Bill Scott, a seven-time South Florida PGA Section Special Awards winner and a GRAA Elite Growth of the Game Teaching Professional is a PGA of America Golf Professional and the Senior Lead Instructor at Don Law Golf Academy at Osprey Pointe in Boca Raton, Florida.
Bill Scott on the importance of implementing fitness in your high-performance academy:
Growing up in Alexandria, Virginia, I started playing golf at age nine and really started dedicating myself to the game about a year later. I was hooked on golf in my mid-teens, played four years of high school golf and turned pro at 18. Today, I’m coaching and mentoring kids at the Don Law Golf Academy who have the same dreams I had. Our High-Performance Academy is a comprehensive program geared towards tournament-playing juniors ages 8-18 who see golf as a serious part of their future. They want to take their game to the next level, and we do so through this holistic program – skill development, competition and physical and mental fitness. With the success our students have had in this program, we’re welcoming new clients from all over the United States and internationally. We have an accomplished team of PGA of America Golf Professionals on hand to mentor the students of the Don Law Golf Academy with modern player development concepts, and golf fitness is a prominent facet of our programming. As such, we have partnered with a local gym and transport our High-Performance Academy students there twice per week to work on their stretching and warmup routines. Back at our academy, we place a focus on speed training and ground force techniques to help students get faster and stronger.
Bill Scott on the business impact of implementing fitness in your high-performance academy:
We initially had to fend off many questions from parents who were “curious” about the merits of this aspect of our training. But with education (of the parents as much as the students), everyone now understands the importance of fitness, speed, power, endurance, agility, mobility, stability and so much more on the golf swing and to our young golfers. As PGA of America Golf Professional coaches and mentors, we discuss the importance of nutrition and a solid mental game on their long-term development and ultimate performance to truly provide a well-rounded approach to helping them achieve their goals in golf. We also implement some remedial fitness concepts into our general youth programming and summer camps, but focus the more intense and thorough fitness programming on our high-level juniors.
If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email scottongolf@gmail.com.
