Adam Smith

Please indicate past awards won/recognitions:
PGA Section Teacher of the Year, GRAA Growth of the Game Teaching Professional

Other awards won (if provided):
GOLF Magazine Teachers to Watch. Golf Digest Best in State.

Total number of individual lessons given per year:
Male: 1000
Female: 500
Junior: 250

Total number of individual clinics given per year:
25

Please indicate any Growth of the Game initiatives your facility/academy has launched over the past year (please give specifics on such programs):
Growth of the Game initiatives are my priority, here at the club. I write a monthly newsletter golf tip for our members to read. I produce a few golf instruction video clips for the newsletter, each year. I publish golf instruction articles in the spring, summer and wintertime off-season months in our Virginia State Golf Association magazine called The Virginia Golfer. I conduct junior golf clinics with our assistant golf professionals at our Westhampton golf facility, eight miles down the road from our Tuckahoe Creek facility. I execute High Performance Clinics during the spring, summer and fall that are complimentary and one hour in length. These HP Clinics feature our PGA Professional staff demonstrating a specific area of the golf game, for example: bunker shots, pitch shots, chipping and putting. They are demonstration clinics and I entertain questions and answers after they conclude. I schedule junior golf playdays and junior beginner clinics regularly to grow the interest in our youth program. We hold, annually, a Junior Pro-Am here at the club, where the PGA golf professional staff plays 18 holes of captain’s choice with three young juniors. We have a big cookout and prizes by the pool, afterwards. I conduct beginner ladies “Pop-In” clinics where newcomers to the game can show up and get some tips on how to learn golf and continue to improve. We have an OP36 ladies golf program as well, to get the beginner ladies out on the course. I make it a big deal for the participants to exchange cell phone numbers in order to follow up with one another, for the purpose of communicating, practicing and playing together. Our club gives out a “free lesson certificate” to all of our new members at the club and I make it a point to encourage the new members to use their certificate with me. After each lesson certificate is spent, I text these new members to encourage them to come back and to let them know that they can reach out to me any time with any questions they may have. Making new members feel at home, right away, is the goal.

Please share any programming you have made to keep your customers & students engaged:
My private one-on-one lesson program is my favorite initiative to keep my students engaged. I text and email my students after my lessons in order to remind them of what our lesson was all about and to encourage them to practice before the next lesson. After each private lesson, it is a best practice of mine to book the next lesson. Promising more improvement and telling my students how much I care about their game improvement is a very important personal touch. I offer golf fitness classes in the off season, to encourage my students to follow the proper cardiovascular exercise, stretching regimen and strength training routine. I offer lesson packages in the off season to encourage my students to hit in the simulator, learn from the launch monitor, examine their swing on the video and deconstruct their weight shift tendencies using Swing Catalyst. These packages keep my students interested in golf and engaged during the cold, dark winter months when some golfers rack up their clubs and don’t play. I gotta keep these people moving and interested in getting better all year long! I recommend fun golf movies to watch. I suggest good golf psychology books to read. I just really like my students to keep golf on their mind and in their life, 365 days a year. I produced a golf fitness stretching booklet, called “From The Ground Up” in order to demonstrate the best golf fitness stretching exercises to do on a daily basis. I sell this booklet for $19.95 and I make it complimentary for every student who joins me for off season golf fitness lessons.