The inspirational story of Oli Leett: Aim and Achieve

“It doesn’t hold me back. As I was born with it, it feels natural. Just as you’re born with ten fingers. You can’t imagine any different.”

Oli Leett isn’t your average golf coach.

Not only because of his affiliation and specialisation to putting, and not only because he is heralded as one of the best in the country, but the fact that he was born with Amniotic Band Syndrome.

Amniotic band syndrome (ABS) is a group of birth defects that result when strands of the amniotic sac detach and wrap around parts of the baby in the womb. The defects may affect the face, arms, legs, fingers, or toes. Amniotic bands are thought to be caused by damage to a part of the placenta called the amnion.

For Oli it was the fingers, but that hasn’t stopped him or hindered him in his pursuit of putting prowess.

“I started playing golf just outside Aberystwyth when I was about seven. I then joined my local club when I was eleven.

“Luckily, although there was no junior section, there was about three or four of us who got down to a decent level. When I was 15, I got down to three handicap, won the club championship, and got selected to play for Wales.”

Oli’s main ambition at the time was to ‘go pro’ and secure himself a place on tour, but interestingly his inclusion in the Welsh team drove him away from that.

“We had some guys off about +3, +4 handicap. So I was like the big fish in the small pond in my little old club, but now I was the little fish in the big old pond and I realised I wasn’t good enough to make it.

“So the golf plateaued and it slipped down the pecking order behind drinking, driving, and women. Which is, in my opinion, the way it should be at 18, 19. I’d encourage that.

“I started working at a printing company at 17. I made good money and moved up the ranks there a little bit. Yes the tasks were laborious (I had to put in the insert in each magazine to begin with). I was 21, living at home, earning £25,000-£30,000 a year, out on the lash with my mates every weekend but I knew this wasn’t what I wanted to do long-term.”

He continued, alongside his current job, to help out at the local club, before taking the plunge and handing his notice in at the printing company. He looked to go through the PGA route. You needed a C in English, Maths and Science and with Oli acquiring just a D, and his local pro unwilling to take him on, it seemed a steep hill for Oli to climb.

“I rang them up and they were saying ‘No! You can’t’. Of course that felt awful but I did it one more time and said, tell me what I have to do and I will do it.

“At 21 I had to basically retake my GCSE English, I passed, so then I started looking for a job and look for a course in September.

“I had 13 interviews. Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, from Cornwall to Bray, and 13 rejections.

“I look back and thought, what made me not give up. Why didn’t the young me begin to get the message hat maybe this isn’t for me. I really don’t know.”

He managed to secure his 14th interview with a pro in Cheltenham, and got the job to begin May 1st.

“I packed my bags. Everything I owned was in there. I moved two hours away from my family, a stable job, all of my mates, for nine grand a year.

“I look back on that as a really proud moment. That was a ballsy decision.”

Oli enjoyed his few years in Cheltenham before seeing a pro by the name of Tim Hall win ‘Foremost’ Pro of the Year award. Tim was at a club called Ross-on-Wye Golf Club, and in 2013 Oli contacted him about getting a job in the west of England.

Ross was a club in need of development, and from the start Tim had the vision of creating a forward thinking, friendly club with a strong junior set-up. Thus Oli had made a good choice.

“I met Tim Hall and we hit it off straight away. I was in awe of his vision and within a couple of months I was moving to Ross-on-Wye. And I believe that’s when you started playing golf, no? You were a lot better looking then and didn’t have the red hair!

“I wanted to learn from the number one, a passionate guy. He’s a class guy, and what was nice from day one is that he wanted to help me build my own brand. He wanted me to specialise straight away. Thus saw the birth of the Leett Putting Hub.

“What I love about Tim is that he’s always leading the industry in the right direction. We had one of the first ‘studios’ in the UK, we have our brilliant seven stage youth development programme, and he is the leader for everyone else to follow.

“LPH was a brand before it was a product in all honesty. I branded myself a putting specialist, but I knew very little about the mechanics of putting.”

After the beginning of the Leett Putting Hub, Oli decided to contact each and every leading putting coach in the world of golf to aid him in his evolution. John Graham and Mark Sweeney were two who gave Oli a large amount of time to develop his AimPoint coaching strategies too.

It then moved on to his two mentors now in Phil Kenyon and David Orr who are considered two of the best putting coaches in the world, and he is in regular contact with them.

Photo Credit – practical-golf.com

Above is Adam Scott, performing the AimPoint method. AimPoint is a way of reading greens using just your feet and fingers.

“I didn’t actually know how to read greens, and as a putting coach that’s probably one of the most important things! Over 100 people applied for AimPoint, and luckily I got given the role and I became a Level 1 AimPoint instructor.

“It’s been expanding hugely in the modern game and although you don’t see it on TV, over 40 players at the Open last week used it, and it continues to grow year on year.

“It’s a huge part of my job, and now as a Level 3 instructor I can go anywhere in the world and coach it.

“If you’d have told me I would have been in this situation five years ago, I’d have probably laughed it off as a load of rubbish. But I’m not one to wait for anything to come to me.”

He now works with tour players such as Becky Morgan, whilst still working with beginner players, working in the shop and staying connected to Ross on Wye Golf Club.

“I have the best office in the world. With talkative members, friendly people, I just love it here. I’ve got the perfect work-life balance at the moment. I spend five days here at Ross, one away, then one with my young daughter who’s two. I don’t want to be the Dad who is away all the time. I want to take her horse-riding, football, golf, any sport. I want to keep this balance as long as I can.”

Oli coaching AimPoint at Ross on Wye Golf Club

Oli has a normal life. A completely functioning life, and living the dream. His ABD hasn’t even come into question.

“So on my right hand I’ve got two fingers and on the other I have four fingers, but three of them are small, fat and funny. When I was born I had to spend basically two years in hospital. These fingers were all stuck together, and those two years were spent cutting them open, taking a bone out of my toe to give me a little thumb, but it’s normal to me.

“Because it was natural, I don’t think it’s ever held me back. I probably couldn’t function as well with four fingers and a thumb, like you probably couldn’t function as well with my hands.

“People say ‘Oh you cope so well’. Like I get that they mean it in a nice way but I’m not coping at all. In fact, I’m excelling, and just living a good life like any other human being.

“The only negative I can think of having it is on my daughter, Esme. I don’t want her to get bullied for having the Dad with strange fingers. I don’t want her to carry that burden, because the playground is a savage place.”

Oli was a fantastic man to talk to and will continue to progress onwards and upwards I’m sure. One of the best putting coaches around, and if you want any lessons or coaching visit either leettputtinghub.co.uk or rossonwye.intelligentgolf.co.uk to find out more.