Ryder Cup legend, Bernard Gallacher, International and Premiership Manager, Alex McLeish, and former Scottish International Rugby player, Gavin Hastings will be part of ‘An Audience with Scottish Sporting Legends’ when they come to the 2014 PGAs of Europe European Teaching & Coaching Conference (TCC) in conjunction with Ryder Cup Europe.
The trio of Scotland’s finest sportsmen and coaches will be present on Day Two of the TCC in September at the beginning of Ryder Cup week for the ‘Elite Performance’ sessions and will be drawing upon their experiences on the front-line of coaching and being coached.
The Q&A-style session will give each a chance to explain how the role of the coach influenced their own playing careers as successful international sportsmen, whilst also looking at the overall coaching landscape and how they each now act as, or are still touched by, coaches.
Bernard Gallacher is renowned across the world as a Ryder Cup legend having captained the European Ryder Cup Team 3 times and played 8 times.
Gallacher recently experienced a sudden cardiac arrest and it was only thanks to the availability of an automated external defibrillator (AED), along with early-response CPR treatment, that Gallacher was able to regain consciousness and head towards a full recovery.
Gallacher then took steps to address the lack of availability of AED machines at golf facilities in the United Kingdom by launching a campaign early this year. With Gallacher’s profile and encouragement, allied to a fundraising campaign being run concurrently with the PGA and Arrhythmia Alliance – the Heart Rhythm Charity – an estimated 2600 golfing venues and around 4,000,000 club golfers could benefit from the Campaign.
Glasgow-born Alex McLeish has had an illustrious career as an international football player with 77 caps for Scotland across 13 years as well as over 400 appearances for Aberdeen, but it is perhaps his leadership that is most well known.
After managerial spells at Motherwell, Hibernian, and most notably Rangers with two Scottish Premier League titles, two Scottish Cups and three Scottish League Cups, McLeish took charge of the Scottish National team before moving to Birmingham City. His time at the club was hugely successful helping them to finish runners-up in the Football League Championship in 2008/09 and winning Football League Cup in 2010/11. Since then he has held managerial positions at Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest.
Gavin Hastings is best known as a former international rugby player in which he had 61 caps at full back for Scotland, 20 of them as Captain. He captained the British Lions on the 1993 tour to New Zealand and has scored 700 points in test rugby, 12th in the all-time scoring international rugby players.
Most recently Gavin assisted the Golf Foundation at The Open Championship at Royal Liverpool Golf Club, UK, alongside other HSBC Ambassadors, to help raise the profile of the charity’s HSBC Golf Roots programme.
TCC Delegates are also offered the opportunity to attend the Junior Ryder Cup at Blairgowrie Golf Club on Tuesday 23rd and the Tuesday 23rd and Wednesday 24th Practice Days at The 2014 Ryder Cup.
Ticket registration is now live at http://eur.pe/europeanTCC on a first-come, first-served basis.
Further speaker and schedule information will be revealed across the coming weeks, and more information can be found at http://eur.pe/europeanTCC
PGAs of Europe www.pgae.com