Besides admire as a professional in our industry (I say without referring to a professional player hcp 0) was a great personal friend. We were born in the same region of Belgium, our parents shared profession and we met many evenings to discuss all of golf. For this reason, I would like to make a small tribute to his long career which was the important (but invisible) man behind so many illustrious names.
Their friendship comes from my beginnings in this world that is so passionate about golf, where he also tried to break through their mental coaching techniques with other golf professional Bill Fergusson, (the head coach Colin Montgomerie) founding: Golf & Mind Combined.
During his first steps, he spent much time teaching in courses at Atalaya Golf, then whenever he could fit into his busy schedule, he came to visit us after harvesting success after success.
He had no degree in psychology or other university degrees, indeed, he could barely finish her studies. He began his interest in psychology in the company Concentra in Hasselt (Belgium) where in a few years managed to position the company as a manager of media. It introduced a system of preparation / training for all staff earning improve considerably.
He devoured hundreds of books about the human mind, and came across the book “The Inner Game” of Timothy Gallway. This book changed his life, he left his job in the company and flew to the US to meet the author of Gallway. He was there about six months cultivating, improving, correcting and adapting their techniques to the world of golf.
His beginnings were very hard, to come up with Retief Goosen, a player number 83 in the world at that time and in just a couple of years catapulted to the top of golf by winning the US Open in 2001.
From that moment job requests failed him, he could even choose whom to train. Players reaped success after success as he followed in the background, giving the finishing touches to his pupils on the putting green and driving ranges where international tournaments are held.
He almost always coincided with tournaments such as Volvo Masters in Valderrama Montecastillo, KLM Dutch Open, Open, Cologne, Munich, Hassan II in Rabat and a long list of places.
One of his most famous and gifted pupils was Els. Twitter account Ernie Els: “Today I played with great sadness after learning the sad news of the death of my former coach Jos, a good man and a good friend” (Ernie ElsTheBig_Easy). He had thousands of anecdotes of these players.
He died on Friday of heart failure at age 62, after retiring for two years to recover from a fall causing fracture of the hip, ribs, legs and arms.
His brother Emiel Vanstiphout still a member of our Club de Golf.
I can not omit the other person behind Jos, Ms. Mia Colemont, great lady that fascinated by the mental techniques, did everything possible so that he reached the top.
Several of his pupils: Rich Beem, Thomas Bjorn, Angel Cabrera, Michael Campbell, Darren Clarke, Ross Drummond, Ernie Els, Gary Evans, Sergio Garcia, Retief Goosen, Soren Hansen, Padraig Harrington, David Howell, Raphael Jacquelin, Maarten Lafeber, Thomas Levet, Paul McGinley, Mark McNulty, Rolf Muntz, Eduardo Romero, Justin Rose, Adam Scott, Marcel Siem, Vijay Singh. Even with the unsurpassed Severiano Ballesteros worked a couple of afternoons in Germany.
R.I.P.
