business to remote coaching during the COVID pandemic. He now coaches golfers remotely across the U.K., U.S., Australia and beyond using Onform.