RCGA chooses Ingram to coach women’s amateur team

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This article was published 05/11/2009 (6164 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG’S Derek Ingram has his eye on medals as he takes over as head coach of Canada’s national women’s amateur golf team.

“My goal is to have the team medal at the World Amateur next October,” Ingram said Wednesday, the day his promotion from within the overall national team program was announced by the Royal Canadian Golf Association. “And a personal goal I’ve had, a 10-year goal, is to coach golf in the Olympics and for Canada to win a gold medal there.”

Golf will be an Olympic sport at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Ingram, a former Canadian Tour player, is Elmhurst’s head teaching pro and has spent the last five years as an assistant coach of Canada’s men’s team.

But when women’s head coach Dean Spriddle stepped down last week, the RCGA approached the seven-time Manitoba PGA teacher of the year and two-time Canadian PGA teacher of the year.

“I didn’t even realize I was up for it,” Ingram said. “But they offered it to me. It’s something I’ve been working towards for a long time. There are only two jobs like this in Canada and now I have one of them. To me, it’s the pinnacle of coaching.”

Given that his new position is going to be time-consuming — “I’d say what I was doing as an (men’s) assistant coach was 40 per cent of my time and this is going to be more than 100 per cent of it,” he said — Ingram knows some changes to his schedule are coming.

He won’t have to move, but he expects to relinquish some of his duties with the University of Manitoba’s golf program, with the Maple Leaf Junior Tour, with Golf Manitoba and likely at Elmhurst.

He said he hopes to continue his private teaching and coaching business but allowed that those interests will be scaled back.

And it’s unlikely he’ll continue in his role as coach for Canada’s entry to the World Junior Team Championship.

Wednesday, Ingram said his mind is racing, trying to determine the best way to get organized.

“Dean’s done an excellent job and it’s going to take me some time to build relationships with players, the kind I had on the men’s side and have been working on for five, six years,” he said.

“It’s hard to say there will be changes in the program but there could be. I’m apt to use more sport science than a lot of people, and more technology.”

Ingram also said he knows the spotlight will shine on the program again soon, since 2010 is a World Amateur year. The tournament will be played in October in Argentina.

“As always, there will be high expectations,” he said.

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca