John Platt

Please indicate past awards won/recognitions:
PGA Section Teacher of the Year, GRAA Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, Golf Digest Best in State, Other (Indicate specific awards in 3-a below)

Other awards won (if provided):
1999 NCAA National Coach of the Year

Total number of individual lessons given per year:
Male: 1000
Female: 300
Junior: 1200

Total number of individual clinics given per year:
My junior clinics run November thru April – 4 nights a week with 90 participants. I hold another 15 short game clinics, ladies golf nights, putting clinics, PGA junior league and a fall PGA junior league throughout the year..

Please indicate any Growth of the Game initiatives your facility/academy has launched over the past year (please give specifics on such programs):
As I mentioned above, I have a program for junior players called CAP (Committed Athlete Program) that has 90 participants with various levels of experience. We use the Mistwood Golf Dome since this program runs from November to April. The players come on Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday for 1 1/2 hours and we have an APPEX program for our future Division 1 players. One of the players from this program, Alli Wiertel, shot a "59" during the season and then went on the win the IHSA state finals by shooting a state record low round and also a state record 2-day total (65 and 136). In addition, 27 of the 90 players also qualified for the state tournament with 8 of them getting All-State honors. When this program ends, we start another program at the golf course where we do mostly on course instruction and utilize all the improvements they made with their swings from the winter. This program has been utilized for over 12 years now, with over 80 percent of the players moving on to play college golf.

Please share any programming you have made to keep your customers & students engaged:
I try to make all the programs, especially the adult programs, fun and entertaining. I try to always have some type competitions at the end of each clinic and give out prizes, be it pro shop credit or some type of beverage of their choice. On the junior side, about 1/3 of the program is simulated competitions in the dome and the losers usually have to do push-ups, sit ups or run stairs and I give the winners a choice of a treat from our food menu. These are done at the end and many times I put the boys against the girls, and it gets VERY competitive!!