Stories of The Q at Myrtle Beach: Peter Finch, the International Favorite
Peter Finch began his golf journey as a driving range teacher in England. Now, he is one shot away from the PGA TOUR. This is his story.
Watch The Q at Myrtle Beach, April 23rd on Play Golf Myrtle Beach’s YouTube Channel.
Peter Finch:
Yeah, went out and just wanted to basically give Luke and Sean a chance to prove themselves as golfers. It was an abject failure, basically wiped the floor with them, felt a little bit sorry for them in the end, gave him a hug, and then just left.
Maybe 15, 16, that’s when I really started to commit to hitting the ball around the field and regretted it ever since, but here we are.
But I was coaching at a driving range and absolutely hated going to speak to people to try and pump myself out for lessons. I found it incredibly cringey. There was one guy, Rick Shields, who was basically at the same driving range, he was making videos and people were coming in for lessons off the back of that. I thought, “Well, it’s a great way to advertise myself as a coach.” It started to get a little bit of traction, and yeah, from that point, I’ve never really looked back.
I remember the first time when I went to The Masters and that was off the back of obviously doing videos. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to go, so to be able to walk through those gates and to be recognized, even when you went through, say hello to people, to make content around that event was just … It was a real eye-opener for me, and it was something which I’ll never forget and always appreciate.
Obviously, I love golf, but to be able to do this as a job, to be able to have the chance to, for example, qualify for a PGA TOUR event is absolutely ridiculous. If you’d have told me that was an opportunity 10 years ago when I was slogging it out, doing lessons on a freezing cold driving range in December in Manchester, I quite rightly wouldn’t have believed you.
If people have watched my videos before, I don’t think anyone is on any illusions about how rubbish I can be. I think on a scale of 1 to 10, I give myself a solid 3.5. Imagine throwing every little bit of waste that you’ve ever accumulated in your life into a cargo ship, sending it out to sea, firing a rocket at it, seeing it all go to flames, that’s my long game right now. At the moment, it’s just on the horizon, burning itself, sinking down to the depths. That’s probably where I’m at.
At the end of the day, with this event with this kind of microcosm of what’s going on here, you need one good round and then two more decent rounds, and you could make the PGA TOUR event and could put yourself on a pedestal and a different kind of positioning within the game that we’ve never had before.
I’m just going to go in there with absolutely no pressure on it, because every fairway and every green hit is just going to be the most wonderful surprise, and I am putting pretty well. I just need to get there, but I’m not seeing what the greens are like at TPC Myrtle Beach. I might actually poo my pants when I get there, so we’ll see.
