Michael Wheeler

Please indicate past awards won/recognitions:
Other (Indicate specific awards below in 3-a)

Other awards won:
Golf Digest Best Young Teachers in America, Golf Tips Magazine Top 50 Instructors

Total number of individual lessons given per year:
Male: 750
Female: 250
Junior: 400

Total number of individual clinics given per year:
125

Please indicate any Growth of the Game initiatives your facility/academy has launched over the past year (please give specifics on such programs):
Golf Boot Camp for social members and guests that are "new" to the game; PGA Junior League; junior camps and clinics that are designed for juniors of all skill levels; I created a new junior "academy" called "The Stable" for the competitive juniors, which has led to many college scholarships; working with local veterans and first responders (I am also a licensed Paramedic and volunteer – so I like to try to help the first responder community).

Please share any programming you have made to keep your customers & students engaged:
I have been fully involved with redesigning the instruction program at Maryland Golf and Country Clubs. We also built out a room as an indoor learning center and brought in my technology to outfit the bay with Trackman 4, Swing Catalyst dual force plates, 3D motion capture, and high speed video analysis. We are currently working with contractors to build a 3-bay learning center on our range with all of the technology listed, as well as Motion2Coach for 3D marker less technology.

The junior program had less than 5 juniors involved in past seasons and this season we had over 60 juniors in all of the programs we offered this year. They will be expanding more for next season. A new "junior academy" named "The Stable" was implemented for juniors wanting to play competitive golf, which yielded decent results for its first season. PGA Junior League performed well, especially for our first season, and competed against some of the local clubs in both the Spring and Fall season.

The women's program was also reportedly non-existent and we conducted weekly ladies clinics this season. Several ladies that started taking lessons performed well in club events and inter-league matches. The weekly clinics had a new topic each week and each lady received a free glass of house wine or beer at the clinic.

Adults and seniors had options for lessons and golf schools. I started a monthly coaching program that saw some success this season. The monthly coaching program included a full TPI assessment and BioSwing Dynamics body assessment, data collected from all of our technology as a baseline, and an on course/skills testing assessment. All of this was used to create a "Performance and Improvement Plan" written for each player individually. Golf Schools saw great success, especially the Short Game School. This school was 4 hours long and included a Short Game Manual that I wrote and included a custom fitting for a Titleist Vokey wedge. This helped the student have proper equipment and also helped our Titleist sales for the year.

We hosted Dr. Rob Neal this year for one-on-one sessions with Dr. Neal and myself with our members using his proprietary 3D motion capture software. We plan to host Dr. Neal again next year, as well as two other guest instructors.

I also use the CoachNow platform to keep students engaged and interacting. I allow students to send over swing videos to show progress and I'll do a VoiceOver to discuss how they are progressing. For students that are OK with being shared on social media, I share progress and student accomplishments on all of my social media platforms to keep students wanting to get better. These social media platforms have combined to over a million views in the last 12-18 months. That is still growing. I've stepped back slightly from TikTok because of club policies, but those are changing and I will be able to post more on that platform starting in the new year.