By Vinnie Manginelli, PGA
Brad Myers remembers being introduced to the game of golf by his dad when he was in elementary school. “Sunday nights would be family golf nights,” he recalls. “My mom and dad played, while my brother and I walked along, and they tried to wear us out.”
Now a Quarter Century PGA Member and two-time GRAA Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, Myers started playing golf occasionally during his junior high and early high school years. But growing up in the state of Indiana, he was much more interested in basketball. He didn’t get serious about golf until the spring of his senior year in high school. Unfortunately, Myers found out that he had two cervical ribs, one of which presses on an artery and a nerve. Because of this, he had to seek a sport or activity outside of basketball.
“As my dad had always played golf, he encouraged me to try it again,” Myers explains. “He took me out to the range and I automatically fell in love with it. I went back to that public range at Oak Mountain State Park in Birmingham, Alabama every day for two straight weeks.”
The pro at the time, Benny Smallwood, offered him a job picking the range, which gave him the opportunity to hit as many balls as he wanted once his work was completed. Myers would hustle during every shift to get all his duties completed.
“At 9:00, I’d turn off the lights until everyone cleared out and would then flip them back on, pulling my car onto the range tee to hit balls until midnight, 1:00 a.m. or until I couldn’t hit anymore,” he recalls. “At that time, my only reference material was a Mike Hebron book – See and Feel the Inside Move the Outside. This book compared the golf swing to many other athletic moves, so it resonated with me.”
Myers’ road to becoming a golf professional started at New Mexico State University as a member of its PGA Professional Golf Management Program. “I was lucky to be under the wing of Herb Wimberley,” Myers says. “The PGA Golf Management Programs were not nearly as structured then, and it allowed me to complete all my classwork and then save all of the 20 months of co-op work until the end. Upon completing my classwork, I obtained a job at TPC Sawgrass, where I was around a lot of great teachers who would visit and work with various students. For example, Golf Digest would hold their golf schools at the facility, often taught by instructors such as Jack Lumpkin and Hank Johnson.”
After Sawgrass, Myers went to work on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. While at Oxmoor Valley in Birmingham, he was introduced to a new system at the time called the CompuSport System developed by Dr. Ralph Mann. He also spent a lot of time with Eric Eshleman (Now at the Country Club of Birmingham) and Joey Hidock (now at The Villages Golf Academy in Florida) who helped him better understand the golf swing.
Myers moved to Texas to be the PGA of America Head Golf Professional at The Woodlands Country Club. At the time, LPGA Hall of Famer Carol Mann and multiple PGA Tour winner Don Massengale were teaching at the club.
“Both were gracious with their time with me, and I was lucky to be able to teach alongside them,” Myers boasts. “I still use stories and metaphors that they shared with me and their students in my instruction.”
There, Myers oversaw one of the largest junior golf programs in the state, with boys and girls who would win multiple state championships. His students earned scholarships to colleges and universities such as the University of Arkansas, Texas A&M University, Lamar University, Notre Dame and more.
For the past nine years, Myers has been running his own golf school – The Ball Flight Academy in Bradenton, Florida. “Our goal is to improve people’s lives through the game of golf.” Myers says this means he wants to meet his students where they are in their golf journey and help them reach their goals, regardless of their current level of play.
Myers uses some of the game’s leading technology in his coaching, including Trackman, Sportsbox AI, deWiz Golf and Blast Golf. All of these technologies allow him to measure what is happening in real-time. “We take complex information and turn it into easy-to-understand concepts that we communicate clearly to students,” Myers explains. “I have found that the students don’t care about all your certifications or the technology you have, as long as you can find a solution to their problem.”
Myers is also a PGA Hope Certified Coach and recently assisted in a local program, finding it to be a very rewarding experience.
“At the graduation lunch, almost every student was emotional, and some had tears in their eyes. They were thankful that the instructors gave time to the program. It meant so much to them. Again, for me, it goes back to improving lives through the game of golf,” Myers reminds us.
Myers has a very robust golf clinic program, teaching over 100 one-hour clinics a year. He has approximately 35 different topics that he classifies into four different buckets – driver, irons, short game and putting. The buckets are then rotated so if the students can only come one day a week, they’re not getting the same clinic every time.
“At $30 for the hour session and an eight-student limit, these clinics are a very popular way for my students to improve their golf game,” Myers states proudly. “In the one-hour session, I’ll give a short 5-10-minute presentation on the topic and then break into stations where I use the remaining time to help them the best that I can. It seems like in every clinic, someone is sharing a success story with the group.”
Myers has also implemented a four-holer group for beginners, which includes a short 30-minute clinic and then an hour on the golf course.
“We’ve been running these in 12-week sessions,” says Myers. “It may take them an hour to play one hole, but we’re discussing rules, etiquette, order of play and more. We discuss how to actually play the game. By the end of the 12 weeks, the students are having fun, playing four holes within the hour, and then typically having lunch at our facility.”
Myers believes that technology-driven golf instruction and virtual coaching are trends that will keep growing. With so much information on social media, it’s hard for a golfer to know if it’s the right solution for them. In the future, Myers thinks we’re going to see more video submissions to critique virtually and golfers will buy into monthly membership plans for the opportunity to do so.
“I will be launching my monthly virtual coaching program using Sportsbox AI to capture, measure and review golf swings,” he concludes. “Look for this in late September/early October on my website – www.ballflightacademy.com“
