Behind every great golfer is a chipping green, a patient coach, and a parent who knew when to stay out of the way. England Golf just named Lottie Woad their performer of the year — again. Here’s how she got there.
Lottie Woad has been named Performance of the Year at the 2026 England Golf Awards England Golf — the second consecutive year she’s taken the honour. Her season included winning the Irish Open on the LET as an amateur, then winning the Scottish Open on the LPGA Tour in her debut as a professional. Liphook Herald The numbers are extraordinary.
But there’s a video on the England Golf website that tells a more interesting story than any stat line. It features her dad Nick, her coach Luke Bone — head professional at Farnham Golf Club, who has coached Lottie since she was seven — and it covers the years before the rankings, the titles and Augusta.
What strikes you watching it isn’t the talent. It’s the structure around the talent, and how quietly and undramatically it was built.
Don’t specialise early
Lottie played football for a team of boys. She did cricket, swimming, tennis, cycling. Golf wasn’t even the main event until her mid-teens. Nick Woad is unequivocal that this was a good thing, and Bone backs him up entirely. The competitive instinct she’d developed across every sport she’d played didn’t disappear when golf became the focus — it just found a new home.
It’s a useful reminder at a time when junior golf pathways can feel pressured and early-entry academies are everywhere. Breadth, not depth, in the early years.
The England Golf pathway — use it
The turning point came via the Abraham Trophy, an England Golf competition Lottie entered at thirteen on the back of a nine handicap. She shot level par and won convincingly. England Golf suggested she apply for a regional squad. Nick’s response: “Oh, what’s that?”
They followed the thread, and it led directly into the performance pathway that shaped the next several years. The pathway exists for exactly this kind of player — but families have to know to look for it. If your daughter is showing real ability and improvement, ask the question.
Find a coach and stay
Nearly fifteen years on, Luke Bone is still Lottie’s home coach. That kind of continuity is rarer than it should be, and worth protecting. Trust between a young golfer and a coach takes years to build properly. The video makes clear how much that relationship — honest, long-term, through good patches and difficult ones — has mattered.
Let them own the practice
Members at Farnham will tell you the same story: Lottie on the chipping green before they teed off on Saturday morning, still there at the thirteenth, on the putting green by the time they finished. Nobody arranged that for her. Bone is careful to note it wasn’t just hours — it was smart hours, with very little wastage. But the ownership was hers.
That self-direction is something coaches can encourage but can’t install. The parents’ job, by the sound of it, was mostly to stay out of the way and keep the door open.
