Amelia Island Plantation, FL has a low-key atmosphere.
As you contemplate buying to a community, has the thought “my time has come” for getting into golf or lowering your handicap? That golf could now be waiting around the corner in the form of an excellent championship course and a top-notch learning facility is the clear inspiration.
Among the planned communities in the GolfCourseHome Network, most, if not all, can provide wonderful golf and caring, professional instruction. A few communities take golf improvement a step farther, building and staffing full-time comprehensive golf academies. If you are one of those my-time-is-come types, here are some questions you might ask in searching out a community with top-rank instruction or golf school.
1. Does the school have a truly complete “curriculum” that addresses all aspects of the game for every type of player ?
The program of activities at Barton Creek Resort & Spa’s famed Chuck Cook Golf Academy is the ultimate example of skill-by-skill instruction and player-specific training. Cook, a longtime Golf Digest instructor, includes such offerings as a Half-Day Putting School, a Two-Day Short Game School, a VIP program with on-course teaching, and a Low Handicap Two Day Specialty School.
There are also specially designed school of various lengths for beginners in groups, juniors, ladies and families. The Cook Golf Academy is also headquartered wonderfully, in a classic Hill Country stone house beside the Fazio Canyons course. Known as the Rock House, it is equipped with day lockers, a large classroom with big screen TV, a refreshment area and an outdoor patio next to a creek.
2. Is budget as important as a lower score?
Learning golf is a lifelong enterprise—and for that reason a student may want to budget his expenditures along the way. The Black Gold Golf Academy at Vista Del Verde understands this element of the equation.
Study the academy’s catalogue of offerings and you will find bonuses like a 50-percent-off card for practice range use anytime; five rounds of golf (off-peak) for just cart fee, and an automatic Player’s Club membership that brings with it a whole other package of value and savings for golf practice and play.
3. Does the schools’ setting and golf atmosphere provide inspiration for game-improvement?
Chip Beck made himself into a tour winner by beating balls into a garage net, while Lee Trevino learned to play on rutted fairways and rolled-sand greens. But most golfers are inclined to thrive in a place that inspires excellence and has the facilities to back it up. PGA National, where a Ryder Cup, a PGA Championship and multiple Senior PGA Championships have been played, is steeped in modern golf history and gets the competitive juices flowing like few other American golf settings that include residential membership.
4. Does the school offer golf diagnostics and performance measurement such as high-tech body-mapping and equipment fitting?
The PGA Learning Center at the Florida golf community PGA Village is about as high-tech as it gets. This 35-acre golf park features state-of-the-art video analysis, computer imaging and complete clubfitting services on-site.
PGA Village offers high-tech golf instruction.
The PGA Learning Center is also one of seven sites worldwide to feature the Motion Analysis Technology by TaylorMade (MAT-T). This system provides a revolutionary advancement in clubfitting and golf instruction.
This academy is also one of a select number of locations that utilize Titleist's proprietary launch monitor, the TPM, developed to measure minute differences in ball flight and help optimize trajectory and distance.
5. Does the golf complext include not only an excellent teaching academy but also several courses with a variety of challenges?
If so, you should find plenty of options. That’s because communities that emphasize golf training also tend to offer more than 18 holes of golf. GolfCourseHome communities that have golf schools plus a choice of courses include PGA National which has five layouts—two by Tom Fazio, one by Arnold Palmer, one by Jack Nicklaus and one course by Karl Litten.
Communities with a golf school plus four courses include Barefoot Resort & Golf (architects: Fazio, Greg Norman, Davis Love III and Pete Dye); Barton Creek (Coore-Crenshaw, Arnold Palmer and two by Fazio) and Amelia Island Plantation (Pete Dye-Bobby Weed; Fazio, Tom Jackson).
Property owners at PGA Village have access to three courses—Fazio (36 holes) and Dye are the designers. And there’s a private equity course there by George Fazio. At the Daniel Island Club, you can test what you’ve learned on a new Rees Jones course or the original Fazio 18.
6. Is there a smooth transition from skill work to execution and from range to golf course?
All serious golf academies emphasize scoring and on-course performance. At the Daniel Island Club's Golf Learning Center, students sharpen their skills on a top-notch, 14-acre practice facility that directly adjoins the club's Beresford Creek and Ralston Creek courses.
The Learning Center’s range, which measures more than 400 yards from front to back, is contoured and treed to resemble the adjacent courses—which helps a golfer visualize on-course play vividly as he or she practices. Mature live oaks define practice fairways and bunkers and swales frame many of the target greens.
7. Is relaxation and a low-key atmosphere important to your learning style?
Tension is the foe of efficient golf swings, which is why golfers steer clear of pressure and overly serious environments as much as possible. The golf school at Amelia Island Plantation, designed and led by Ed Bowe, truly addresses the needs of golfers who are eager to improve but prefer a serene setting to do it in. The Amelia Island Plantation Golf School is located at the prestigious Long Point Golf Course. Nestled between ancient live oaks, the school overlooks its own private driving range and practice green.
Barefoot Resort & Golf, SC fosters a sense of spirituality.
8. Are you looking for more of an earthier or New Age experience?
Barefoot Resort & Golf might be just the place for golf school graduates who want to be challenged in a holistic manner. The director of the Barefoot Resort & Golf Academy, Nick Bradley, is an English-bred teaching professional whose students include tour star Justin Rose and whose teaching technique takes in elements of human spirituality.
Having been mentored by some of the leaders in the field of human potential, Bradley’s appreciation of “spirituality over psychology” in sports performance is a fundamental belief.
Comments