The Balderstone Sports Institute (BSI) is a multi-sport high performance training and education institution based in Johannesburg.
Their stated aim is to provide an environment of excellence that encourages the development of each student to his or her full potential, in sports performance, education, personal development and in preparation for life. To be a hotbed of talent development. To train and produce champions. To develop leaders and positive contributors to society.
SA Golf Trader have followed the development of BSI with keen interest over the years as coincidently both businesses were started in 2004. BSI have provided this publication with numerous instructional articles/videos which have always been of the highest order and dealing with founder and managing director Michael Balderstone and his team is always a pleasure.
Michael’s story is rich and fascinating, beginning in England, moving to South Africa, starting The Golf School of Excellence (later to become BSI) and developing the business into a true South African success story.
SA Golf Trader: Tell us about your early
days and how your interest in sport was sparked?
Michael Balderstone: I was born in Carlisle in the UK. Carlisle is probably the most northern town in England just before the Scottish border. My father was a
professional footballer and a professional cricketer. He was the captain for Carlisle United. In the winter, he would play football, and, in the summer, he played for Leicestershire County Cricket Club. My family would move between the two towns and then when my dad retired from football in the mid-70s and went on to play cricket for England, Leicester became home.
Essentially the start of my sporting journey and my career in sports comes from my father being so heavily involved in sports as a professional. When I was about 14, I gave up pretty much all other sports and focused on golf. I played for my county at all levels up until I was 21 when I turned professional. When I realised that I was not quite good enough to make it as a player, I went the PGA route.
SAGT: What inspired you to take up coaching?
MB: I very quickly fell in love with coaching and discovered that I was good at it, I found I had empathy with the players, and I was more interested in helping
others than working on my own game. So that’s what kind of led me to specialising in coaching.
SAGT: Why did you move to South Africa?
MB: In 1998 an opportunity arose to work at Wedgewood in Port Elizabeth. I’ve kind of found that if you put stuff out into the universe, then things come. So, I moved across to SA.
During my time in PE, I ended up coaching. I became the provincial coach of all the junior teams. That really got me on the road to youth development and coaching high level juniors. It was a big turning point in my career and the fact that the youngsters had access to good golf courses and proper greens all year round, whereas in the UK you only get to spend half the year playing on proper grounds and the rest is on temporary greens. this kind of blew my mind.
SAGT: You then moved to Johannesburg, how did that come about?
MB: In late 2000, a girlfriend that I had at the time wanted to move back to Pretoria. So, I moved up with her and landed a job as a coach at the World of Golf. I ended up buying into the Teaching Academy and then after a year More Golf took over and I sold my shares and decided to set up my own academy. To build up some more capital I moved to America for two years to do instruction at summer camps in Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston.
SAGT: When did you start your academy?
MB: The Golf School of Excellence opened in January 2004 and was the first elite performance golf academy in South Africa based on academies that were in America. We started with six kids, and we’ve grown to one hundred and sixty five in our academy in Joburg and another forty are in our academy in Cape Town, so we’re over two hundred students now.
We have had some really good players
coming through, Toto Thimba was one of our first students, he came to us in in the second year after receiving a bursary. When deciding on a bursary, I looked down the SAGA rankings at that time for the highest-ranking player and he was the highest ranking at that point. He was 110th or 120th, one of the two.
“He made his breakthrough in the KCB Karen Masters of 2019 when he defeated Stephen Ferreira by three shots”
Thimba had a very successful amateur career which provided a solid platform upon which to launch his professional career. After turning pro in 2007, he won the Vusi Ngubeni Development Stroke Play in 2007 to start his new chapter as a Sunshine Tour professional. He announced his Sunshine Tour arrival with a fifth-place finish at the Seekers
Travel Pro-Am in 2008, posting eight-under after rounds of 71, 72 and 65. He would have 11 more top 10 finishes before his maiden victory on Tour arrived. He made his breakthrough in the KCB Karen Masters of 2019 when he defeated Stephen Ferreira by three shots.
SAGT: When did you become a provider of the PGA qualification?
MB: At this stage we were kind of ticking over with about 24 students each year, the likes of Toto had done well, but the vast majority were coming for one or two, even three years and then weren’t making it. So, I wanted to provide something else for those guys. I approached the PGA to see if we could be a provider of the of the PGA qualification. They advised us to get an academic partner, which we did, the Exercise Teachers Academy. We set up in 2008, and launched our PGA program, this revolutionized the business.
“We want those dual pathways to success”
Providing high performance training along with academics, that’s probably our number one philosophy to date across all our programs. We want those dual pathways to success. We quickly became the number one provider of that program, and we still are to
this date. It’s just phenomenal, whether it’s guys that have gone on to the Sunshine Tour or the vast majority that have gone on to achieve amazing success in the golf industry all around the world, (we’ve got graduates in 26 countries around the world).
SAGT: Tell us about some of these success stories
MB: Murray Smit is one of our graduates, he’s now the national coach of the Singapore Golf Association, which is one of the top jobs around the world. They plough a lot of money into their development, so they source the best coaches, he was basically their number one choice. He has also won the PGA of South Africa, Coach of the Year award, and he recently won the International PGA, Professional of the Year award, so he’s done phenomenally well.
We’ve got guys like Jeremy d’Argent, who’s the golf director at the Links, Fancourt. So again, one of the top jobs in the country. We’ve got guys that have worked their way through the management levels at the Pro Shop. We’ve got guys that are setting up their own businesses, getting top jobs in coaching, literally every manufacturer has one of our graduates working for them behind the scenes.
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SAGT: How did the Junior Academy come about?
MB: We set up our Junior Academy in 2013 after I saw that many guys were
starting their development at eighteen and often at that age it’s almost too late. I realised that if we could get them earlier, then they’d have a better chance of getting to a higher level eventually, so now we provide our program from Grade 8 upwards. Yurav Premlall came through our junior academy, and he recently won his first Sunshine Tour event.
SAGT: What does the future hold?
MB: While the golf academy has been growing and getting better and better, we’ve also set up from 2019, a football academy. Three years ago, we set up a tennis academy and at the same time we set up an athletics program. And from next year, we’re offering basketball.
Our five-year goal is to create a world class multi-sport academy with a custom-built amazing facility in Gauteng, where we’ll offer multiple sports at a world class level for South Africa and for Africa.
