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Steven Bann

Steven Bann - or "Banny" as he is usually known - is one of Australia’s best-known golf coaches. After turning professional in 1979, Steven played on the Australian Professional Golf Tour full time from 1981 to 1986 and then part time from 1986 to 1996. From 1986 to 1990 Steve was the Head Professional at Box Hill Golf Club in Melbourne before commencing golf instruction full-time as the founding Head Coach of the world-renowned Victorian Institute of Sport.

Steven nurtured and developed the program for six years, which has produced multiple International amateur and professional tournament winners and to date eight graduates of the program earning their US PGA Tour cards and as of 2007 there are 5 VIS graduates in the top 60 of the world rankings.

Steve was most recently awarded the 2006 Victorian PGA coach of the year.

Steve has occupied the position of Head Coach of the Victorian men and ladies State teams and coached the Victorian men’s junior team to the national title in 1991 and the ladies team to national titles in 1994 and 1996. (Victoria’s only two national titles in the past 25 years).

In 1989 during Steve's tenure as Head Coach of the Victorian men’s team, he began coaching then-upcoming junior Stuart Appleby (8 times winner on the US Tour and 2001 Australian Open winner, 10 straight years in the top 50 World Ranking) and has coached Robert Allenby since he was fourteen years old (4 times winner on the US Tour, 4 times winner on the European tour and 1994 Australian Open champion. He remains Stuart Appleby’s coach to this day and travels regularly work with him on the US PGA Tour.

Steven’s most recent coaching success and new, comer to his stable of World Class golfers is Nick Flanagan 2003 US amateur champion. Nick is currently playing on the USA Nationwide Tour and in the middle of 2006 Steve started work on a full time basis with K.J Choi.  K.J  won the Chrysler Championship in Tampa in late 2006 just 12 weeks after starting work with Steve.

Steve is a co-director of Bann Lynch Golf, which operates at the prestigious Melbourne Golf Academy at Capital Golf Club with his co-director and business partner Dale Lynch.

Steve has presented several times on the Golf Channel in the USA and with Stuart Appleby on ESPN and ABC.

Steven's coaching has also extended to the written word. For ten years he was the teaching editor for Golf Australia magazine and has written numerous instructional articles and in 2007 he will write feature articles for Golf Illustrated in the USA.

Steven has published four books:
*    "My First Golf Book”; which aims to introduce young junior players to the game;
*    "Golf Gadgets”; a book that explains the world of golf improvement products;
*    "Play Like the Pros”; a compilation of Steven and Dale Lynch's top one hundred instructional lessons from their weekly newspaper column, and;
*    “Simply Golf Back to Basics” (over 200,000 copies sold world wide).

Steve is a partner and instructor in an internet golf instruction website www.golfspan.com and co owner of Australia’s number 1 golf website www.golf.com.au Steve also is a founder of The Leaderboard www.proleaderboard.com  The Leaderboard is now used in training by over 60 Tour pros around the world and also many teaching pros are now seeing great benefits with coaching golfers of all levels with The Leaderboard.

Steven also shares his knowledge of the game through his delivery of presentations and lectures to fellow golfers, both amateur and professional. Steven has lectured throughout Australia to the PGA sharing his coaching philosophy and was a presenter at the 1992, 1994,1996,2002 and 2004 Australian golf coaching summits.

Outside of golf, Steven's main interests are personal fitness, boating and fishing. Steven originates from Riversdale Golf Club in Melbourne, where he was introduced to the game as a caddie and is today still a club member. Steven is 47 years old, married to Kerrianne and has two teenage daughters, Jessica and Emily.

Click here to see Steve's Blog

Vern McMillan

History

Raised in outback Australia on a 100,000-acre cattle and sheep property.  Worked on property for some years during which played professional rugby league and competed on the professional rodeo circuit before leaving to study and work in Melbourne. 

In 1990 Vern commenced working with Elite athletes in Rowing and Cycling supervising and prescribing their physical preparation.  These athletes went on to win silver and gold medals at the Olympics. 

From 1991-1996, Vern was responsible for the physical preparation of athletes in 28 different sports.  His responsibilities also involved training staff to help with these sports, developing a training facility and working with coaches in these sports to develop athletes to their full potential both on and off the field.  It was also during this time that he developed a training method which encompassed all aspects of the athletes preparation in an effort to not only allow the athlete to reach their potential but to do it in a way that reduced the impact of repetitive motor patterns, necessary for training at elite level, on their overall well being. 

The training method developed from studying and utilising many aspects of more traditional movement philosophies, such as yoga, massage, pilates which also included methods used by traditional martial arts and circus performers.  This included both training and recovery techniques.

This method not only reduced the number of injuries both short and long term but was responsible for allowing the athlete more time to train and recover due to less down time from injury.  It also allowed coaches the luxury of having a full playing list to choose from at competition time, which produced many favourable results.  During this period the athletes that he was responsible for won more Olympic medals and world championships than most entire countries.  The list included, rowing’s Peter Antonie and Simon Hawkins, (Bronze), The coxless four, gold in consecutive years, Cycling; Cathy Watt (silver in both road and track at the same Olympics) Anna Wilson (gold in the road race and world champion) Cadel Evans world champion, mountain bike, Australian netball and hockey teams world champions and silver medallists, Danielle Woodwood, Slalom Canoe, silver medal, etc.  The North Melbourne Football club was the dominant force in the Australia football league for the period of his tenor with both night and day Championship wins. 

During this time he also worked with Steve Bann developing golfers for professional careers.  The Victorian Institute of Sport Golf Program is the most successful single program in the world with more players on the world stage including not only the US PGA Tour but also European and Australian tours than any other program worldwide.  It is these players and others that he currently trains, and include, Stuart Appleby, Robert Allenby, Steve Allan, Geoff  Ogilvy, Aaron Badderly, Adam Scott, Ernie Els. 

During his time with Steve they were also responsible for preparing junior players and it was these juniors that he studied extensively to refine the philosophies that are currently in place.  He has over 200 juniors that he has studied extensively over a 10 year period to quantify the effect of repetitive movement patterns (golf swing and life patterns) on their performance and implement strategies to enable them to not only combat the negative effect of the repetitive nature of sport and life but to minimise its impact on their wellbeing and long-term health. 

It was from these studies that Vern developed the Leaderboard.  It is a tool that develops the body from the ground up by not only teaching the juniors the correct movement pattern to be able to apply force in a rotational pattern with minimal effort and therefore least impact on the body but establishes a stable base or hitting platform to initiate this rotation.  It also enables them to perform their trunk or core exercises in the correct manner to train rotation and as it trains the correct rotational pattern is excellent for golf technique exercises to establish the correct swing sequences from the putter to the driver.  By using one of the most proprioceptive parts of the body, the feet, it trains the correct swing or sequence from the ground up in a manner that is instantly transferable to the golf swing as it enables the golfer to feel or get feedback as they swing the club both on and off the Leaderboard.  The movement is instantly trained as it is cemented into their swing via tactile feedback.

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