In 1999 I arrived at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta for US Open sectional qualifying.  80 players (or so) for 4 spots.  I was a decent player spinning my wheels on professional golf’s mini tours.  I asked my older brother to caddie for me.  More than anything, I sold it as a fun trip for the two of us and two days on a famous golf course.

On the way down, he asked me a question:

“Do you think you have a chance to get through this thing?”

The truth….I hadn’t even given it thought.  There were a couple dozen tour players at this sight.  The open was being played at Pinehurst #2, where I had so many wonderful childhood memories.  It was beyond my wildest dream to think I could be in the field for the United States Open.  For the next 48 hours he pounded self-belief into me.  By the time I teed it up for the 36 hole qualifier, I was in a fog of confidence and concentration.  I had dreamed about pulling this off for two days.  It was the most prepared I had ever felt before beginning a golf tournament.

As the day went on, things began to happen.  Before I knew it, I had a 6 foot birdie putt for a second round 67 and a two round total of 138 (6 under).  As it turned out, I found myself in a three way playoff for two spots.  Myself, and a couple of celebrated college players named Charles Howell and Bryce Molder.  I was a nervous wreck, but I survived the playoff with the most incredible bunker shot I have ever hit!

It was surreal sitting in the clubhouse at East Lake receiving a packet of information from the USGA with the title “US Open Participant”.  My brother and I stood in the parking lot in disbelief.  Despite the fact he instilled this belief in myself, I’m not sure either if us truly thought it would happen.  This I know, if I hadn’t dreamed about pulling this off, it would had never happened.  That day taught me a valuable life lesson.

In my opinion, junior golfers over achieve when their work ethic and dreams begin to match up.  A lot of the students I encounter practice for hours and hours every day, yet they show up at tournaments HOPING to play well.  There is very little trust and belief in themselves or what they are capable of.  It’s almost like all the practice they do is irrelevant when they get to tournaments.

I have also had a lot of students who were very content with shooting three 75’s and finishing 25^th.  Sure, it’s a decent finish that we can find a bunch of positives from.  The frustrating part for me is I think the kid is capable of so much more!  He is a good player, works his tail off, and has all the tools to go low every time he tees it up.  Unfortunately, he sees a 25^th place finish as a good tournament and “mission accomplished”.

My advice is to junior golfers…………dream about accomplishing things beyond the ordinary.  Don’t hope for it, close your eyes and visualize it.  Go to the putting green and act out the scene on the final green.  If you do this, you will be far more prepared for the situation when it does present itself.  And believe me, if you dream about it enough, it will present itself!

 

Mark Slawter

Founder/President

Straight Shot to College Golf

www.sstcg.com

In recent articles, I have provided advice on how to go about identifying college golf opportunities.  Again, the most important thing to do is to be realistic.  The better you understand where your son/daughter stacks up, the more efficiently you will be able to go through the process.  It’s also important to consider how you go about contacting theses coaches and in particular, the information your share.

Many of my clients have been surprised by the inconsistencies in correspondence with college coaches. One time they respond to your email straight away and seem very interested.  Next time, days go by and no response.  My advice…..don’t read too much into this.

Remember, these guys get tons of emails on a daily and weekly basis. Sometimes they are a little slow to respond.  However, if you receive an email from them, I suggest you respond promptly (within 24 hours).  The longer you wait, the less interested they may think you are.  I know this seems crazy and a bit unfair, but it’s the way it works.  I have had several college coaches attest to this.

Your initial instincts might tell you they are playing a game and you need to play the game with them.   If you follow college football recruiting, you know how nuts it can be.  Please do not confuse the two.  College golf recruiting is vastly different!  The best thing you can do is play with an open hand.  If you are interested in a school, make sure they know how interested you are.  The more honest and upfront you are, the better positioned you will be with the school you desire the most.   If you sit back and wait, it’s not going to work.

The reason is pretty simple.  College coaches average about 2.5 kids per recruiting class.  They may start with a large recruiting net, but they will quickly narrow it down to the recruits they have developed relationships with and recruits they feel share mutual interest.   I can’t tell you how many times I have had coaches tell me this:

“I didn’t think that kid was interested.  He emailed me a while back, but I never heard back from him.  I just assumed he moved on”.

This is certainly part of the strategy I incorporate within my program.  However, students and parents sometimes begin feeling pushy if they have been emailing the coach frequently.  The key is substance, not quantity.  If done correctly, coaches love receiving updates on recruits.  The thing to avoid is “sugar coating” results or making excuses for recent scores.  The best thing to do is for the students to be honest about their current state of development.  Also, they should have a plan for improvement.

Let me provide a couple of examples:

Example #1 – The wrong way

Dear Coach Smith,

Last week I played in a local junior event.  A bunch of the best players in the state were there.  It was really cold and windy and the course was in bad shape.  Something was wrong with my driver because I was hooking it left.  I had a bunch of bad breaks that cost me several shots.  Some of the best players in the state played bad too.

See you soon,

John

 

Example #2 – The right way

Dear Coach Smith,

Great playing last week in the Bridgestone Intercollegiate!  You guys seem to be playing really well right now.  Keep it up!

Lately, I have been working really hard on my game.  I shot 79-76 last weekend in a local event and finished 27^th out of 59 players.  I was disappointed in the outcome, but I went through my stats and determined a few things.  My driving and putting were my two biggest weaknesses.  Consequently, I have put together a practice routine for the week that will focus on these two areas. If you have a second, I have attached my stats and practice schedule for the week.   Any advice you could share would be greatly appreciated!

Good luck to you guys next week!  I’ll be pulling for you!

Go Tigers!

John

 

Coaches love to hear prospects give honest assessments of their game.  If a prospect says he has no weaknesses, it tells the coach he doesn’t plan to work hard.  Consequently, if a prospect admits flaws and provides a plan for improvement, he will fair much more favorably in the coaches eyes.  Trust me, it works with the coaches and it’s a better way for the student to improve his/her development!

In summary, my advice is to any family is to be realistic, be honest, and have a plan.  Once you have found the programs you are the most interested in, make sure they know!  Contact them on a weekly basis, and make your student’s development an open book.  The coaches will love this!  More importantly, it will give your son/daughter the advantage they need to remain on the coach’s short list of recruits.

 

Mark Slawter

Founder/President

Straight Shot to College Golf

www.sstcg.com

If I have heard it once, I have heard a hundred times……….

“Coach, I want to play D1 golf”.

I would be lying if I told you I was any different when I played junior golf.  Maybe I’m older and wiser now (older-yes, wiser-that’s certainly debatable), but I see things so much differently.  I mean, think about what college golf is.  To me, it’s an opportunity to get a great education and to put yourself in an environment to find out how good you can get at golf.  Some kids might argue that in order to find out how good they can get, they would need to play “D1” golf.  I see their point, but I can also tell you this, the kids that were the # 7-12 players on my college team didn’t get any better sitting at home.

The first key to the whole process is being honest and realistic with yourself.  If your son is consistently winning tournaments and finishing in the top ten, big time D1 golf might be what he needs to continue his development.  However, if your son is finishing 15^th to 30th in most events, big time D1 golf may not be the best fit for him (if you could find an opportunity).

I offer two scenarios to my students when talking about this topic.  You may want to present this very scenario to your junior golfer.

1. You go to a big in-state DI School.  You get a bag, a couple of shirts, a few hats, and you get to play in three JV events.  Four years later you get a solid business degree and off you go in the working world.
2. You go to a top ten DIII program in your home state.  You play in every event for four years, eventually playing as the #1 man your senior year.  You are a three time all conference performer, one time All-American, and your team won a national title your senior year. Your scoring average goes from 75.8 (freshman year) to 71.4 (senior year).  Four years later you get a solid business degree and off you go in the working world.

I have actually had a couple of prospective students choose option #1, and that’s ok.  However, I beleive if a kid is going to go to the course every day for the majority of their childhood life, we owe it to them to help them find a situation that will allow them to find out how good they can get.  By the way, by no means do I think we should sacrifice anything academically in order to play college golf.  In every situation that has been presented to me since the conception of SSTCG, we have been able to find opportunities that fit the students’ needs academically.

Nothing is a guarantee and my scenarios don’t describe every kid’s college career.  However, I know this much, the kid in example #1 is going to live his whole life wondering what he could have done in the game if he had played college golf somewhere else.  You know how I know this? Because, I know a bazillion men who have said this very thing to me:

“Man, I remember when I was 18 and I could really play.  If only I had gone to school XYZ instead of the big in-state school, I might be on tour now!”

I chuckle about the whole “tour” thing, but I do feel for them.  Golf is a passion for a lot of kids and it holds lasting memories.  There is a little part of all of us that thinks we could play the tour if things were different. I know it’s a brave goal, but I hope I never hear any former student of mine say this to me during their adult life.

As you can see, one of the main principles of the SSTCG program is to find programs my students can actually play for.  It’s hard to do, but is a huge goal of mine. Of the ten students I placed in the class of 2011, eight of them saw playing time in the fall.  Personally, this is my proudest accomplishment to date.

If you are getting ready to go through this process, please remember one thing:

“Please, please, please, do not get caught up in what it sounds like”

I realize it’s not the most glamorous thing to go to work and tell you coworkers your son or daughter has committed to play college golf at a small, DII private school in Georgia.  In fact, they will probably look at you puzzled and ask why he or she isn’t going to Wake Forest or some other well-known D1 school.  The fact is most people don’t understand how competitive junior and college golf is.  They don’t realize there are hundreds of other kids who can hit a five iron as good as your son/daughter. Believe me, if you find the right fit for your student, everyone will commend you on a job well done four years later.

Get out there and look around.  If you don’t like what you see, then it will help to solidify what you already knew.  Don’t discount a school because it had a DII or DIII label.  Look at it for what it is, a chance to get a great education and play college golf!  Ask yourself this, “could my son/daughter flourish here as a student, a golfer, and a human being”?  If the answer is yes, then you are on the right track!

Mark Slawter

Founder/President

Straight Shot to College Golf

www.sstcg.com

Last July, I attended my first AJGA (American Junior Golf Association) event in some 20 years or so.  I made the trek down to Pinehurst, loaded up on the sunscreen, grabbed a bottle of water, and set off to battle the mid July sun. The course was foreign to me, so I had to ask for directions to the 10^th tee.  Probably a 2.5 mile hike later (through the forest), I arrived at the 11^th fairway and found the group I was looking for (which included a student of mine).  What I saw over the next two hours blew my mind!  I truly believe the “leaders” in junior golf are losing sight of their main responsibility to the game.

In order to catch my breath, and to avoid having any of the golfers hear me wheezing from my hike, I decided to park myself up in the woods left of the 11^th fairway. I had a nice vantage point to the 10^th green, where my student made a solid par four on the hole.  However, before he could tap in his par putt, one of his playing partners proceeded to grab his bag and march up the hill to the 11^th tee.

I’m still watching the two boys putt out on the 10^th green, when I heard the “bang” from a driver head.  This boy was already teeing off #11 (before the other two had putted out on #10), and had hit a vicious sniper right at me! I hit the deck and the ball went crashing into the house behind me.  The ball amazingly caromed back in bounds off the house.  Shaken, I stuck my head out to give him the “safe signal”.  Too my amazement, he was already 30 yards down the fairway with his bag on his back!   Meanwhile, my student and the third member of the group were just making it to the tee box.  In order to play their tee shots, they had to call out to the boy to move out of the way.

I thought to myself, “Man, this kid has a lot of nerve!  At least now maybe he will pull over and wait for his playing partners.”

I was wrong! He kept walking, just slightly more out of the way now.

The scary thing is, he was doing EXACTLY what the AJGA tour wants him to do.

Believe or not, this story gets better.  The third member of the trio was a young man who is a very good player from Charlotte.  He happened to open with 68 and held a share of the first round lead.  A few minutes after I caught up with them, coaches from UNCW, Wake Forest, South Carolina, and Georgia Tech showed up to watch this young man.  They all proceeded to stay with this group for the next three or four holes.

I was walking down the 14^th fairway with one of the coaches.  All of the sudden there was some commotion in the fairway.  In turned out, an unfortunate circumstance had taken place.  The wrong ball had been played from the fairway (thankfully, my student was not involved).  This is a very simple procedure.  The ball is replaced, and the young man who played the wrong ball receives a two shot penalty.  However, the young man who had opened with 68 wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything wrong (his ball was the one that was hit).  He wanted to wait for a rules official to arrive.  Seeing as how he was near the lead and there were several coaches in attendance, I didn’t blame him.  I would estimate this took 7-8 minutes to rectify.

A couple of holes go by and most of the coaches had left to go follow other groups.  I was walking up the 16^th fairway when a rules official road out into the fairway to greet the group.  She handed each of them some kind of card or ticket.  I was a bit confused, but no one seemed to react, so I continued up towards the green.

Next thing I know, all three players are literally running up to the 16th green.  My student rushed a forty foot birdie putt and then tried to finish from six feet. He missed putt #2, tapped in for bogey, and proceeded to grab his bag and run to the next tee.

Another hurried bogey on 17, and my student had let a really good round slip away from him.  I was now down the 18^th fairway and turned back towards the tee to watch them play their tee shots.  All three hit, and again grab their golf bags and started running up the fairway.  This continued until they putted out.  The round was over.

There were no parents following this group, just me.  I sat behind the 18^th green and tried to reflect on what I had just witnessed. My student bogeyed four of the last six to shoot 75.  I felt like he was really rushing, especially on the last three holes.  I needed some answers.

Fifteen minutes go by, and all three players are still in the scorer’s tent.  Finally, my student comes out.

“What took so long in there”, I asked.

“We have to write three thank you letters after every round.  The AJGA official has to read each one before we can leave.  She didn’t approve my second one, so I had to rewrite it.”

If you have ever played a round of tournament golf in your life, you can probably appreciate what I am about to say.  Golf is a long, grueling, mental and physical struggle.  When I finish a tournament round of golf (especially in the heat), it is all I can do to sign my card.  I’m drained mentally and physically!  I am all for writing thank you letters, but three of them? Every day? In the scoring tent? There is no way I could do it!

Naturally, I needed some answers from my student about what had transpired. He explained they received a “bad time” walking off the 15^th green (the AJGA have timing stations every three holes).  They were given a “red card” in the sixteenth fairway, and told they must finish the round in an allotted amount of time or the WHOLE GROUP would be penalized!  According to the official in the scoring tent, they made it in less than 15 seconds!  Whew!

Now, about the whole “putt out and run to the next tee” thing.  The AJGA tour actually promotes the first player putting out and heading off to the next tee.  Never mind your responsibility to attest another playing partner’s score. They want you to get your bag and go.  Don’t stop there, keep moving.  No need to concern yourself with actually being still while your playing partner tees off.

If you don’t believe me, click this link and read it yourself.  http://ajga.org/TournInfo/pace.asp

This is straight off of their pace of play page. My comments are in Italics.

• Realize the group is “on the clock” as soon as they play from the teeing ground on the first hole.

A little obsessive, but I get it.

• Play ready golf throughout the entire round.

This is a golf tournament, not Saturday at the muni.  Do you think it says “play ready golf” on the Master’s rule sheet?

• The first person to complete each hole should immediately go to the next tee and is expected to be the first person to tee off. The second person to finish should replace the flagstick.

This is rude, uncomfortable, and disrespectful.  Do it in a college event and you might start a fight! I don’t like it for several reasons.

• When spotters, officials or parents are available to help search for a potentially lost ball, the AJGA recommends that players go forward to play his next shot or shots and hold the group’s position on the golf course.

What?  Don’t help your playing partners look for their ball?  Keep moving?  What’s next, drive past the old lady on the side of the road with a flat tire? This is just wrong!

Maybe I’m “old school”, but this is not the way golf was meant to be played.  Is there an international problem with slow play?  Absolutely!  Do we need to address it?  Heck yea!  However, we cannot sacrifice the principles of the game in order to save five or ten minutes in a round of golf.

What has golf taught young people forever?  Honor, sportsmanship, etiquette, honesty, patience, perseverance, courtesy, and integrity.  I could keep going, but you get the point.  Ask yourself this, do you know a parent that wouldn’t encourage their child to play golf?  It’s the king of all sports when it comes to building character!

The whole pace of play thing is a topic for another day. However, I agree it’s a problem on tour, Saturday at the muni, and everything in between.  My question is this, do we really need to sacrifice some of the life skills the game teaches our young people in order to slightly improve pace of play?

AJGA tour…..

You have always been good for the game.  For the most part, the best players on tour today all spent time cutting their teeth on your tour.   You are the best, no doubt!  However, we need you to be better!

Please don’t lose sight of what the game is all about.  Parents pay a ton of money to send their kids to your tour.  Sure, they are hoping that you will help to develop and refine their golf skills.  More importantly, they send their kids to you in order to develop and refine them as human beings!   For every one tour player you have produced in the past 35 years, you have probably produced ten doctors, ten lawyers, and ten CEO’s.

Please, don’t change this model.  It’s too important to the future of golf and the future of our kids.

All too often I encounter young people who have adopted the “If I don’t try, I can’t fail” approach to junior golf.  It drives me nuts because I see all the talent and potential they have.  I think to myself, if they would just sell out one time, what could they accomplish?

This article exemplifies what can happen when a person or a group of people go “all in” and leave everything “on the field”.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/giants-credo-origins-faith-155556452.html;_ylc=X3oDMTNuY2o3ZG9tBF9TAzIxNDM5Njk4ODAEYWN0A21haWxfY2IEY3QDYQRpbnRsA3VzBGxhbmcDZW4tVVMEcGtnAzgxYmZmZjdmLTljNTEtMzYwNS1hOGYwLWIyNTZmYjI1MTM1NARzZWMDbWl0X3NoYXJlBHNsawNtYWlsBHRlc3QD;_ylv=3

If you are frustrated with your game and need to put things into perspective, this video will be a huge help!

http://www.andrewricegolf.com/2012/01/inspiration/

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a time period where golf was shown on television four days a week. A lot of what I learned about the game came from watching guys like Tom Watson, Tom Kite, Curtis Strange, Nick Faldo, and Corey Pavin (to name a few). For the most part, guys averaged around 250 yards off the tee. Sure, there were a few “bombers” on tour, but for the most part the game was dominated by what I like to call “navigators”.

Because most players were unable to overpower golf courses, they had to become very efficient with hitting the ball in the fairway and having solid short games. Through my college years (1992-1996), this is basically the way everyone played the game (including professional, amateur, and collegiate golf).

In 1994, Tiger Woods won his first US Amateur at the TPC Sawgrass. In my opinion, everything started to change at this time. The “Titleist Professional” ball became the prominent golf ball in the mid 90’s. Soon after, we had the first Pro V1. Manufacturers also started to make larger headed medal drivers, which soon led to the first Titanium head driver.

Seven years later Tigers Woods won the Masters to complete the “Tiger Slam” (he held all four major championship titles at the same time). The “bomb and gouge” era was here. Players were fully engaged with hitting the ball further, and subsequently, we started to see the first signs of the modern golfer. Bigger, stronger, better conditioned “athletes” started coming on the scene.

The so called “Tiger effect” is full blown today. Comb the driving range of any Nationwide tour event, and you will see 6’4” monsters absolutely crushing the golf ball. Fairway bunkers that used to be out of play, are being carried with ease by 25% of the field (or more). I mean think about it, does it really blow your mind to see a professional golfer hit a 200 yard 8-iron anymore?

Junior golfers are certainly not immune to this. Last summer, I gathered ten of my students for a practice round at a big regional junior event. The first hole was a slight dogleg right par 5 with a bunker on the right corner of the fairway. To carry the bunker, it was 318 yards. To the bunker, it was 295 yards. Naturally, I was suggesting these players take a route left of the bunker (just in case they rolled it into this bunker). They laughed, and I watched in amazement as seven of these ten junior golfers carried this bunker. Wow, what could I say?

I had to learn to adapt my way of thinking about the game, and so have college coaches and teaching professionals. I encourage all of my students to take advantage of the available resources with equipment, instruction, and fitness. In order to achieve their college golf goals, they will have to adapt a plan that includes a regimented practice routine, along with a commitment to improving their fitness level. I want them to hit it as far as they possibly can!

So this is the era of golf we are in, and it doesn’t appear it’s going to change anytime soon. If you have a young golfer who is interested in playing the game competitively, they will grow up hitting it as hard as they can, finding it, zapping the flag with a range finder, and then hitting it again. Yardage books and hole location sheets practically don’t exist in junior golf anymore. Heck, they barely exist in college golf.

This concerns me, and I would like to explain why. I have recorded stats for many of my students over the past four years. The vast majority of these players have Par 5 stroke averages over 5.0 (Remember, seven of the ten junior golfers flew a 318 yard bunker that day)! These guys have some serious length, but their ability to consistently play par 5’s well is puzzling to me. Consequently, I have spent a lot of time thinking about and researching this very thing. My conclusion is this:

The range finder, while helping pace of play, is hindering our young player’s ability to navigate golf courses. The art of thinking your way around the course is being lost.

There is no doubt technology is exciting and good for the game. Go out to any golf course this Saturday and you will see GPS devices and range finders everywhere. They have got to be improving the pace of play, right? Well, that is debatable I guess. This I know, the range finder or GPS device is taking a lot of the thinking out of the game, especially for junior golfers.

In fact, if it weren’t for tour caddies, I truly believe a lot of the young, talented players who get their tour cards would be a bit lost. I rarely meet a junior golfer who can even read a hole location sheet. A big time D1 college coach recently told me he gave up on hole location sheets. He claimed his players were sticking them in their golf bag on the first tee and hardly ever pulling them out again. Instead, he draws pictures of all 18 greens and puts dots on each green to indicate where the flag for each round. He felt that at least that way they will know if the hole location is in the front or back of the green. This was eye opening for me!

If you think I’m saying to get rid of your junior golfer’s range finder, I’m not. In fact, I use one myself every time I play! However, I find myself making lazy mistakes at times because all I did was zap the flag. I know I am better off when I think through each shot a little bit more.

Here is an experiment to try for a parent or teaching professional of a junior golfer:

Take your junior golfer to a golf course they have never played before (or at least, a course they are less familiar with). The challenge for the day will be to play with no range finder. Along the way, ask them to record notes on each hole. See if they can use the resources they have available (the score card, sprinkler heads, and their feet) to make notes as if they were playing a practice round for an upcoming tournament round on the same course. My guess is they will find it tedious, difficult, and tiring.

However, it may open their mind to a different way of thinking. They may actually begin to understand how to navigate a golf course. Instead of busting a 3-wood forty yards short of the green on a par five, they might learn to do some quick math and lay back to a better wedge yardage. Maybe then we will start seeing the birdies outweigh the bogeys (and higher) on the par 5’s.

Mark Slawter
Founder/President
Straight Shot to College Golf
www.sstcg.com

As a perspective student athlete and junior golfer, identifying college golf opportunities can be a frustrating and head scratching process.  You may be playing in all of the “right tournaments”, sending out dozens of email packages and resumes to coaches, and even making plenty of visits to college campuses and coaches offices.  Only nothing seems to happen and the clock seems to be ticking faster.

 

In my experience with dozens of families and students, the key to the entire process is understanding who you are (as a golfer and student athlete), and where you fit in the coaches eyes.  The more you understand about the landscape of college golf and what coaches are truly looking for, the more efficiently you will be able to identify college golf opportunities.

 

There are two main factors that play into this process:

 

1. Your graduation year
2. Your current state of development (i.e. your scores and results)

 

Your age and graduation year play a huge role in coach’s eyes.  Some D1 coaches are recruiting as many as 2-3 years in advance.  In other words, you need to be shooting the scores and posting the results they want to see at a very early age (9^th and/or 10^th grade).  Other DI, DII, and DIII schools may be willing to wait until the later years of high school.  In other words, college coaches want to see the results and scores indicative to their level of recruiting at the time they recruit that particular graduation year.

 

When coaches start looking at recruits, scores and results are the main criteria.  I hear parents and students talk a lot about the scores college players are shooting.  This is a dangerous and potentially misleading way of figuring out where a student may fit.  First of all, the course set ups in college are typically more difficult than that of most junior events.  Secondly, the college game is vastly different.  The pressure of performing for a coach, a team, and a college/university is a huge adjustment for most junior golfers.   Couple that with the jump from high school to college (and all of the responsibilities that brings with it) and things can become rather overwhelming for a young person.

 

The best piece of advice I can give any parent or junior golfer, is to log on to each college team’s website and pull up the bios of the guys on the team (particularly the freshman and sophomore).  Typically, these websites will offer a junior golf synopsis of each player.  If your resume matches what you see from these other players, then you may be a good fit for that program.  If your resume doesn’t quite match, then you are probably a long shot to be desired by that coach.

 

I heard this great quote from a coach one time…….

 

“I’m not out here walking these golf courses all summer to find more #7, #8, and #9 players.  I’m looking for my next #2 and #3 players!”

 

That statement really stuck with me.  I think it says a lot about where a student fits in the coach’s eyes.

 

If you are embarking on this process, I hope this helps.  This is a crucial step in efficiently working your way through the college golf recruitment sequence.

 

If I can be of any assistance on this or any other topic, please let me know.

 

Mark Slawter

Founder/President

Straight Shot to College Golf

www.sstcg.com

mark@straightshottocollegegolf.com

919.345.3768

In today’s college golf recruiting process, it’s more important than ever to have a game plan.  If you are a junior golfer that aspires to play college golf, you probably already know you need to develop a resume and get it to the college coaches you want to play for.  College coaches are inundated with resumes on a daily basis.  Between the head coach and the assistant coach, they have to sort through all of the resumes they receive.  They simply don’t have much time to look at each one.

 

For this reason, it is vital that you arrange your resume in the format they are looking for.  Here is a list of the five things they look for first:

 

1.  What year are you.  Sounds pretty silly, I know.  However, it is frequently messed up! Put it in the title of the email, in the first paragraph, and at the end of the email.  Make 100% sure they will find it quickly.  They get extremely frustrated when they receive resumes from prospects who don’t clearly list their graduation year.
2. A list of your scores for a minimum of 2 years.  List (in chronological order) the date, tournament name, course, field size, score(s), and finish for each event.  Make it easy to find on the resume and make sure it is easy to follow.  Do not include “explanations” of weather, names of other players in the field, or anything of the sort.  To a coach, this sounds like excuses.
3. Who is helping to develop you.  Make sure to list the name, phone number, and email address of those who can attest to your ability and character the best.  Examples would be your instructor, High School coach, fitness trainer, mental game coach, etc.
4. List your academic makeup clearly.  Assuming your scores match what they are looking for, coaches will then check your academic make up to make sure you are a good fit for the college/university.  List your weighted and unweighted GPA, your complete three part SAT score, and complete ACT scores.  Also, list any AP/Honors course you may have taken.
5. Include a complete list of all of your awards, achievements, community service, church involvement, and other sports played.   Don’t hold back, fill this list up!  Coaches LOVE this stuff.  It will separate you from other recruits, I promise.  They are always trying to find out more about each recruit (other than golf).  This is a great way to get a head start.

 

I am constantly meeting students are parents who have become frustrated with the lack of response they are receiving from college coaches they have been emailing.  While they are trying to do the right thing and include pertinent information, they end up with a long, confusing resume that is hard to follow.

 

My advice to you would be to keep it simple.  Don’t overdo it.  Put yourself in the coach’s shoes.  If you had to read dozens of resumes a day, what would you like to see?  Do this, and you will start opening your inbox to lots of return emails, and ultimately, more college golf opportunities!

 

Mark Slawter

Founder/President

Straight Shot to College Golf

www.sstcg.com

mark@straightshottocollegegolf.com

919.345.3768