About Mike McNally, Your Golf Coach in Edinburgh

My dad, Stephen McNally (Steve to everyone who knows him), is a PGA Professional, and golf was always the family business. He was head professional at Burgham Park Golf Club in Northumberland, where I played my first ever 18 holes, and I was also a junior member at Bedlington Golf Club nearby. I picked up a golf club aged 11 and never looked back. Around the same time, we moved to Scotland. Dad had been appointed Scotland's National High Performance Golf Coach at the lottery-funded Scottish Institute of Sport in Drumoig. I started my first year of high school in Scotland and became a member at Monifieth Golf Club. By 16, I was playing off 3 and representing my county at junior level.

In 2009 I enrolled at the University of Stirling, where I rebuilt the university golf club, served as 3rd team captain and later president, and was honoured with a Colours Award for my contribution to the game. I then walked away from golf completely for two years, travelling to Australia and working at events including the Formula 1 Grand Prix, the Australian Open and the Ashes. I'd spent a decade chasing the perfect swing instead of learning to actually play, and it took stepping fully away to see that. It's exactly why I coach the way I do now. I came home, got myself back to a 4 handicap, and turned pro in 2017.

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I'm forever grateful for the opportunity to do my PGA training at Murrayfield under Jonnie Cliff, who taught me the importance of making golf coaching fun while keeping the focus on impact rather than swing positions. I was then approached by Peter Arnott to help build a golf academy at Swanston. Peter changed the way I think about golf coaching, and remains the biggest influence on how I coach today. During Covid, I also worked with Mark Bull, helping him build his Bull 3D Academy.

Since then, I've coached full-time at Murrayfield and Swanston Golf Academies, won PGA Assistant of the Year twice, helped build successful golf academies in Edinburgh, and founded Play 9 – Score 36, an event that gets beginners playing on an actual golf course instead of just a driving range. I've been nominated for Scottish Golf Coach of the Year two years running, reaching the final three in 2025.

Four people shaped how I coach. My dad gave me a strong technical foundation, having trained with Mac O'Grady and the P-System. Jonnie showed me that coaching has to be fun, and that impact matters more than swing positions. Peter's constraints-led approach to skill acquisition, practising in ways that reflect real performance rather than isolated technique, remains the biggest influence on how I coach today. And Mark shaped how I talk about the game and how I understand human movement.

My biggest teacher is my students, who I learn from every day. And all the technology I've invested in (TrackMan, Swing Catalyst, HackMotion) I use as a learning tool for myself as much as for you. It sharpens what I can already see; I don't need the screen to tell me what's happening in your swing anymore, but it keeps me honest, and it keeps me improving.

People often ask if I prefer coaching beginners or better players. The honest answer is both, for different reasons. But the golfer I care about most is the one who's started to believe they'll never get better.

I know that feeling because I've lived it. Ten years practising harder than anyone I knew, with a coach in the family and every resource going, and I still got stuck. Eventually I quit. I walked away from golf completely for over two years. Nobody, including me, had ever worked out what I actually needed to work on, or the one thing holding me back.

That's the golfer I'm best placed to help as a golf coach in Edinburgh. The one who's quietly stopped believing it's going to click for them. I know what that feels like from the inside, and I know what actually got me out of it: someone finally finding out what was really going on, instead of guessing along with me.

Beginners are a different kind of reward, and I love that work too. It's really the same thing wearing a different face. Most complete beginners aren't just nervous about embarrassing themselves. Somewhere along the way they decided golf wasn't for them, or that they weren't the kind of person who could be good at it. Taking someone who believed that and showing them it was never true is exactly the work I love, just earlier in the story. But it's a different room. If that's you, the New to Golf page is where to start.

For everyone else: if you've been playing a while and have quietly started to wonder if you're just not built for this game, it was never really about talent. It's about whether anyone's ever properly found out what's going on. That's the work I actually want to be known for.

I can't help anyone who is uncoachable or looking for a quick fix. If you want to understand your own game and stop guessing, we'll get on well.

Easily accessible from the City Bypass. I've personally coached over 2,000 golfers here as a golf coach in Edinburgh since joining Swanston in September 2020.

• Double-sized coaching studio, plus driving range and short-game practice areas
• A grass tee on the driving range: genuinely rare, and about as close to practising on the course as it gets
• TrackMan 4, Swing Catalyst Motion Plate, HackMotion Wrist Sensors
• Free parking, views of the Pentlands