By Vinnie Manginelli, PGA
The Graves Golf Academy was founded by PGA of America Golf Professional Tim Graves and his brother, Todd, in 2000, and operated at Coffee Creek Golf Course in Oklahoma until the facility was sold in 2017. After the property sat dormant for more than six years, the Graves purchased 80 acres of the land and built Graves Golf Club, a six-hole private club that is now home to their golf academy.
Tim Graves, PGA
“We rebuilt the coaching and teaching building, renovated the driving range and installed a practice putting green, a short game area and the six-hole golf course,” Tim Graves explains.
Today, the Graves Golf Club is a private golf facility with 120 members. The club’s membership roster will be capped at 150 members to prevent overcrowding and ensure a premium experience with every visit.
As a six-hole facility, the mission is to provide not only a course where members play without the pressure of being rushed, but a practice facility where golfers have the opportunity to work on different shots and hone each specific skill that golf requires for a well-rounded game.
Todd Graves
“The beauty of the six-hole course is that it requires virtually every golf shot,” Tim says. “You can play out there for a year and always find a different shot to practice. We’ve set it up to be a unique and very special practice facility.”
In addition, Graves Golf Club has one of Oklahoma’s largest grass driving ranges that can accommodate more than 60 golfers at a time and has a bunker adjacent to the hitting area where golfers can practice their fairway bunker shots, hitting balls directly onto the body of the range. In addition, Toptracer Range Mobile ball-tracking technology was recently installed to elevate members’ practice experience and provide options for gaming, socialization and competition with family, friends and other golfers. The size of the range and the technology implemented aid the Graves brothers and their academy coaching team in providing a stellar learning experience to their many students.
The Graves Golf Academy offers one-day, three-day and five-day golf schools and clinics year-round, with a new group starting every 2-3 weeks at its home in Edmond, Oklahoma. Instruction at the Graves Golf Academy is based on The Single Plane Experience, the concept that the club at address should start at the same angle at which it will make contact with the golf ball. The tilt of the body will also be similar at address as it is at contact, and arms are aligned with the club.
This philosophy was made famous by Canadian professional golfer Moe Norman, who won back-to-back Canadian Amateur Championships in the 1950s and captured more than 55 Canadian Tour championships, including the 1966 and 1974 Canadian PGA Championships and eight Canadian PGA Seniors’ Championships. He set 33 course records and had 17 holes-in-one. Norman’s ball striking was acclaimed industry-wide, and he is considered one of the game’s greatest ball strikers by more than a few long-time experts.
Tim’s brother, Todd, enjoyed a long relationship with Norman, not only getting to know Norman’s swing – one that amazed him at first, and then set him on a course that would shape his career for decades to come – but befriending the man himself. This excerpt is taken from the Graves Golf website and is best shared firsthand:
As he was perched on the driving range in Chicago, Illinois, in 1994, with his clubs strewn about, I watched Moe Norman, the greatest ball striker of all time, strike shot after shot with effortless perfection. I could hardly believe what I saw. I was amazed at how simple his swing looked.
Intrigued and inspired, I quickly grabbed my video camera and recorded his swing. I wanted to have something to study. Something I could watch and mimic later. All I could think about was “I need to learn to feel Moe’s swing.”
Because of my eagerness and commitment to learning his swing, a lifelong friendship was sparked between us, where Moe took me under his wing and shared something he’d never shared with anyone in all his years refining and developing this swing.
As I learned more about Moe’s swing and saw astonishing and rapid improvements in my own game because of it, I felt like golfers needed to know about this simply repeatable swing.
Graves goes on to say that Norman was hesitant about going mainstream with his swing concepts and was asked if they could be adequately taught or communicated to others. Norman had confidence in Todd, saying, “Todd’s the only one who knows it. Really know it. Other guys just think they do.”
Graves considers this the greatest compliment he ever received and was honored by the respect Norman showed him. Graves developed a method by which he would teach Moe’s philosophy on the golf swing and opened Graves Golf Academy with his brother Tim in 2000, as mentioned earlier.
During the years between Coffee Creek’s closing and the opening of Graves Golf Club, Tim and Todd took their instruction on the road, establishing roots in more than 20 locations across the U.S. and Canada, with great focus in Orlando, Phoenix and at home in Edmond, Oklahoma.
As is the case at home in Edmond, their satellite programming offers multiple options in golf schools and clinics for beginning golfers that are facilitated by a team of more than two dozen Graves Golf-certified instructors who have completed a 3-6-month program to earn the right to teach the Single Plane Swing. These coaches will either travel to these clinic locations or are based out of those areas already.
Graves Golf Academy offers specialty schools and alumni camps that Tim and Todd administer firsthand with other coaches on their roster. In all, the academy schedule consists of 90-110 golf schools and clinics per year. Back home in Edmond, the Graves will offer several free clinics each month to their Graves Golf Club members. Of course, private lessons are available, as well.
Graves Golf Club has Callaway premium golf balls on its range, the best state-of-the-art technology on its range and within its coaching programs and is very family-oriented, welcoming young families who are not only active at the club today, but will shape the future of the facility for years to come.
For more information about Graves Golf Academy, log on to its website today and check out Graves Golf Club here.
