Sandy Farquharson says Spain's real advantage isn't better coaches but the density of hard-working players training together. The competitive environment enables four-hour daily sessions and constant peer challenge, something rare in the UK where players split time between coaching and pro-ams.
Chapters
I think it's interesting when people think, oh, I want to improve my level, I'm going to go to Spain. I think in their mind they see it as there's amazing coaching and there will be players that are going to be better than me that I, I can really challenge myself. And I think that part of that is true. I don't— me personally, I don't think the level of coaching in Spain is very good. I think you do have great coaches and you, you do find them at academies, but generally I don't think the level of coaching is, is very good. But what they do have is they have a lot of players. The players, yeah. And, and you are essentially, by going to Spain, you are putting yourself not only in an environment of players like that, that you can compete with and you can, but they all, they're all hustling, they're all fighting, they're all, you know, training hard. It's not like in a lot of these emerging countries where you might have team players that play for the nation and they are either kind of full-time coaches on the side or they are doing more pro-am and celebrity stuff than they are the training. I mean, you're going into a hustle environment over there, which I think is brilliant. It's, you know, 4 hours training a day. And I don't think that's a reflection on the people necessarily. I think it's, the accessibility. Like, even in, in the UK, for example, it'd be really difficult to get even the small group of players that would want to train at a location together with that environment and make it accessible, whereas there it is accessible, isn't it?
