Emotional Toughness Training for Golf Coaches
Golf Digest recently did a survey anddiscovered that the number one complaint among golfers is their inability to take their best game from the range to the golf course. This course, Emotional Toughness Training for Golf, is a sports psychology certification program for the new USGTF coaches division, the World Golf Coaches Alliance. To be the best coach you can be, you must also be an expert in the field of sports psychology....
Smith Named First Recipent of Harvey Penick Trophy
When USGTF professional Matt Smith speaks, he does so eloquently and with a passion that’s hard not to notice. What makes this all the more remarkable is that Smith has all but overcome a lifetime of stuttering, something he is more than willing to make known. For his passion for teaching and improving not only his students’ golf games, but also their lives, and for conquering obstacles that others may have let defeat them, Smith has...
Gulych Wins US Cup In Spectacular Fashion
Maybe it’s the experience of being a little bit older, or maybe it’s the way they play up north. Whatever the case, the 18th edition of the United States Golf Teachers Cup was somewhat of a repeat of the 17th edition: A golfer over 50 won for the second consecutive year, as did a golfer from Canada. Grant Gulych, a longtime participant in the US Cup, realized his playing potential by overwhelming the field with a fi nal-round 69 in...
The Great Hickory Match
One fine spring day, my good friend Brian Schuman from Long Island rung me up and asked a question. “Mike,” he said, “there are six of us Americans going to Scotland for the World Hickory Open, right?” “Yes,” I replied. He went on. “So maybe we can arrange a match with a group from Scotland or from other points?” Thus was the background and origin of the Hickory Cup. We contacted another good hickory-playing friend in Virginia, Rick...
Big Picture – Little Picture
I had the occasion to pay a visit to my old hometown Flin Flon, Manitoba, recently. I had not been back for some time, but this place is on the Canadian Shield and is pretty much lakes, rock, trees, and stunningly beautiful, especially in the fall. I was a guest of the community, and had been invited to make some presentations for their local Culture Days. I took the opportunity to visit a fellow author I had been linked up with but...
Ingredients of a Successful Golf Coach
There is more than one definition of being successful at coaching golf. Certainly, one definition would be winning all of your matches as well as the championship you have been striving for. I have been at both ends of that. Sometimes, you don’t win nearly as many matches as you wanted, or even come close to the championship that you were striving for. Coaching competitive golfers is not always about winning and losing. Another...
Conquering The Course: Managing for Results in Business and Golf
During the week of my golf teaching certification course at Penn National Golf Club in July 1999, three members of my foursome were experiencing a career/life change, and felt that teaching golf was what they might want to do as a part-time or second career. In my case, my love of the game and experience as a university professor of management and business executive for more than 30 years seemed like a perfect fit for a part-time...
World Golf Teachers Treated Royally In China
Neil Diamond bellowed that, from around the world, they’re coming to America. However, on this day, professionals from the World Golf Teachers Federation were coming to China. As Geoff Bryant, who began it all in 1989, observed the gathering of men and women from fourteen countries, I asked if he ever envisioned that it would come to this. “Never in my wildest dreams,” he replied. I could only imagine his jubilation in seeing...
China Runs Away With Team Competition
Sometimes, playing at home brings added pressures that cause the locals to fold. In the case of Team China at the 11th playing of the biennial World Golf Teachers Cup, not only did they shake off whatever pressure might have been present, they fed off it, romping to a 39-shot victory over runner-up Canada at Sun Island Resort Golf Club in Shanghai, China, this past October. The team of Li Fang Yie, Guo Bin Yu, Zhi Xue Li, Wen Fang...
USGTF Teaching Pros Share Insights: What I Have Learned from My Students
“Inever let my schooling interfere with my education,” Mark Twain said. Observations expressed by America’s most renowned humorist over 100 years ago still ring true today. Twain, an astute interpreter of human nature, had a way of illuminating life through genial satire. Golf teaching professionals worldwide, in their quest to share their skills and knowledge, affi rm Twain’s assertion as they invariably discover that their own...
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