James lands first putting qualification

Lincolnshire PGA professional  Ed James, based at Ping’s European headquarters at Gainsborough Golf Club, has become England’s first online-certified putting instructor.

James took advantage of a new course run by the PGA in collaboration with the Frank Thomas Frankly Academies and is determined his pupils will reap the benefit of his putting expertise to improve on the greens.

“I have always been interested in specializing in one area of the game and until I took the Certified Putting Instructor course, I never realized how much there was to teaching putting and helping golfers putt better,” he said. “Since qualifying, I have done a lot more putting and short game lessons as part of my winter packages.

“Putting is vital to scoring and now that I have my qualification I can help reduce my students' scores by spending time on the green educating and helping them understand the importance of lessons and putting practice.”

South African-born Frank Thomas, former USGA technical director and the man behind the online course, said: “I am happy to welcome Ed into our fold as our first CPI in England. The qualification is going from strength to strength with quality instructors available to help golfers putt better.”

Thomas, the man who invented the graphite shaft, redesigned and introduced the stimpmeter and has spent the last decade researching putting, says: "Putting is up to 45% of the game of golf.

There are many different opinions when it comes to teaching putting and we designed this on-line course to help PGA professionals teach this critical element of the game from a more scientific perspective."