Andrew Caruso Mulyadi was born in Bali to an Indonesian father and an Italian-Australian mother, grew up playing football and athletics, and didn’t pick up a golf club until the age of fifteen. Today, he is Head Professional at Golf Club Gams-Werdenberg and runs a year-round indoor golf studio in Buchs — proof that the road to becoming a Swiss PGA Professional can start from the most unexpected places.

A Footballer Who Found Golf

Andrew’s sporting life began long before golf entered the picture. As a teenager in Bali, football and athletics were his world. It wasn’t until he was fifteen that he swung a club for the first time — considerably later than most who go on to turn professional. Rather than seeing it as a disadvantage, Andrew credits that athletic foundation with shaping how he understands movement, fitness and the body’s role in the swing today.

As a junior, he competed in the Nick Faldo Series and the Aaron Baddeley Junior Tournaments in Australia — early signs that this late starter was catching up fast.

Melbourne Roots, Swiss Structure

Andrew’s coaching career took shape in Melbourne, where he trained within the Bann Lynch McDade coaching group alongside internationally respected coaches and players. It was there that he came under the mentorship of Steven Bann, whose holistic approach left a lasting impression. Rather than treating the swing as an isolated mechanical problem, Bann connected technique to the whole athlete: fitness, movement quality and mindset as one integrated system.

“I credit that early mentorship as the single biggest influence on how I coach now,” Andrew says. A personal highlight from that era: walking inside the ropes with Steven Bann while he coached KJ Choi during the Presidents Cup.

After moving to Switzerland, Andrew completed the Swiss PGA training programme, adding a second, complementary layer to his coaching foundation — one that combined the holistic philosophy from Melbourne with the technical and professional standards expected of a Swiss PGA Professional.

Data-Driven, Never One-Size-Fits-All

Andrew’s coaching style is defined by two qualities his clients consistently highlight: depth of knowledge and the ability to adapt to whoever is standing in front of him — from a junior hitting balls for the first time to an experienced player chasing single figures.

Technology plays a central role. Andrew has worked with Foresight Sports launch monitors including the GCQuad and, more recently, the Falcon system installed at his indoor centre in Buchs. He chose it specifically for its accuracy and its ability to capture data for every club in the bag, for both right- and left-handed golfers. “This isn’t about replacing feel with numbers,” he explains. “It’s about finding the real root cause of a swing fault, rather than guessing at symptoms.”

Andrew was also the first coach to bring Operation 36 to Switzerland. As a recognised Op36 Top 50 Coach, he uses the programme’s progress tracking and leaderboards to keep golfers motivated. The concept is elegantly simple: shoot 36 for nine holes from a specific yardage, starting just 25 yards from the green, and master the short game before worrying about distance.

Family, Football and Australian Humour

Andrew now lives in Switzerland with his Swiss wife and their two children. Off the course, his interests circle back to where his sporting life began: football and physical fitness remain ongoing passions, and he stays closely connected to how broader sports science intersects with golf performance.

Andrew describes the balance between family life, competing in tournaments himself and growing his business as “an ongoing juggling act — one I wouldn’t trade for a tidier Plan B.” His Australian humour, he adds, sits well with his work ethic — and has helped him build lasting friendships in his adopted home.

A Centre for Every Level

Andrew’s vision for the future is clear and ambitious: he wants to expand ACM Golf into a more extensive high-performance centre, both indoors in Buchs and out on the range at Gams-Werdenberg. The goal is to give golfers of all levels access to better facilities and more structured coaching pathways, year-round.

Andrew’s deep understanding of a players equipment needs led him to team up with YK Golf to introduce the market’s first 100% Swiss-made, zero-twist-torque blade putter. He provided valuable feedback during the development process.

Enjoy the Game, Put In the Practice

Andrew’s advice for anyone considering a career in professional golf — or simply hoping to improve — is refreshingly simple: enjoy the game, and put in the practice. The two go hand in hand. Without genuine enjoyment, the work becomes a grind; without practice, the satisfaction of real improvement never quite arrives.

It’s a philosophy that traces a straight line back to a fifteen-year-old footballer in Bali who found a new sport almost by accident — and to a mentor in Melbourne who taught him to see golf as more than mechanics.