Golf Instruction
I started my teaching/coaching career in 1986 at John Lotz* Golf Range in Los Gatos, CA, where I provided golf classes for the town's recreation department.
So at the age of 23, after a year of discovering I knew less about teaching than my students about playing the game, I began to develop my skills and also started working with individual students as well. My experience and philosophies evolved over the years and I now seek to find out what the student is after, then formulate a game plan, cooperatively, to help them achieve it.
After law school at UC Davis School of Law and private practice in San Jose, CA, I spent two years teaching and working with my junior golf pal Mike Green, who had become the Head Golf Professional at Del Paso CC in Sacramento, CA. In 1995 I jumped on-board the SRI Golf team with Rob Frederick as the Director of Instruction at Woodcreek Golf Club in Roseville, CA, where I helped golfers of all ages for more than 10 years before changing my career focus.
During my time coaching, I've had the pleasure to collaborate with 1000s of people who love (and sometimes hate!) the game of golf and the process of developing themselves -- their attitudes and skills. I led the junior golf program during that time and collaborated with The First Tee and The First Tee of Greater Sacramento as an affiliate site.
One of my favorite students of all-time has to Katie Quinney. She moved to Roseville with her family when she was 12 and I began working with her on her golf soon after. She played at Woodcreek HS in the 1990s before going on to play at Florida State University. She is now the Head Golf Coach at University of South Carolina Coastal and has taken her team to the NCAA tournament. She was persistent, dedicated and fun to work with. Small in stature, she seemed to defy the laws of nature as I believe her HEART and GUTS outweighed the rest of her body combined!
Since moving into Real Estate full-time, I have reduced my coaching schedule to no more than five hours a week, which lets me continue working with some of my long-time students and newer, personally-referred students who understand that I love to teach but that my responsibilities to KZ Real Estate Group and my real estate clients comes first.
*John Lotz was one of my early golf heroes after I caddied for him in a pro-am at my home course when I was 12. He helped me with my game a bit during my high school years when I had the chance to spend a couple of weeks at his range every summer. John's idea of a lesson was much different than the "scientific" approach today or that utilized at the time by the famous instructor from Carmel, Ben Doyle, who was a practitioner of the Golfing Machine and well known as Bobby Clampett's instructor. Of course, John didn't really care to teach . . . A typical "lesson" would go something like this: I would ask him a question as he was walking by. He would say, "Gimme that club," then hit one or two shots to demonstrate. He'd hand the club back and ask, "Did you see that?" I'd say yes and he would start walking away and simultaneously say, "Keep hitting it until you can do it!"