Jaime Gylan is the PGA Director of Instruction at Royal Manchester Golf Links in Mount Wolf, Pennsylvania.

Jaime Gylan on the importance of keeping sessions to 45 minutes:

For more than a decade, I have conducted my sessions in one-hour increments, allowing two hours for on-course playing lessons. But with the workload I have incurred in sheer number of clients who seek my services, I’ve recently moved to 45-minute sessions, rather than one hour. Implemented in the spring of 2021, they still pack the same punch as their longer counterparts and provide the player the same great experience, but in a more condensed period of time. This not only forces me to remain laser focused during each session, but also allows for more sessions in a day. That means more patrons coming through our academy, more golfers practicing on our range and more play on our course. I used to coach nine students in my nine-hour day, but can now attend to 12 of them, maximizing my engagement. After all, with more than 500 individuals on my roster, coming at varying levels of frequency, I needed to do something to open up more opportunities for them and accommodate their busy schedules. With the COVID-19 golf boom, many full-time coaches have more golfers than ever before, and as the only coach at our facility, it was on me to make this change. The overall structure and framework of the session remain the same with discussion of what we’ve been working on, gaining an understanding of their recent practice sessions and talking about our plans for the future. Players leave the 45-minute lessons with as much of an understanding as they did when they were one hour.

Jaime Gylan on the business impact of keeping sessions to 45 minutes:

With a full season of this format under my belt, it really worked out for everyone. A few individuals expressed initial resistance, citing their hour drive just to get to me, but once we implemented the change and they saw the benefits of a focused coaching session, as well as greater ease in booking a time since I have more lesson times available, everyone ended up pleased. And I’m packing in more lessons in a day. From a strictly revenue perspective, you can’t argue with that. It’s been a lucrative couple of years for golf, with several million new people coming to the game. We must do everything we can to retain them beyond COVID, and that starts with helping them learn the game and play better golf. Some coaches promote 30-minute sessions and others swear by the one-hour format. As professionals, we must evaluate our own situation and put a process in place that works for us and our golfers.

If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email jgylan@gmail.com.