Laird Small

Please indicate past awards won/recognitions:
PGA National Teacher of the Year, PGA Section Teacher of the Year, GRAA Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, Golf Magazine Top 100, Golf Digest Top 50, Golf Digest Top 20, Golf Digest Best in State, Other (Indicate specific awards in 3-a below)

Other awards won (if provided):
PGA specialty certification in teaching. PGA Master Professional, NCPGA Horton Smith, NCPGA chapter Hall of Fame, Pebble Beach Junior golfer coach of the year,

Total number of individual lessons given per year:
Male: 400
Female: 150
Junior: 300

Total number of individual clinics given per year:
80

Please indicate any Growth of the Game initiatives your facility/academy has launched over the past year (please give specifics on such programs):
we conduct our version of Get Golf Ready for our employees (1,800) we conduct programs over the shoulder seasons for both
Women’s and Men’s programs.
With our corporate groups we conduct a Learn to Play Program for new golfers. The program consists of a 30 minute presentation on swing and game concepts; then one hour of full swing coaching and one our of short game coaching, then take the to the Hay golf course (par3) and play with them heling them to transfer the skills to playing the game. concepts of etiquette, speed of play, scoring are all shared. by brining the two areas together students can understand their basic skills and how to transfer them to the course.

Please share any programming you have made to keep your customers & students engaged:
we are one of a few facilities that uses a robot to help teach the golf swing. the robot moves the players through the correct motions to help build an efficient and repeatable golf swing.
we are also starting to use a robot that offers resistance in the swing to help the player understand how to gain more distance and how to train for distance. so far the gains have been incredible 10-15 MPH increase. We have had PGA TOUR players on the robot and they love it. they can also see where they can gain more distance and accuracy. as we continue to refine the robot we will start introducing it to Junior golfers at the appropriate age. more research is being done at the current time.