Top 100 Clubhouse - Golf Podcast · Top 100 Golf Courses

Episode 86: Making Bets With Tiger Woods - Gordon Sherry's Life In Golf

September 1, 2025·1 hr 21 min·5 clips

Tiger Woods and Gordon Sherry turned the Scottish Open and Open into a £2 bet.

1. Top 100 Clubhouse - Golf Podcast episode 86 centers on Gordon Sherry’s life in golf, from childhood sports to elite amateur competition. 2. Host James Henson interviews Gordon Sherry, a Scottish golfer whose amateur career included the Scottish boys, the Amateur Championship, and the Walker Cup. 3. The episode asks how football, family coaching, and Bob Torrance shaped Sherry’s golf and competitive mindset. 4. Sherry says his first love was football, that he signed for Kilmarnock as a goalkeeper, and that a broken leg at 12 pushed him away from that path. 5. He explains that golf was always around because his father and brother played, and because he spent summers near Anaan Golf Course with both football and golf. 6. His first major golf memory was Seve Ballesteros winning the 1984 Open at St Andrews, where Sherry watched the final putt in his living room. 7. He then watched Sandy Lyle win in 1985 and stayed up for the 1986 Masters final round to follow Jack Nicklaus. 8. Sherry says his obsession with Nicklaus led to years of watching Golf My Way videos and copying the simple instruction he saw there. 9. He describes breaking his leg again in early 1987 and then turning fully toward golf after football stopped. 10. Sherry says Bob Torrance gave him his first lesson on May 15, 1991, after Ben Collier beat him 5 and 4 in the Scottish boys. 11. He says Torrance transformed his mentality, practice routine, and ball-striking by focusing on body motion, clubface control, and a few repeating fundamentals. 12. Sherry says Torrance relied on ball flight, divots, and contact feel rather than video, and that he worked on only a handful of things for years. 13. He says the coaching took him from a 3 handicap at age 17 to almost scratch within months. 14. Sherry describes the pressure after losing the 1994 final at Nairn and says Torrance met him on the range at the Open with the line, “That could have been you. What are you going to do about it?” 15. He says that moment drove him into obsessive practice and helped him return to win the Amateur Championship in 1995 after a comeback against David Howell. 16. Sherry also credits his mother and father for tough but supportive responses, including a silent car ride home from Nairn in a Renault Clio. 17. The tone is conversational and anecdotal, with James Henson prompting Sherry through specific tournaments, coaches, and courses. 18. The style mixes technical golf detail with personal memory, including caddie stories, course preferences, and repeated references to Bob Torrance’s blunt motivation. 19. Listeners who enjoy Scottish golf history and amateur careers will get the most from it. 20. Listeners wanting a tight mechanical swing lesson or a quick summary may skip it.

As heard by us

A loose golf conversation that turns venue talk into something personal.

Gordon Sherry keeps this Top 100 Clubhouse conversation loose and unhurried. He moves from how golf started for him to amateur play, the long stretch of a round, and the courses that still stay with him. The appeal is that he talks about golf as something lived, not ranked.

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Why you'd press play

If you care about great golf courses and the people who know them by foot, press play.

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