After a significant absence, I’m back and will make this blog an important part of communicating with parents and coaches.  Over the past two years we have built an outdoor gym, brought in awesome new coaches, launched our new junior program, and I’ve started teaching a bunch of great kids.

I’ve always enjoyed working with kids, but the addition of Milo Bryant (one of the awesome coaches), and incorporating fitness development into our golf training has been the big catalyst for me.  In my opinion just teaching golf skills to young athletes (4-8 year olds) and engaging them each class can be very challenging.  The addition of Coach Milo and incorporating a Long Term Athletic Development (LTAD) model has been exciting and very beneficial for the progression of our young athletes.

I’ve seen the results with our players when we focus on developing core athletic skills first and then layering golf specific skills.  A great example is the picture above; the player exhibits great weight transfer, lower body separation, and rotational speed.  Golf skills don’t have to be taught just by swinging a golf club.

Here are a few of the highlights and “firsts” I’ve seen from our players this year;

• 10 of our under 7 players have gone to the golf course with dad, mom or grandparents for the first time – AWESOME!!!
• First two foot box jump after a young athlete struggled for months (this might not sound like much but it was a major achievement for the young athlete)
• First 100 yard shot for a 5 year old
• 5 consecutive SNAG shots
• Awesome battles of Tic-Tac-Toe
• The chance to have my daughter Mira participate in our program

Involving Mira in our program and seeing her progress is very special to me.  She loves coming to golf class and “playing” each week.  Her athleticism has increased significantly and for a 5 year old she displays some nice fundamentals.  I will continue to show her successes and challenges as I continue this blog.

We now have 4 classes each week, will be expanding to a new day for our SMASH (8-13 yr olds) and have waiting lists for 3 classes.  Our program and philosophy is built on developing long term relationships with the players and their families.   I can’t describe how excited I am when our players go to the golf course with their dad, mom, grandpa, etc.

The Academy is based on three primary goals;

1. Ensure each athlete enjoys the game of golf and has FUN
2. Develop golf skills to develop and become proficient golfers
3. Incorporate physical training and develop athletes

To evaluate, monitor and develop each of our players’ abilities we use a hat system much like martial arts, I will go into this more in future posts.  Test days are big days and we treat them like our “majors.”

Most of our players have never played golf before starting our program; I look forward to going to the golf course with each of them.