Daniel Shelden

Please indicate past awards won/recognitions:
GRAA Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, Golf Digest Best in State

Other awards won:
2020 Youth Player Development – Illinois Section

Total number of individual lessons given per year:
Male: 290
Female: 40
Junior: 700

Total number of individual clinics given per year:
30

Please indicate any Growth of the Game initiatives your facility/academy has launched over the past year (please give specifics on such programs):
The past couple of years, we have been running a program called Get Golf Ready. Get Golf Ready League is an opportunity for beginning junior golfers to develop and improve their golf skills in a fun, comfortable environment. Each participant must be enrolled in the Ruth Lake Junior Golf Program to continue improving on the basic skills, forms, and fundamentals. The program is designed for all boys and girls to learn and enhance their golf skills on the golf course!

Get Golf Ready Format: A team will consist of 6-8 players with a group of 3-4 players per group. All matches will be played in-house as travel and competition against other teams is not necessary. Each match being played will consist of six-holes. The holes will be played as followed:

• Short Hole: 25-50 yards (Par3)
• Medium Hole: 50-100 yards (Par4)
• Long Hole: 100-175 yards (Par5)

The ulitmate goal of Get Golf Ready is to set forth age-appropriate guidelines and curriculum aimed at making golf enjoyable, nurtuing a lifelong passion at making golf enjoyable, nurturing a lifelong passion for the sport and suppporing excellence in golf.

Please share any programming you have made to keep your customers & students engaged:
While there is no magic formula, there is one simple strategy most instructors swear by that generally works: Make golf fun. If you keep the game fun, you make it enjoyable. My #1 objective as a PGA Professional and GRAA Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional is to make sure new golfers are engaged and have fun. To educate and get people involved in golf is the goal but keeping it fun is the primary focus.
We incorporate fun and creativity into our teaching/coaching by using games that we created and had success with in the past. The main objective of our junior golf program (and any program in general) is to make it fun and enjoyable for all participants, while ensuring that everyone develops the talent and skills necessary to keep improving. Whether we use traditional golf practice settings or FUNdamental settings, we are trying to develop golfing skills that help each golfer improve.

Teaching and coaching golfers requires the instructor to marry technique with skill development. Technique is the ability to perform a physical task while a skill is the ability to deploy it in the competitive environment. Skill is something that requires context to develop, and you need problems to be solved. In a practice with no game-like activities or direction to force decision making, there may be technical development, but there is very little skill development. And without skill development there is no transfer. Based off that research, we build learning environments that represent competition as much as possible.