Entering A New Phase In My Career

We started another season down at The Core Golf Junior Academy in Orlando this past week and each year, we grow a little bit more in number of students and in solidifying our programs. 

We have added Bob Skura as our director of mental performance. He will be there on a more consistent basis along with our PGA coach Neale Smith who will come in and lecture from time to time. 

We have also added more coaches and I guess the biggest thing for me personally is that I am moving full time into Core and the operation as of September 30^th. 

My time at OslerBrook Golf and Country as general manager has been a great learning experience and one that I wouldn’t have traded for the world. 

The opportunity to join a club right at the start of its life, help build the course, clubhouse and buildings, create systems and processes to meet the operation’s needs and, most importantly, creating a management team and establishing a culture for that club from day one is something not many people get to do. 

A club only gets built once and to have that chance is one in a million and I am very grateful for the last six years of doing this job.

However, it’s time to move on and, while I have been involved on a part-time basis with both the Core Golf Academies in the Toronto area – at Piper and Willow Valley – the full-time Junior Academy at Orange County National in Orlando is where I will be focusing my immediate attention this winter.

You would have to have been in a cave to not be aware of the attention our PGA Tour coach Sean Foley has been receiving with his potential association with the current No. 1 player in the world, but I personally think that two of his other students, Hunter Mahan and Justin Rose have had outstanding years. 

They, along with Sean O’Hair and Parker McLaughlin, form an outstanding group of young PGA Tour stars Sean works with and when you add Stephen Ames, the Canadian connection to the group with another solid year’s performance, you can see why Sean’s future is very bright indeed.

While Sean works with the above players, I want to, in the future, introduce you to other players of Sean’s who are accomplishing great things.  It is just not the ones we hear about today on the various tours that Sean enjoys working with, but some up and coming players who have him most excited.

Sean’s success mirrors that of our director of strength and fitness Dr. Craig Davies, who not only works with a number of Sean’s players, but also treats and works with a couple of other PGA Tour players. 

Sean and Craig are a great team as they learn more about the demands a golf swing places on the body and how to better instruct their players to avoid injury and promote peak performance. 

They work with the world’s best players and the students at the Core Golf Junior Academy are the real winners as all that knowledge gets brought back to the Academy and passed along to them. 

This past Wednesday in our first session of the season with the kids, Sean talked with the students about the work he is doing with his players and did an analysis of each of their golf swings with the coaches and put a plan in place on what needed to get fixed and how to accomplish those goals. 

This type of cooperative coaching will go on for the whole year and I am excited about getting back down south and helping to promote Core to other young juniors and, hopefully, giving them the chance to learn from some of the best instructors in the world today in the greatest golf environment possible.