21 Jul 2011

Teaching Student’s About Patience

By: Mike Levine USGTF Level IV Member Port St. Lucie, Florida Golf is a game of a lifetime… and you as a teacher of this amazing game need to bear the torch for its disciples. Create awareness in your students that there is no easy way. No real shortcuts. Enjoying practice and having an understanding of the steps necessary in order to advance is the only “secret.” One must learn and truly grasp fundamentals that are time-honored in order to advance and prosper with this game. The commitment is similar to learning a musical instrument. The formula is the same. Fundamentals well-rehearsed lead to sound technique, and followed with a commitment to improve continuously leads to achieving your potential. Once a student gets hookedby the game, whether from a drive that flies much farther than the effort would suggest, or a high, towering iron shot that seemed equally effortless, the “magic” begins. The brain and spirit of a golfer become addicted, triggering the excursion of a lifetime! Like any long journey, its passage reveals unique and surprising twists and unexpected delights and stumbles along its way. It is all but boring, and skilled practitioners of this game know all too well to expect only the unexpected. So, why do so many quit before they really begin this journey? We as teachers must share a bit of the blame, and perhaps should try to lessen the burden of the learning experience and the requirements necessary for golfing proficiency. That is only part of the answer, but it is more complex than that. Instant gratification is the byword today. This is the now generation, waiting only micro-seconds to be informed, entertained, gratified and fed! Yet, we can’t force golf into this micro-second community; that is both the peril and charm of golf. A great deal of the joy of golf is its contradiction to today’s “now” mentality. Like it or not, we only slowly acquire the skills necessary to approach mastery of this game. Yet, mastery is only rarely touched upon, and it fleets as quickly as it embraces us. How dare golf do this to us? Neither riches nor power have control of the golf gods. These gods lay their deaf ears upon all of our crying and moaning, and they care not for our misery. This god shows such little compassion that most flee this wrath, escaping to some other endeavor, all the while secretly dying to touch again upon that moment, day, or week of greatness. To feel and bask in the glory of great ballstriking, or effortlessly scoring on the course puts the hook in deep! The exquisite joys of those sparse moments of golfing greatness continuously beckon to us, like a cruel mistress calling us to her bedside, knowing full well of our burning desire to be satisfied by her special charms. This is the pleasure and the passion, the pain and joy of golf. The lows are low, and the high are high; but, therein is the addiction, and few who have experienced these peaks and valleys would trade for these moments. We must help our students stay on course. To endure and persevere. We surely can’t stop the world from turning so fast, but we can take a ride down a less-traveled and more peaceful path, that of patience and perseverance, which leads to golf’s inner circle – those who dare to be humbled and exalted by this game. So, let your students know what truly lays ahead – the journey of a lifetime, the pathway to self-mastery, the mastery of patience and perseverance!
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Where should golf be spending its marketing efforts?
10 Jul 2011

Where should golf be spending its marketing efforts?

Anytime someone asks, “What is the best way to grow the game of golf,” the answer is almost always on junior programs. I respectfully disagree, and I have been operating junior golf programs for 15 years. There are all kinds of junior initiatives that have been around for several years. They have not lived up to expectations. From my own experience about one in ten stay with the game once they reach their teens. Not that we shouldn’t be supporting the effort, it’s just that there is little monetary benefit for golf courses. Junior golf is a labor of love, a way to give back to the game. For teachers, it can provide decent cash flow, but for courses, it does little for the bottom line. Think about it. You can’t realistically charge 8 to 14 year old kids $40 to $70 to play golf. That would be criminal.

So where should golf be looking to grow revenue? Simple. There will be 76 million people retiring in the next 10 years. They will have money and time on their hands. Talk about a marketing opportunity. Think I’m off base, then check out a place called the Villages in central Florida. It’s a retirement community. They have 28 executive courses and 9 regulation golf courses and each is full every day. Statistics say there are about 25 million golfers in the United States. That’s less than ten percent, which means that a great number of those retirees have never played golf. If I were a golf course owner, I’d be down at the Social Security office handing out flyers about the benefits and healthy activity of golf. I’m not discouraging junior efforts, just being realistic when it comes to keeping cash flowing.
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