My website is simple, my golf instruction is simple. We don't need bells and whistles to get a point across. The information is what is important....

I trust you will gain some tremendous insight from what I have attached to these pages with regards to my life as a professional golfer, the experiences I have been fortunate enough to live through, and my golf instruction based on all those experiences.
I look forward to assisting as many people as possible with their golf games...... Enjoy The Ride!!
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Born in Melbourne, Australia. I have played the professional golf tours of the United States, Europe, Japan and my homeland Australia since 1988.
I have been fortunate to have some success as a golfer winning some important events and representing my country in International team events.
I decided after 20 years of travel to spend more time at home with my family. I now look forward to teaching golf and passing on many of the lessons I have learned from the greats of the game to people who are searching to improve their golf ability, whatever their standard of golf.
Come inside and enjoy the journey as I talk about the many facets of this great game of golf. I will give you some insights about life on the road and about the many people I have met and great golf courses and cities of the world I have had the pleasure of visiting throughout my travels.
What a great way to learn about life. To be able to travel the world experiencing different cultures, different food and different scenery and do it all whilst playing a game you truly love and enjoy !
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 I would like to thank all the people who have been there for me every day- through the good or the bad and offered me their support and love
 

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Amateur Achievements:
1982 Youngest person to play in a Major Australian PGA event (Victorian Open)
1984 Doug Sanders International Australasian Champion
1984 Doug Sanders International World Championship 3rd Place (Aberdeen,Scotland)
1987 Victorian Junior Champion
1987 Victorian Amateur Champion
1987 Leading Amateur Australian Open
1988 Leading Amateur Australian Masters
1988 Victorian Amateur Champion
1988 New Zealand Amateur Strokeplay
1988 New Zealand Amateur Champion

Amateur Teams:
1983-84-85-86-87 Victorian Junior Team
1986-87-88  Victorian Amateur Team
1987 Australian representative Asia Pacific Championship (Hua Hin, Thailand)
1987 Australian representative Claire Higson Trophy ( Tasmania, Aust)
1988 Australian representative Sloan Morpeth Trophy (Auckland, New Zealand)
1988 Australian representative Eisenhower Cup World Amateur (Stockholm, Sweden)

Major Professional Victories:
1988 Western Australian Open
1991 South Australian PGA Championship
1993 Australian Masters
1996 Tournament Players Championship of Australia
1998 Australian Masters
2004 Nationwide Tour Wichita Open
    plus 25 other various pro-am events and professional  
  tournaments of a state or local level

Runner Up Finishes as a professional:
1989 New South Wales Open (Australia)
1991 Tasmanian Open (Australia)
1991 Windsor Classic (Canada)
1992 Palm Meadows Cup (Australia)
1992 Daiwa KBC Championship (Japan)
1993 Victorian Open (Australia)
1994 TPC of Australia
1996 Australian Masters
1998 CVS Charity Classic (US PGA Tour)
1999 Kemper Open (US PGA Tour)
2004 New Zealand PGA (Nationwide Tour)
2006 Legend Financial Classic (Nationwide Tour)

Top 10 finishes as a professional 3rd-10th place:
40 times finished 3rd through 10th in official PGA Tour events in Australia, Europe, Japan and The United States

Team Events:
1994 International Team Member Presidents Cup
1996 Australian Team World Cup of Golf with Stuart Appleby
1997 Australian Team World Cup of Golf with Wayne Riley

Tour Membership:
Australian PGA Tour  1988 - present
European PGA Tour  1990, 1994 -1997
Japan PGA Tour  1992-1994
USPGA Tour  1997 - 2002,  2005
Nationwide Tour  1995 - 1996, 2003 - 2004,  2006 - 2008

  PGA Of Australia Member since 1988
   PGA of America Member since 1998

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                 *VIDEO* : 1982 interview as the youngest player to ever  compete in a major Australian PGA tournament

                              

vicopen82 from Golf Aus on Vimeo.

 BELOW: My golf swing in 1982 in still frames when I was 15 years old and playing The Victorian Open as the youngest ever to compete in a major event in Australia.
                    

                                                                                                                                             
              
This humorous cartoon appeared in theThe Herald Sun paper           Receiving a putting lesson from Greg Norman with his 8802 putter    

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    My parents and sister joining in the celebrations- 1998 Australian Masters
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          EQUIPMENT and THE STATE OF GOLF

I strongly believe that golf equipment has been pushed too far. The game of golf has been dumbed down significantly by trying to offer people large headed 'woods' and large perimeter weighted clubs and plastic balls that don't sidespin.
The best thing we can all do to make our golf game better is to at least practice with (and hopefully play with also) older smaller heavier golf clubs such as blade irons and persimmon woods.

      FEEDBACK of the golf swing is necessary
        for improvement to take place      

If you make a poor swing and miss hit the shot you NEED to know about it so you can work on improving your technique. Today's modern clubs allow for NO FEEDBACK as all shots basically feel the same no matter where they are hit on the club face. Without the brain receiving any knowledge about a mis-struck shot poor habits will only become farther entrenched in your swing.
The modern golf club is too upright in it's lie angle which prompts golfers to slap at the ball with their hands instead of using their body to power and rotate the club through impact to a full strong finish.
Club fitters are even doing it wrong by attempting to fit clubs for you based on the few swings they watch you hit into a net or on the range. You would be much better of getting correct instruction and then setting up your clubs to how you WANT TO SWING in the future and build your swing action around your clubs...NOT the other way around.
Clubs are also made too light again initiating the brain and body to swing wildly with the hands to create speed bringing all kinds of problems to the swing such as casting, acceleration too soon in the downswing and flipping the clubface through the impact area making accuracy a hit or miss proposition based on luck.
All club advertisements we see on television and in magazines point to distance and length by offering clubs lighter and lighter each year in head weight, shaft weight and now even grip weight. The companies promote this for revenue to themselves and their share holders but it comes at a huge cost to the golf swing.
You are MUCH better advised to swing a club with some weight and mass to it. It will help with promoting speed in your swing in the correct area and from the correct inside path. This will in turn impart the mass to the ball with increasing velocity and you will still hit long shots but with much more accuracy. The new technology is rewarding the ego of players and who can hit their pitching wedge 150 yards but it is slowly disintegrating whatever decent swing mechanics they had in their system with every passing round or practice session.

 Every day I give lessons I hear this common complaint from my students.
"I got this new driver and I can hit it far when I connect but most of the time I have absolutely no control over the ball and my game is getting worse and worse"....well now you know why.

Your shots may go shorter with the older equipment but it is all relative. Today's 6 iron is really a 4 iron based on the lofts and length. The golf industry is obsessed with distance and will do anything to market it...ALL AT THE EXPENSE of better more controlled golf.
Iron lofts have been tweaked stronger so everyone thinks they are hitting the ball father than they actually are. This has made long irons obsolete...so now they have to sell you a hybrid club....cha-ching.. more $$$...and with the modern wedge loft being that of an old 8 or 9 iron, they now have a space that has to be filled between your 47 degree wedge and your 56 degree sand iron...so invest some more $$$in a gap wedge and added even more expense to your game.
It is all brilliantly marketed to attract you to buy a game but the concept places long lasting deterioration to your swing at the same time. Now you have less money in your pocket and a finger scratching your head wondering "What just happened?"
A new latest greatest driver is put on the market every 6 months or so making new claims to be the longest and the farthest and the best. We now see white headed drivers and 'woods' because they have run out of ideas to get people to part with their hard earned cash....so make something in white and call it different.
          YET THE AVERAGE HANDICAP of golfers is stagnant.
             Ponder that.....and then really assess...

The golf ball doesn't lie...it does what it is told...so in my belief that makes the person holding the club more important than the implement striking the ball.
Improve your swing and you will improve your game. The lightweight, upright lie angled clubs that are marketed today will NOT do it for you.

Here's a great article I found talking about this very thing:(click link)

        http://www.startribune.com/yourvoices/51781722.html
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   FLAT LIE ANGLES-   The Reason behind the Logic of The Great Ballstrikers

I know from personal experience in a question asked directly to Lee Trevino that he used clubs that were at least 3 degrees flat in lie angle from the old standard.

Doug Sanders also informed me in the interview I recently did with him
 (on page 2) that he had his clubs flattened down so the toe sat down and the heel would never strike the ground first

If we look at Ben Hogan's club that is in USGA Golf House Museum it is close to 6 or 7 degrees flat in lie angle when compared to clubs of the same length and loft of today.

                       

If flat lie angles were the choice of the game's best ball strikers throughout history then WHY do manufacturers insist on putting upright lie angled clubs in the hands of golfer's today?

The upright clubs make the player come steeply into the ball on descent.

The upright clubs tell the body stall and insist that the hands flip through impact to try and square that upright lie angled club with the ground.

The upright club straightens the right arm away from the body and increases clubface roll throughout the shot making timing a huge problem.

Upright lie angles deteriorate the swing by not stressing the importance of swinging the golf club behind and around the body and rotating through impact with the correct body effort and sequence.

Too often we now see golfers throwing the club through impact- pushing the club head off to the right of the target or throwing the clubhead left of the target with their hand roll --flipping the club face over by hand action trying to correct the mistake.

                Today's clubs should all come with a :warning label:   "Swing Deterioration And Poor Mechanics Possible By Using This Club"

Add the fact that the shafts are too long and the swingweights and overall club weights are too light and it is little wonder we don't see ball striking mastery on any level any longer.     Remember: Feedback of the club and the swing is necessary for improvement to take place.
                                                                  That's why golfers are not improving.

They don't know the difference between a good strike or a bad strike of the ball because the permieter weighting and large sweet spots don't allow such reference. The equipment golfers are using is NOT designed to help them adjust their swing to the correct efficient motion.



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                       PHOTOS OF SOME GOLFING HIGHLIGHTS
                                      BRADLEY HUGHES

           
1987 Victorian State Amateur Champion  1988 Victorian State Amateur Champion      Leading Amateur -- 1987 Australian Open Championship

              
            1988 New Zealand Amateur Champion                                       The 2004 Nationwide Tour WICHITA Open
       Won 2 up after being 12 under par for the match                   a final round 65 forced a 4 man playoff and a birdie on the first playoff hole took the prize

 
                
                                                               The 1993 AUSTRALIAN MASTERS
      Walking towards the 72nd green with my caddie. I birdied the hole for a 66 and a total of 11 under par to tie Peter Senior and would win the title on the first playoff hole. Receiving congratulations from Peter Senior after I defeated him in sudden death to win The 1993 Australian Masters at Huntingdale Golf Club

 
          Hitting a tee shot and holding up 10 fingers for the 10 birdie round           The player-caddie relationship is an important factor to success and
                of 10 under par 62 at Fulford GC in York, England                                 making good decisions during a round of golf
                     in the 1989 Benson & Hedges International

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  CAREER HOLE IN ONES      9 (nine) in seven different countries

   COURSE RECORDS   12 (twelve) around the world with a 10 under par 63 at Huntingdale GC in Melbourne, Australia AND
                                           a 10 under par 62 at Fulford GC in Yorkshire England

    LOWEST SCORE   60 12 under par 12 birdies & 6 pars at Sand Creek Station GC, Wichita, Kansas, August 2008 in a pro-am event which
                                         included a career best 7 birdies in a row

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                    1988 Western Australian Open- * VIDEO *

                                            

waopen88 from Golf Aus on Vimeo.

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   I had a lot of fun being a contributor to Golf Australia in the late 1990's giving some insight and thoughts about my ideas and how the regular golfer could improve their own game   --    Here are a sample of a few of those magazine covers & printed lessons 
                
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                                         WHAT ABOUT THE GOLF COURSES ?...
                                       DON'T THEY DESERVE A SAY IN THINGS

The unfortunate thing about the technology invasion of golf is the fact that most -if not all- of the great golf courses of the past have become all but obsolete for tournament play.
Clubs and balls that fly too far have made for golf courses being built that are too long and too difficult for your average golfer.
Golf courses have too often become residential selling areas with 18 holes attached to them. The golf course itself has become secondary to the amount of real estate that can be sold at a profit.
Distances from greens to the next tee have been increased to upwards of 100-200 yards more or less making golfers drive in carts instead of walking and enjoying the surroundings.
Course designers are trying to outdo one another with water carry holes, island greens everywhere, crazy hole designs with ski moguls down the sides of the fairway and greens far too undulating for a tour pro let alone a regular golfer.
Golf has become over priced. A round of golf now takes far too long, Golfers lose too many balls in a round adding more expense because the courses are far from reality and not well designed tests of golf that offer different avenues for golfer's of varying abilities to be able to play upon.
The great courses are stretched to their limits and cannot be used for the world's greatest events as showcase courses any longer.
Courses are being built as a huge expense because of land needed which only adds to the cost of playing the game and golf is being over priced.
I doubt things will ever get back to how they should be but it would be a great time to stop the madness and have the golfing bodies of the world reign in the technology surge before golf becomes only for the rich and unenjoyable for your average player.
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                                                                 This photograph of a hole shows perfectly what the modern golf game has become.

                                                      The red line indicates how this hole was designed to be played.

 With the older equipment where the ball didn't travel as far and a 'wood' was actually made of wood you had to slide a drive up the left side of the fairway and let the natural contours bring the ball down towards the center of the fairway. You then had to avoid the fairway bunker with a shot that went too far and you had trees blocking your approach if you drove too far to the right and also a water hazard for the severe heel or toe mis- hit that veered off sideways. The left side was no bargain either with rough and a downhill sloping lie adding to the difficulty.

                                                  The blue line indicates how this hole is played today with the new technology

Drivers that have hot trampoline like faces with huge heads and huge sweet spots and light graphite shafts and hard plastic balls that hardly move in flight allow a fantastically designed golf hole to become nothing more than a joke . Players now drive over all the trouble that was intended in the course design. Players now put their tee shot with in a few yards of the green, hitting a chip shot instead of the 120 yard approach that the designer of the hole required by positioning the tee shot.

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   This is your classic example of why great courses are now being made obsolete and why newer courses are coming up with ridiculous 520 yard Par 4 holes and 680 yard Par 5 holes- so they can try and protect par. All at a huge cost. Wouldn't it just have been easier for golf's governing bodies to reel this stuff in when they saw what was happening to the old courses and what the new courses had become?

The governing bodies of golf well and truly dropped the ball by allowing companies to advance their technology with almost no restrictions, to the point of making the course designers and even golfers from the past an after thought.  It's a very sad state of affairs


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                                            GOLF AND THE PRESERVATION OF THE PAST
                                               AND THE PROTECTION OF THE FUTURE
            
  
                                                             

usga from Golf Aus on Vimeo.

                                          
Golf's governing bodies saying one thing and totally doing another........
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And here below we have a newspaper article from 1976....with quotes and future references from the USGA equipment committee chairman about equipment that have been shelved and totally forgotten and not put into place.
It's very disappointing. If we can only take what they said in the past with a grain of salt how can we believe what they are saying now is the truth?

                                                           

Ability is what should separate the good from the bad. The entire playing field has leveled out because of equipment that allows for mishits and by allowing clubs that are distance orientated even for the most obscene looking golf swings.
The golf ball travels too far and has terrible flight characteristics that don't allow for shot shaping. The ball flies too far and is designed to not curve and we have seen incredible ball strikers and control players such as Corey Pavin, Hal Sutton and Nick Faldo  phased out of the game.

Golf has now become a smash it as far as you can from the tee and been disheveled into a putting contest... The courses have become too short and many of the world's greatest courses are stretched to their limits and are now set up in a manner that is entirely off the mark of the original design set out by the world's great course designers of the past.

It is very sad that the state of the entire game has been influenced by money and equipment sales, instead of a golfer's ability to learn to swing the club correctly to produce the desired results.
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                                                                  Where have all the great ball strikers gone?
As such technology has brought the world's touring professionals to a stalemate where the art of shaping shots and playing each hole on it's merits has been lost. The days of players driving the ball down every fairway and hitting green after green in regulation to build a score is almost non existent.

Fairway bunkers are just there for landscaping as today's pros bomb their drive over them and don't care if they are in the rough or not because they only have a short iron to the green anyhow and the rough is very rarely penal in it's height to deter them from doing such a thing.

Par 72 courses have been reduced to par 68 courses because no par 5 holes exist out on tour any longer. So when you see a pro shoot 16 under par he is really only even par based on the reality of it all.

Shaping drives around doglegs or fairway bunkers doesn't exist and playing the hole as it was originally intended to be played is a thing of the past.

The governing bodies of golf have allowed far too much technology dictate the way the game is played. The governing bodies duty was to protect the heritage of golf and the integrity of the game and they didn't do a good enough job of doing what they were actually meant to do by assuming their position.

Golf at the biggest stage has become nothing but a smash a drive somewhere and the tournament result now normally hinges on a  putting contest to see who wins.

It is truly sad in that regard that we may never see the ball striking exploits of a Trevino or Hogan again.....

It makes no sense that your Number 1 & 2 golfers in the world the past 5 years can barely hit more than 50% of the fairways between them on average for an entire year.
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What does this tell us about the direction golf has headed?
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