THEY can be seen On the practice ground at tournaments, eyeing the row of players. Heads nod admiringly as balls are rifled into the distance, but interest is sharpened appreciably by the appearance of tell-tale, distress signals. These are the golf coaches, the self-styled surgeons of ailing swings.

It seems that none of the leading competitors can function without them, though some observers would argue that they can create more harm than good. Still, European practitioners are more fortunate than their American brethren who are regularly preyed upon by charlatans.

They are the notorious fixers; the purveyors of instant cures. "So you have the problem of the ball going left all the time? Try aiming more right." The player tries it. It works on the practice ground but the flaw remains, ready to re-surface during a competitive round.

During the recent English Open at Hanbury Manor, Jamie Birkmyre, the tournament director, was called to the practice ground to have unauthorised persons removed. When it was suggested to John Paramor, director of Tour Operations, that some of these intruders might have been "fixers," he insisted that Europe was not yet afflicted with the American problem.

Meanwhile, Simon Holmes gives a quiet smile. He suspects otherwise, but won't elaborate. He knows the business, having learned his craft on David Leadbetter's staff at Lake Nona, Florida, prior to working with such notables as Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer and Seve Ballesteros. He runs Holmes Golf Inc, based in Orlando.

Describing the coaching scene at tournaments on this side of the Atlantic he said: "There are some teachers such as Dennis Pugh David Whelan, Bill Ferguson, Bob Torrance, Scott Cranfield, Peter Cowan, Dennis Sheehy, John Jacobs and myself, who work with a number of players.

"Then there are those who operate as personal coaches to players such as Russell Claydon and Andrew Sherborne. Then at the top level in the States you have Leadbetter, Butch Harmon, Jim McLean and Rick Smith.

"A common factor among all these coaches is the way they actively promote the notion that they have sole possession of the key, the secret which they're prepared to pass on to privileged clients. But as we're all aware, the secret is that there is no secret."

Holmes went on: "Probably the best golf instruction book ever written was by Percy Boomer and that was published around 1920. It informed its readers that the golf club has to be delivered on to the ball in a certain manner to make the ball fly in the desired way. That remains as true today as it was nearly 80 years ago.

Holmes, a 30-year-old American-based Englishman, had a promising playing career destroyed by injury. "When I was 19 and in my first year at college in the US. I broke both my wrists while competing in the 1986 British Amateur at Lytham," he said

"It happened when I hit a cut-down tree stump hidden in thick grass. I broke three little bones but damaged a whole range of ligaments and tendons. Three operations forced him out of the game for two years and on his return to action, he went for tuition to Leadbetter preparatory to a professional career.

Before long, Holmes realised that serious competitive golf was a lost cause. And in the best, Shavian tradition, he decided that if he could no longer do, he would teach. So it was that he joined the Leadbetter coaching staff at Lake Nona.

From 1989 to 1992, he learned the so-called Leadbetter method. I now realise that there was nothing revolutionary about it, but the information was expertly packaged," he said. "Leadbetter's great strength is that he's an excellent communicator.

"He has a thousand ways of telling you the one thing and, if necessary, he will repeatedly change the emphasis or the approach until you actually absorb it. And in learning the business I discovered that there's so much more to being a good golfer than simply having a better golf swing.

While on the Leadbetter staff, Holmes travelled to all the important tournaments with Faldo, learning to cope with the moods and demands of star players. In the process, he acquired the confidence to work with other leading practitioners such as Langer and Ballesteros, when he went out on his own. Indeed he has taught as many as 70 tournament professionals in the last five years.

"There used to be a concentration on right to left flight but then Jack Nicklaus decided to start fading the ball," he said. "Obviously it was a swing that worked for Nicklaus but suddenly, everybody wanted to acquire it. It became the flavour of the month.

"So we had the farcical situation of 50-year-olds, some of whom had just taken up the game, being taught the Nicklaus swing. And of course is couldn't work.

Golf instruction has become very commercialised, based on the notion that golfers will listen to anything. And with Tiger Woods being the hottest thing right now, everyone will be doing special training to try and replicate his astonishing shoulder speed. The market is going to be flooded with Tiger Woods instruction videos. We'll have My Winning Way by Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods this. Tiger Woods that. And of course it's nonsense.

We returned to the spectre of coaches, hovering like vultures at the back of the practice ground. According to Holmes, they have no shortage of clients because, by its very nature, the game will always have talented, vulnerable players who seem to have lost their way. Players like Ian Baker Finch or Paul Way or, at times, Ballesteros.

The player will probably have grafted in vain to recreate his old productive feel. Suddenly, this benefactor appears like a fairy godfather.

"If you look back at Seve's swing when he was playing well, when he was the best in the world, and you look at it now, there are marked differences," said Holmes. "The position of the club; how his body moves. As I have done with hundreds of players, I looked back over old times, including the British Open.

He went on: "The first time I worked with him was at Cannes in 1993. I had been helping Anders Forsbrand who happens to be a close friend of Seve's. Anyway, Seve asked Anders if I would be willing to come and watch him hit some balls. So we met. And we had about two or three lessons that week. He didn't make the cut and showed no interest in remaining with me.

"Then, at the Irish Open at Mount Juliet a few months later, he asked me to work with him again. I told him I would do it only oil condition that he would commit to it until the end of the year, at least. Not just have a few lessons and go his own way.

He played reasonably well in the Irish, quite well in the Scottish and in the British Open at Royal St George's. But he fought me all the way. And I fought back. I went out and bought an instruction book of his that had just been published. It included a swing sequence in it.

"So I took it to the range the following morning and showed it to. him. We then video-taped his swing as it had become, and I invited him to make comparisons. There's the proof, I said. Look at where the club was then. Look where it is now.

"I became a little angry, insisting I'm not talking shit. This is the truth. This is the way things are." He believed it. His clubface had got more and more shut; his grip had got stronger and stronger and his plane had got flatter and flatter.

"Gradually, improvement started to come and when he finished second to Barry Lane in Switzerland he actually began to flight the ball the way he used to. But at the Ryder Cup later that year. he played badly. As a result, he asked every coach present at The Belfry for a tip: our relationship was at an end."

And what of the Irish approach? "Eamonn Darcy and Padraig Harrington could hardly be described as orthodox, but they learned to become fine ball-strikers," he replied. "In flat, calm conditions in Florida, the ball flight is considered to be very important. But in a 30mph Irish wind, if you hit high shots with a beautiful-looking golf swing, you re not going to find the ball."

He acknowledges that certain coaches deliberately complicate the game. "The key is to accept what you have, your own particular level of co-ordination and physical strength," he said. Then, with the help of an enlightened coach, you must find the way of becoming the best player you can possibly be."

Holmes concluded. You certainly won't acquire the club-head speed of Tiger Woods, for the very good reason that he happens to have been blessed with a different body. No amount of coaching is going to change that. And if you don't accept this basic truth, you're certain to be disappointed.