Stoke City favourite Peter Odemwingie gets new career as golf professional

Peter Odemwingie has become a golf professional with an eye on joining the senior tour – a decade after starting to take the sport seriously while he was on the books of Stoke City.

Odemwingie, now aged 42, got a taste of golf during a pre-season trip with West Bromwich Albion under Roy Hodgson and he quickly got the bug. He had golf lessons while on holiday, bought his first set of clubs in 2013 and firmly got hooked after joining the Potters in January 2014.

The Nigeria international forward was a frequent visitor to American Golf in Trent Vale, just down the road from Stoke’s Clayton Wood training headquarters, and met Neil Wain, who worked at the PGA National Academy at the Belfry.

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He joined Aston Wood Golf Club, in Sutton Coldfield, and gradually brought down his handicap to earn PGA membership. He shot an 82 at the English PGA Championship – Midlands at Whittington Heath this month, missing the cut, but is looking forward to what happens next.

“My eyes are on the senior tour in the future because I definitely know there is a player in me,” he said. “This game offers us longevity and if you stay healthy you can play for a long time, as someone like Gary Player shows. Hopefully when I’m old with a lot of grey hairs I’ll be able to tell a pretty cool story about my time playing golf.”

“I’m 42 now and it feels like I was a teenager one more time. It’s a blessing really as I got to put my history and my football career to one side and I told myself, ‘You’re a young man just beginning a new journey in a sport that you fell in love with’. I saw myself as a young kid and felt young going to two classes on a residential week in England with mostly younger people.”

Odemwingie and he will coach golf as well as play, knowing first hand what a difference sound advice can make.

“I was at the driving range all the time hitting so many balls (when I started) that the people there had to tell me, ‘Peter, it’s better to have a lesson!’” he said in an interview for the PGA.

“I could hit 500 balls a day, I was so keen and practising to get good, and I watched so many videos of professional players to learn their swing.”

He added: “I have all the books ready to make the next step in the coaching, which is the plan now to read as many books as I can. I want to keep on following that path of continuous professional development and I’m interested in the courses the PGA offers.

“I’m taking a break for one year where I’ll read and learn as much as I can and then I’ll go back and do the honours degree at the University of Birmingham from next September.”

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