• Change for the sake of change. “Things are going to be different now that I’m in charge.” Certainly some things are going to be different, but some things got the way they are for good reason. Immediately sweeping away all the old rules and procedures is a mistake. 
• Careless Promises.  Never promise anything you aren’t absolutely certain you can deliver.  Remember that you cannot buy loyalty — rewards should be handed out only for what people have done in the past and what they are going to continue to do in the future.
• Playing favorites.  Yes, some employees are more dependable than others.  But your job is to manage all of them (or do something about those with significant performance issues). Good managers treat their people consistently and fairly.
• Hoarding the work.  Often out of nervousness, new managers try to do everything themselves.  But training and delegating are among your most important responsibilities.  Learn to delegate or you invite disaster.
• Special privileges.  Remember that everyone is watching you.  Coming in late, going home early, taking long lunches or playing 18 holes of golf each day send the wrong message. You can’t expect employees to give 110 percent if you’re not doing the same.

By Dr. Patrick J. MontanaUSGTF Level IV Member and U.S. Golf Managers Association Course Director, Scarborough, New York
Today, there are approximately 17,000 golf clubs in the United States and an equivalent number worldwide. With many golf facilities and courses being constructed annually and the industry continuing to grow, there is a need for more qualified and effective golf club managers in the golf industry.
The United States Golf Managers Association is dedicated to training and certifying golf club managers nationally and internationally to effectively perform as golf club or golf resort managers.
In addition to learning the skills for implementing a Results-Oriented Management System, participants are first asked to think seriously about the five basic questions that are strategic in nature for their organization.
Peter Drucker, the late and famous worldwide management authority and a former colleague of mine, associates this process with a set of five questions which are applicable to any organization:

• What is our business mission?
• Who are our customers?
• What do our customers consider value?
• What have been our results?
• What is our plan?

Once an organization has made decisions in these areas, it will have defined the scope of its operations, mapped its future direction, defined its overall relationship to its environment in terms of product/market scope, geographic boundaries, competition (including competitive advantage) and goals and objectives to be achieved. Any and all strategies should, in turn, offer clear and demonstrable opportunities to accomplish strategic goals and operating objectives through our system of Managing for Results.
In addition to learning this system of Managing for Results, during the Golf Club Management Certification Course, students hear from practicing golf club managers and professionals about customer relations and customer service, golf facility operations, merchandising operations, food and beverage, tournament management, golf club financial management, ownership management, turf management operations, and even learn about today’s modern golf equipment.
If you’re thinking about a career in golf club or golf resort management, you may want to consider enrolling in a forthcoming United States Golf Managers Association® certification course and increase your employment opportunities in this growing global field.

Teaching intermediates with typical problems is still not overly strenuous from a technical viewpoint. Their problems tend to stem from the setup, and/or a lack of doing something correctly in their motions. For example, slicers tend not to release the club, so getting them to release properly is getting them to do something they are not already doing.

By contrast, fixing a hook is a tremendous challenge for many teachers. The problem for the golfer who hooks is often that they are already doing something properly (releasing, for example), but they are overdoing it. Getting a golfer to reduce a motion is a more difficult proposition.

A hook occurs, of course, when the clubface is closed in relation to the clubhead path through impact. There are both setup and swing considerations to take into account when evaluating exactly what the student is doing when he or she is hooking the ball. For purposes of this article, we will assume the player is right-handed.

One of the most important things to an amputee is to fi nd some sort of physical activity. It lifts their spirits and gives them the feeling that they can accomplish more than just being able to walk. They must fi nd a place where they can have fun. Some have found golf. There are many associations they can join, should they seek a competitive outlet. There are numerous clinics conducted across the United States that are sponsored by the Amputee Associations. These clinics are geared towards hospital and rehab organizations. The clinic basically introduces and demonstrates the devices that have been invented to accommodate various amputee situations, such as arms, hands, and legs. Golf pros are invited to donate their time for one morning and give brief lessons to handicapped attendees. When it’s over, the pros go home, and rarely (if ever) get in touch with the rehab people again. Because of the present wars, the amputee population is unfortunately growing.

When working with a handicapped person, there are many more considerations involved when making swing corrections than with a nonhandicapped golfer. After a swing correction is offered and tried by the player, you must ask how the movement affects balance. When you get that answer, you have two options: 1) continue along the lines of the correction, or 2) take another approach because of the effects on balance.

You can see this man has golf shoes on, but they do not contain his feet. That little square box to which the red lines are pointing on each leg, acts as his foot in the prosthetic device. It’s like trying to play golf on stilts. Wearing prosthetics is similar to walking across a very slippery surface. When you walk on a surface like that, you use your muscles in a different way in order to keep from falling. Some muscles are tightened up, some are relaxed, and you walk with great caution. Eventually, the body adapts to the movement, and muscles get realigned to work with the prosthetic. Your visional perception also changes. Try turning your head while you are walking on that slippery surface – it gets scary. So, when a double amputee moves, his head goes with him.

When I first started working with this individual, his left leg was air-actuated. When he swung you could actually see and hear it pull up into the body when he shifted his weight onto his leg. His right leg is computer-actuated and does a thousand commands a second. The only drawback is that the computer doesn’t know when he has stopped climbing a hill or riding a bike. So, he has to stop and let the computer re-boot or the leg will react as if it is still on the bike or climbing. His left leg has since been changed to be vacuum-actuated. The vacuum-actuated leg makes it easier for him to get his weight onto his left leg during the downswing.

Without rotors on his legs, an amputee is very limited in making any type of golf swing with a rotary motion. Usually they compensate with lateral movement and an overuse of their arms, which is where we began our lessons. After two lessons, I asked him to see if he could get rotors. In his circumstance, the VA paid for his legs, so money was not a problem. A rotor is a device that allows some pivot motion in one direction or another. The limited movement of the rotor is for balance. Rotors are about the size of a silver dollar, and about an inch thick. They are set equally at 15 degrees to the left and right on his left leg. The prosthetics can adjust for more or less rotation. They are activated by twisting or turning the body. For golf, he pushes his upper body down and activates his hips to turn the rotors. When a rotor is added, the height of the foot on the prosthetic device must be narrowed. The left leg rotates in two directions. The right leg rotates five degrees for the backswing, allowing him to open his right hip slightly on the backswing. There is no rotor for the forward swing.

A double amputee must keep his prosthetic feet flat during the entire swing. Those little square boxes around ankle height cannot tilt. Because if they do, he will fall. There is no such thing as coming up on the rear toe to complete the forward swing. As we progress with downswing movement and better hip rotation, we might be able to add a rotor on the right leg for forward movement in the swing. If that rotor is added, we will again address the balance issues that the rotor creates.

Finally, keep in mind that the more questions you ask a physically handicapped golfer, the better the golf lesson will be.

Before driving ranges, most pros shagged their own balls. They would hit balls from one end of a field, walk to the other end, and hit them back.

Pros needed endurance and accuracy. An unintended benefit was that they’d focus on most of their shots so they didn’t have to go all over hell’s half-acre picking up balls.

From the ages of 14 to 19, Moe Norman shagged more than one million golf balls, most of them in a 225- yard field at Rockway Golf Club in Kitchener, Ontario. The field at Rockway helped forged one of the most powerful and accurate golf swings in the history of the game.

Forty years later, Moe didn’t talk about working hard at Rockway. He talked about effortlessness, ease, and simplicity; about learning to move his body in perfect sequence – in perfect balance.

“My swing balances me,” he would say.

All great ballstrikers swing in balance. Whether we look at a figure skater, quarterback, skateboarder or golfer, all high-performance athletes make complex movements look easy because they move in perfect balance.

Golfers who cannot swing in balance significantly reduce their chances to hit the ball solidly, accurately and consistently. The overwhelming majority of golfers swing the club from outside to inside the target line, while better players tend to swing excessively from the inside.

In both scenarios, the club is out of position and the body moves to counteract the forces at work in the swing, making it difficult to stay in balance. This verifies Moe’s explanation that his swing balanced him.

Moe talked about making the body stable. With stability, the student has a much better chance of moving in balance. Drills that encourage stabilizing the body and proper spine movement will promote proper club movement.

Ball Position
Anything that affects the movement of the spine affects the balance of the body. This includes distance from ball and the position of the ball relative to the lead shoulder, which is a function of stance width. To create an optimum position of the body for balance, the ball must be positioned correctly in order to simplify the body’s ability to balance during the strike.

Since balance is related to how the feet work and balance the body throughout the swing, the best drills for working on balance help you learn connection to the ground.

Great ballstrikers synchronize their upper and lower bodies in a way that allows the hips to turn into the backswing as the shoulders turn. Then, during the transition, the lower body starts the downswing move as the club “drops” on plane. The lower upper body/lower body relationship establishes the stability of the lower body as the upper body produces speed.

Feet on the Ground Drill
Striking golf balls with both feet on the ground from the backswing through release helps train students to stabilize their lower bodies. Ensure that students turn their hips while keeping their feet on the ground, and that the right hip turns inward in the downswing as the lead knee remains flexed. This drill keeps the spine in position throughout the golf swing.

Leverage Bag Drills
A leverage bag is a great training aid to help students move into impact with the upper and lower body moving correctly in sequence. The leverage bag helps teach stability throughout the swing. Note: at impact, the hips are open and feet are flat on the ground.

Todd Graves is the founder of the Graves Golf Academy, with teaching locations in Orlando, Florida, and Edmond, Oklahoma. Visit www.moenormangolf.com for more information. Tim O’Connor is president of O’Connor Golf Communications in Guelph, Ontario. For more information, visit www.oconnorgolf.ca

At my golf academy, our teaching philosophy and methods are innovative. We use a combination of “old-style feel” with the latest in technology.

We specialize in golfers who are serious about moving to the next level. Training includes all aspects of the game with a focus on:

• Swing Mechanics
• Short Game
• Tournament Preparation Techniques
• Mental Focus for Tournament Golf
• Fitness Training

The goal of my academy is to create a positive learning environment. We divide practice sessions into different segments: mechanics, feel, and playing the game. Students see results. They enjoy the learning process and see positive results with each session.

The Learning Process:
Mechanics, Feel, & Playing the Game

A typical session involves a segment where mechanical issues are addressed. From a technical standpoint, we believe that there is an optimal swing model for each individual. This model is determined by a person’s athletic ability, anatomy, physical handicaps, thought process, and level they wish to play the game. The goal is to move closer to each individual’s ideal swing model. Ultimately, this will lead to the most important part of the golf swing, impact position.

First, we determine a student’s model by an evaluation of the student in terms of physical ability and goals. Next, we extensively use the SwingModel video analysis system. SwingModel was developed by Dr. Ralph Mann, an Olympic medalist in track and field. Dr. Mann has been analyzing sports performance for over 30 years in many different sports.

Briefly, SwingModel is science-based. It uses decades of research on elite athletes performing the optimal movement in certain sports. In this case, the performance is the golf swing. All elements of the body motion are followed, and the athlete’s performance is digitized by a computer. Using computer analysis, a model is developed for the maximum biomechanical effort to perform the action. The model can then be fit into each person’s anatomy and ability to perform at a certain speed. Therefore, the SwingModel is custom-fit for each individual person. It is then overlaid on a video analysis of a student’s swing.

From this point, I can begin to provide the student the information he needs to progress. The real art in teaching is to be able to communicate the information to the student for his/her learning type and thought process. A valued teacher finds a way to deliver this information. It is important to understand each student’s learning process. The teacher must communicate the skill through different forms of learning. This includes visual, feel, and verbal communication.

We use “input amplifiers” to transmit the information. These are the visual, feel, and verbal cues that pass the information from the teacher to the student. We prefer to use minimal verbal cues. We find kinesthetic and visual cues are much more effective at transmitting information. Often this can be a simple kinesthetic training aid such as the SwingRite or the visual aid ProAlign1000.

Through research and experience, I have found that many swing flaws are created in the set-up position. When the setup is flawed, the swing becomes a series of compensations. For instance, ball position has a major impact on how a golf club is swung back and through to impact. A ball position too far back or forward greatly impacts how the body will shift and rotate throughout the swing. A ball position that is too close or too far away from the body affects rotation of the torso as well as path of the swing on the backswing and downswing. For instance, research has shown that the ball moves back in the stance in relation to the lead foot less than four inches from the driver to the wedge. The average distance from the ball (toe line to center of the ball) with a 9-iron is 20 inches, and with a driver, 32 inches. Anatomy has an effect on these measurements. SwingModel tells us exactly these measurements for each individual.

This is where a training aid such the ProAlign1000 is useful in reinforcing a proper setup position. We use SwingModel to tell us exactly where the set-up position should be, then we set the ProAlign1000 in this perfect position. Now the student is obliged to set-up in the desired position. Only through perfect repetition can the proper learning process take place.

The same process is repeated through all aspects of the golf swing where the student should be close to his SwingModel.

Feel and Playing the Game

The mechanics of a golf shot are just a part of the game of golf. At any level, the game involves execution of shots. Therefore, I am a firm believer in playing golf on the golf course. Regardless of skill level, the best way to learn to play golf is on the golf course. At our academy, we also simulate game experience with certain drills and techniques designed to teach a golfer how to perform on the golf course. By doing this, we instill game-time performance and repetitive positive habits.

Fitness and Athletic Ability

Fitness training is one of the largest sports industries. People are now starting to realize that top golfers are athletes, and better performance can be achieved with better fitness. We focus on getting strength, flexibility, and endurance. The golf swing is an athletic movement. One of the fastest ways to get better in golf is to treat the golf swing as a sport and train like other sports. Too often, golfers want to get better but fail to exercise the required amount to perform to their expectations. Also, exercise increases quality of life. Golf fitness can increase performance, but can also be a fitness choice for people looking for alternatives to the regular gym.

For more information on any of these products or teaching techniques, please visit the following website: www.swingmodel.com

From wooden golf balls to modern urethanecovered rockets, from tree branches to graphite- shafted aerodynamic titanium clubheads, the golf swing has evolved along with changes in the equipment used throughout the years. Here is a primer of how the golf swing has changed in response to the equipment being used at the time.

Feathery golf balls
The feathery was made by stuffing wet goose feathers into a leather pouch, sewing the pouch up, and the drying feathers expanded to make a fairly hard, useable golf ball. Since the feathery didn’t have the aerodynamics we are familiar with today, it was best to keep the ball low to the ground. To achieve this, the top players would swing in a relatively flat, roundhouse manner known as the “St. Andrews swing.” This swing produced a draw.

Hickory-shafted golf clubs
For centuries, golf clubs were made with wooden shafts, often hickory. The shafts had a lot of torque, or twist, in them. This necessitated strong hand action and rotation in order to square the clubface at impact. To achieve this strong rotation, players would rotate through the ball with minimal lateral action, hitting against a firm left side.

Gutta-percha balls
The gutta-percha ball replaced the feathery in 1848. Dr. Robert Adams Paterson invented it at the time, being too poor to afford featheries (according to his New York Times obituary in 1904). Being far superior to the feathery, it soon became the ball of choice. Golfers then noticed that the ‘gutty’ flew farther when it got nicked up, and soon golfers began to put their own carvings into their new golf balls. Manufacturers then started making their molds, first with outward-facing pips, and then with lines and the dimples we have come to know today.

In Jersey, England, the players found that if they swung more upright, they could get the gutty up in the air, which worked because of the aerodynamic properties of the gutty. Harry Vardon became the first notable golfer to swing in this manner.

Steel-shafted clubs
With the coming of steel shafts in the 1920s, the game was about to undergo a major change in swing motion. Since steel shafts had far less torque than hickory shafts, the old swing of aggressive rotation with the hands produced a hook with the steel shafts. To offset this, players soon found that they had to use their lower bodies much more actively than with hickory shafts, in order to prevent the clubface from being shut at impact. Byron Nelson is known as the father of the modern golf swing for being the first prominent golfer to use this new action.

Titanium drivers and solid-core balls
Not much changed for decades when it came to the swing since Nelson’s day, because the equipment remained virtually the same from the 1930s to the late 1980s – wound balls and persimmon drivers. There were differences in swing styles which were player-influenced, but equipment per se did not influence the differences.

But, with the advent of metal drivers and solid-core balls, the swing changed again, although in more subtle ways. While some golfers, such as Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, were always encouraged to hit the ball as far as they could and worry about accuracy later, most were taught to have a controlled swing. Since the metal drivers offered more forgiveness than persimmon drivers, young golfers were encouraged to seek distance first, accuracy second. Solid-core premium balls, which became popular around 2000, spun less than the old wound balls, which meant that sidespin was also decreased, further limiting crooked tee shots. The result is a generation of free-swingers never before seen, perhaps most notably Bubba Watson.

The future
With so many recent constraints put on the driver from the R&A and the USGA, along with the premium golf ball nearing the maximum distance standard, it seems difficult to believe that swing changes in response to equipment changes will be forthcoming. However, the game has always evolved to some degree. So perhaps anything’s possible.

This article first appeared in the Spring 1996 edition of Golf Teaching Pro, and is another in a series of looking back through the magazine archives. This interview with Byron Nelson was compiled by USGTF contributing writer Russ Pate and has never appeared in any other publication except for Golf Teaching Pro. The article is Nelson’s fistperson account on his thoughts on teaching golf.

By the time I got my first pro job in Texarkana, I had learned how to play really well, but I hadn’t done any teaching at all except for myself. After I was hired, I began to think, “Oh boy, if someone comes out and wants a lesson, I’ll have to give it.”

I was a little nervous about the prospect, but I just studied what I learned myself and the procedures I had gone through in learning to play well. I decided it was working pretty well for me, so I figured I could teach it. I’ve never felt I had much imagination, but what I did have came out when I played golf, and I felt I could use that in my teaching.

Sure enough, my first pupil, Mrs. Josh Morris, came along shortly after I started at Texarkana. Having studied how I had learned, and realizing I was only able to learn one thing at a time, I realized I had to do the same thing with Mrs. Morris – try to teach one thing at a time. This was necessary, because in golf, whenever you make a change, it doesn’t feel natural at first because your subconscious only knows what it’s been doing – it takes a while for any outside changes to sink in.

So, you work on one thing first and get to where it feels normal and natural to do, and then you don’t have to think about it at all. The only trouble with that when teaching yourself, you need to be very good at understanding what your biggest problem is. Then you work that problem and after you correct it, you go on to the next area. But, this isn’t easy for someone who doesn’t understand what their problems are, or how to rank them. That’s why teachers are necessary for most people trying to learn to play golf.

I was never a believer in taking a lot of lessons at once. It works best to take two or three lessons until you get an idea on what the teacher is saying, then go out and practice and play a little on your own for a couple of weeks. Then, take another lesson, practice and play a little, and so on. Learning golf efficiently is really a slow process, a little like recovering from an operation. You don’t all of a sudden begin walking or running, you have to take one step at a time. It’s the same way in golf.

Using these two main thoughts – teaching one thing at a time and not giving too many lessons at once – I basically had good results with the people I taught. And, most important, I didn’t confuse them.

One interesting thing I discovered about teaching was that sometimes when you’re on the practice range, people are so intent on hitting the ball itself that they’re not paying enough attention to what you’re saying about the mechanics of the swing.

For example, there was Zoe Tasker at Inverness. Her husband Eddie and I played together quite a lot, and Zoe was a pretty good player herself. She scored in the 90’s most of the time and that was good, because at that time ladies didn’t get much break off the tees at Inverness. The trouble was, Zoe had a very good swing and should have scored much better, but she was pitiful out of a bunker. She got in them a lot and didn’t get out the first time hardly ever.

I worked with her in the practice bunker at least three times and had not made the progress I wanted to, and she wasn’t happy with it, either. I got to thinking about it, and one day, after she had finished playing Ladies’ Day, I said, “How did you do, Mrs. Tasker?” She said, “I played pretty well, Byron, but if I could have gotten out of the bunkers, I could really have had a good score.” I replied, “Well, I’ve got an idea about that. When you get through having lunch with the ladies, I want to meet you in the mixed grill and talk to you about it.” She agreed, sent a message over when she was ready, and I went and had a Coke with her.

“I want to give you a lesson sitting right here,” I said, and that’s exactly what I did. She listened while I told her everything I’d told her when we’d practiced in the bunker. She asked a lot of questions and we spent about an hour on that “lesson.” The next time she played, she shot an 88 and she never had any more trouble getting out of bunkers.

Some of the best lessons I ever gave were like that, teaching someone without a ball in front of them or a club in their hands. Very often, especially on a cold or rainy day, I’d use the mirror in my pro shop. I feel it worked better even than the videotapes they use so much today, because the student is thinking about what they’re doing, rather than about hitting a ball.

Then, there was Izzy Danforth, who used to be married to Ted Danforth, the son of my wonderful friend Bill Danforth, one of the founding members of Augusta National. Bill lived in Hyannisport, and his children went to school with the Kennedys. One time in the late 1950s, I was up visiting Bill and we went out to play golf at Oyster Harbour with Ted and Izzy. Izzy had a pretty good golf swing, but like Zoe Tasker, she was also poor out of the sand. I watched her whole round – I’d seen her play before but had never played with her. Like Zoe, she, too, should have been in the 80s but she wasn’t because of her sand play.

Now, the whole time we’d played, the weather was getting gloomier and gloomier, and by the time we finished the 18th hole, it looked like it was going to pour. But, I had eight balls in my bag, and I said, “Izzy, come over here and get in this bunker. You’ve got a good swing, but you need to learn how to play out of the sand.”

I could tell she didn’t want to do it, and then just as we got down in there, it started raining. Now, Izzy really wanted to quit, but I told her, “I don’t care how wet you get, you’re going to learn to play out of this bunker or drown!” That got her attention, so she really listened to me. We stayed in that bunker about a half-hour, got soaking wet, and the next year she won the club championship.

That kind of teaching, where a student learns how to do one simple thing well enough so that they can really enjoy the game, is very satisfying to me. One more example is my good friend Ed Haggar, who loves to play, but has often had trouble with his short chips, 10 to 20 feet off the green, which is where a lot of the scoring is done in golf. He’d flub it or top it quite often, and the reason was he didn’t move his feet at all. He used only his wrists and hands and just chopped at the ball. I worked with him every time I’d play with him, and after awhile, he began to chip rather well. Some time afterwards, I saw him playing at Dallas Country Club, and he hollered across the course to me, “Hey, Byron, I just chipped one in!” It always makes you feel good when you can help a friend that way.

The teaching pros who stand out in my mind all have different personalities and somewhat different teaching methods, but they also have one thing in common – they like to help people. To me, that’s very necessary if you want to be a good teacher. You must be patient also, because if you’re not, your students will feel it and that will be harmful both to their game and your ability to teach.

And again, you must not try to teach too many things at once. Concentrate on one problem at a time, and let the student work with that for awhile before you move on to something else. I’m sure most good teachers understand the fundamentals of the game pretty much the same way, but the way they teach may sound different. That’s why golfers sometimes have to go to two or three different pros to fi nd one they can understand and relate to. Even the touring pros today sometimes go to several teachers to fi nd one who can really help them.

Many of the pros in my time were reluctant to teach a lot, because they were afraid the bad habits of their pupils might affect their own golf swing. That didn’t affect me much, fortunately, and I think it was because I didn’t try to teach anyone to swing the way I did – because golf is such an individual game. I simply taught what the right fundamentals were, and those are the same for everyone.

That really is a basic part of my teaching philosophy, that the golf swing is as different as your own personality. If you try to change someone’s natural rhythm, you won’t be very successful. You have to try and see what potential a person has in his or her swing. For instance, after I’d worked with Tom Watson, some people would tell me I needed to get him to slow down his swing. Well, Tom moves quickly, thinks quickly, does everything with a certain amount of quick energy. To try and change his swing speed would mean trying to change something very fundamental about his whole personality, and that just doesn’t work.

As for changing an amateur’s swing, it’s really kind of the same idea. You have to work with their own natural rhythm, their own build, and so on. Unless someone has a lot of time and money and is willing to work really hard, totally rebuilding the swing is just not very productive.

People sometimes ask me – and I sometimes wonder myself – why today’s touring pros can’t seem to correct their own swing faults. In my mind, it’s because so few of them have learned how to swing on their own. They’ve been taught by others from the time they were junior golfers, with rare exceptions. When you teach yourself something, you understand it better and remember it better than if someone else teaches you. Even when I was on the tour, though, there wasn’t much teaching done between the pros themselves as there is today. Unless you were to ask someone for help, they really pretty much let you alone. That might have been because there was so little money out there and the competition for it was pretty fierce at times, but I think it was mostly that the boys were more self-taught, more independent.

I’ve seen a lot of the gimmicks and gadgets on the market now, and I have to say I don’t really believe in them much. If you understand the basics of the swing thoroughly, you won’t have much trouble with your swing, ever. But, one thing I would have liked to have had when I was teaching is the video camera they have now. It really can be so helpful to see your own swing on film, so you can really be aware of what you need to change exactly. Sometimes it’s such a small thing that needs to change, but until you see it yourself on fi lm or in a photo, you aren’t convinced that’s even what you’re doing.

Some people rely too much on what someone tells them to improve their swing or their ability to score. You do need some help sometimes to expedite the process, but rather than running to a teacher every time you have a bad game, you need to analyze the situation yourself first. Decide where the problem is – your driver, long irons, fairways woods, chipping, putting – and work to correct it with what you already know. It’s really best to go to a pro when you decide you really want to improve your overall game and you’re ready to commit the resources it will take to do that. Now, if you all of a sudden start slicing everything, that’s one thing, but your pro has already given you the keys to correcting that, and you just have to go back to the fundamentals.

When you make the decision to take your game to the next level, be sure you’re ready to listen. I’ve had more than my share of pupils who would take lessons, but would just keep doing things their own way. That’s a waste of everyone’s time. Sometimes, you may have to search for a pro who speaks your own language, but when you find one, you’ll be pleased with the results.

I guess my final thought on teaching golf is that professionals need to impart a solid, basic understanding of the swing – the first, middle, and last. When they do that, and do it well, their students will improve steadily, be able to correct temporary problems on their own, be enthused about learning more, and, most important, they’ll enjoy the game as it’s meant to be enjoyed. You can’t ask for more than that.

How Golf Management Began

No one knows exactly who invented golf, or managed the first golfing society or club, but the Flemish, the English, the Scottish and now the Chinese have all laid claim to one or the other. Someday an enterprising archaeologist might well discover a foursome painted on a wall by cave-dwellers of the Ice Age, for all that was needed to play the game was a target, a club, a ball, some kind of talent for accuracy, and an enjoyment of the fellowship of the game.

If it was the compelling happiness of threading a ball through Scottish gales to nestle a ball by its intended target that drove the game’s popularity, it was fellowship and camaraderie that drove the formation of the actual golf clubs.  And, with the formation of these clubs, the field of golf management was born.

Medieval Management

Though fanciful golf art has for many years portrayed lonely Scottish shepherds playing golf by ones or twos with Gaelic crooks in the Highlands, when golf gained its first wave of recorded popularity in the 1400s it was among the Lowland Scots around Edinburgh, and by 1457 the Scottish Parliament was alarmed enough at the effect of golf on archery practice to ban the game altogether.

By 1415, the English turned from invading Scotland to using longbow tactics against the French, who ran into such disasters that Scottish mercenaries were hired to come to the Flemish lowlands to assist the French resistance. In 1423, a Scottish regiment aiding the French against the English at the Siege of Bauge is introduced to the game of chole. Hugh Kennedy, Robert Stewart and John Smale, three of the identified players, are credited with introducing the game in Scotland.

They were members of a new class of society in Scottish life – the gentleman, a class standing between the nobles on the one hand and the yeomen and peasants on the other. Typically descended from the junior lines of nobility and holding coats of arms, they filled out the growing military and merchant ranks, and collectively the gentlemen of Scotland were largely responsible for the game’s spreading popularity, to Carnoustie by 1527, the Old Course by 1552 and Glasgow by 1589.

Introduction of Rules

But, the home of the game for some time remained in Edinburgh, and its heart at the five-hole links at Leith, which grew steadily in popularity until, in 1744, the City of Edinburgh paid for a Silver Cup to be awarded to the annual champion in an open competition played at Leith. It was a companion to a Silver Arrow given to the finest in archery. But, golf needed rules if it were to have an open competition (for it had been played only in match style until then), and the gentlemen golfers of Edinburgh united as, unsurprisingly, “the Gentlemen Golfers,” and codified the original 13 rules of golf.  Thus, 1744 was a watershed year for golf management, as an element of formality was introduced.

Though the Gentlemen Golfers had come together to codify and compete at golf, they found tremendous fellowship in the game deepened by the Society they had formed, and by 1764 the City of Edinburgh limited competition for the Silver Cup to members of the Gentlemen Golfers.

But, they were not yet a club.   In fact, only in 1800 did they become, in the vernacular of the time, “The Honourable Edinburgh Company of Golfers.”  The first “club” was in fact formed in England, with the founding of the Blackheath Club, near London.

The Formation of Clubhouses

“Club,” as it turns out, is an English term — borne of chocolate- and coffee-houses of the early 18^thcentury, and out of tavern houses of an earlier time. The Kit-Cat, the World, and the Beef Steak were typical of the time. White’s originated as White’s Chocolate House in 1698, while Scottish Jacobites met at the Cocoa-Tree, a chocolate house in London.

The clubs used taverns and coffee-houses as their meeting places, but soon they acquired their own premises, and it was the same with the golf club. The first was established in 1768 at Leigh, and appropriately called “The Golf House.” It is no longer standing.

The oldest golf club still intact (and today in use as a nursery school) is located at the clubhouse of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, originally erected in 1854.

Golf Management in the New World

Like today at St. Andrews, there was a separation at the time between the course, the pro shop, and the club. The course was generally for the use of all; the golf shop was a privately run affair, usually managed by the course professional but sometimes not; and the club was for its members, who were exclusively men and few in number.

The club was for changing, for club storage, for lodging in some cases, for drinking and dining in all cases, and for the holding of trophies, and the overall stewardship of the game. A sharing arrangement between The Honorable Company, the R&A and Prestwick in oversight of the rules proved impractical, and sole rule-making authority was invested in the Royal & Ancient by the 1830s.

The club, and therefore club management, moved well beyond United Kingdom shores in the 1700s and early 1800s. The South Carolina Golf Club was formed in Charleston, the first golf club outside of the United Kingdom.  In1820, the Bangalore Club was formed, the first club in India. In 1833, King William IV confers the distinction of “Royal” on the Perth Golfing Society.  As Royal Perth, it is the first club to hold the distinction, while the title “Royal and Ancient” was bestowed on “the Golf Club at St. Andrews” in 1834.

The Professional

With growing appeal, a degree of professionalism would be demanded of golf management, and in 1774 the Edinburgh Burgess Society hired the first golf professional. He also served as the greenkeeper.

Amid the general rise in affluence through the 19^thcentury as the Victorian Era unfolded, golf management became very similar to what we see today as courses acquired greenskeepers, golf shops acquired professionals, and clubs acquired secretaries.  Well-known professionals like Old Tom Morris began competing for a Professionals Championship in 1857, three years after the first recorded book of golf instruction, The Golfers Manual by H.B. Farnie, was published.

More Structured Golf Management

In the 1880s, golf began to achieve a striking renewal in popularity, primarily driven by the keen interest of Lord Balfour (British Prime Minister 1902-05), who wrote enthusiastically of the game and played it well. The game also began to achieve popularity in the United States, and the US Open was first staged in 1895, the same year that the Chicago Golf Club becomes the nation’s first 18-hole course,

In other ways, golf management was becoming more specialized and professional in its approach. Donald Ross launched his professional design career with his first course at the Carolina Hotel (later Pinehurst) in 1901, while the UK’s Sunningdale became the first course with grass grown completely from seed.

At the golf club itself, the process of unifying the roles of greenskeeper, golf professional, and club manager under one set of management was accelerating in the United States. In part, this was achieved by the development of the country club, and in part by the rise of the golf resort.

The Advent of Golf Resorts

The first country club to include golf was The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, which was founded in 1882 and added golf in 1893 with a six-hole layout, expanded to nine holes in 1894, and 18 holes by 1899. The original club featured horseback riding. The concept of the country club — with tennis, swimming, equestrian sports, archery and badminton among the featured sports — established the role of the professional club manager as a permanent feature. Brookline would go on to have more than 1300 members, and the large membership cadre inspired more division of management into specializations such as membership services, dining, and golf.

The most important early resort in golf — and still, like Brookline, a major force today – was Pinehurst, originally founded in 1895 as a health resort (known then as a sanitarium) and situated to take advantage of the healthy climate of the Carolina Sandhills, but it quickly embraced golf.

Pinehurst was one of the first fully-integrated golf complexes. It featured not only its array of courses, including the famous Number 2, but also extensive resort facilities, hotels, dining, instruction, and a location on the edge of a planned village that existed because of, yet contributed much to, the grandeur of the golf resort.

A feature that would be always associated with Pinehurst was its blend of resort services that anyone could enjoy, and golf authenticity and tradition that equaled any private club in the country. From locker facilities, to restaurants, to golf instruction and course design, golf management was no longer divided between the elegance of private clubs and the rough-hewn nature of public facilities. At Pinehurst, there was the best of both.

Specialized Golf Management

In the 1920s and 1930s, champion golfers such as Bobby Jones and Marion Hollins, along with celebrated architect Alistair Mackenzie, developed legendary, integrated, and intensely private golf meccas at Cypress Point and Augusta National.  A small group of members, supervising a professional staff, oversaw not only member operations, including dining, golf and private lodging, but began the operation of large-scale, popular, annual golf tournaments, such as the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am and the Masters.  These tournaments would rival the major tournaments such as the US Open and PGA for attention, yet be played each year at the same course.  Golf management was now a popular profession.

These operations were also pioneers in the integration of media with golf — one of the finest pressrooms in the world is at Augusta – and the participation of numerous celebrities in the Crosby. But, it was next to Cypress, at Pebble Beach, where the development of a first-class resort, course, and real estate went hand-in-hand on a major scale for the first time.

Management Integration

After the Second World War, land developer Charles Fraser took up the idea of the fully integrated golf complex, combining public and private golf, resort hotels and real estate, golf instruction, as well as other sports, and sublime and friendly golf in a pristine “getaway” setting with the development of Sea Pines Plantation in 1951, on Hilton Head Island.   Here, integration reached a pinnacle, with management overseeing golf schools and clinics, private and public club facilities, and private and public dining options. At Sea Pines, there were resort accommodations, as well as private home options raging from short term rentals, to timeshares, to seasonal rental, to condo ownership, to private homes and estates. Owners Associations provided a balance to the resort management, under a master-planned concept that would be repeated by Charles Fraser at Kiawah Island in Hawaii, and by his imitators around the world. Though relations could become prickly between guests and owners, for management it introduced a whole new range of required skills – the politician’s gift for getting people to work together towards a common vision.

As the 1960s gave way to the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds of new real estate and timeshare developments would feature a private golf course, and upscale daily-fee courses developed partly in reaction to the privatization of top-flight golf, and private “golf only” golf clubs developed in reaction to the tie-in of real estate and golf.  In each case, golf management had to respond to new needs, and develop new services, such as more extensive golf instruction programs on-site. The rise of off-course golf pro shops challenged the revenue base of golf operations, as did the decline in food and beverage sales at golf clubs, as members broadened their palates and their restaurant selection.

Golf Management Education

In 2009, the United States Golf Managers Association held its first certification class, in Port St. Lucie, Florida.  Recognizing the need to provide golf management education by those directly involved in the field, the USGMA provides a unique training and certification atmosphere.  Golf managers provide their perspective from various disciplines, providing the necessary information which all golf managers need to succeed.  Designations such as Certified Golf Club Manager®, Certified Golf Resort Manager®, and Certified Golf Club Professional® are reserved exclusively for those who have successfully passed the curriculum of the USGMA.

Golf club management has become increasingly complex, with wholly integrated facilities that are often home to thousands of guests and residents playing as many as eight courses, but the fundamental appeal of the golf club has remained the same as it always has:  a place to deepen the association of friends, through golf, and a vehicle to continue the attentive stewardship of the game that has been mightily beloved for a long, long time.  Educational programs such as those provided by the USGMA assure that this stewardship will flourish for many years to come.

About the author

James M. Lane is the author of The Complete Golfers Almanac, and Peterson’s Golf School and Resorts. He lives in Key Biscayne, FL and Lake Arrowhead, CA.