ACADEMY REWARDS : The future of golf may be at David Leadbetter's school

Golf Digest, Oct, 2001 by Mike Stachura

Says sport psychologist Dr. Bob Rotella, whose daughter Casey stayed home and earned a golf scholarship to Notre Dame: "If the goal is to get better quicker and at an earlier age, this is a fine model. But you could move to Florida on your own and get the same thing done with a local teacher. In all honesty, I don't see any examples of kids who were crummy going to those academies becoming great players. The model isn't the academy. The model is put all of your eggs in one basket and hope it works."

The IMG connection

But for now, the model does appear to be working as a business. Business is paramount to what they do here.

The assumption, and not a completely invalid one, is that the golf program is all about finding the next client for IMG. These are, after all, the IMG Academies, as the full-color brochure and website remind you. But the academies are not simply a feeder system for IMG, insists Meekma. He explains that the IMG Academies--in addition to the full-time student academy programs, they conduct summer camps and other weekly sports camps for youngsters and adults--are a completely separate arm of the IMG empire. Some disagree. Says DLGA competitor Travaglione: "Their whole mission and motivation is scouring the planet for the next Tiger Woods."

Travaglione suggests the IMG connection isn't inconsequential, despite the fact that Gossett did not end up signing with IMG. "To say that they're going to be in the junior-athlete business without the goal of signing these kids up as their clients--well, I think that's so transparent that it's laughable."

Meekma says that assumption not only is wrong, it doesn't make sense. "In rare cases," he says, "that's a nice byproduct, but that is certainly not what owning and operating a business of this size is all about. You can't run a business focusing on that narrow niche."

And DLGA-Junior, just like Travaglione's IJGA and the Saddlebrook Prep program, involves significant dollars and cents. The DLGA golf program's annual fee for a boarding student is $32,200, not including private-school tuition. That's another $8,000 to $10,000. (To cut down on some of those costs,

relatively, some families have simply decided to relocate to the Bradenton area so their son or daughter can live at home and live the academy life, too. The Wongluekiet family does that, having moved from Thailand, yet about three-quarters of the enrollees are kids living away from home.)

Of course, extra one-on-one time with the school's sport psychologist runs another $2,500 annually. That's nearly $45,000 before travel and other living expenses, like pizza delivery and golf shoes, are factored in.

Paula Creamer's father, Paul, thought long and hard about those numbers. He also thought about another number: 3, as in himself, his wife, Karen, and his daughter and how he wanted the family to stay together.

A pilot for American Airlines, flying out of San Francisco, Paul oversaw the rapid progress of his daughter in golf. He was very involved, practicing with her and seeing to it that she got the best instruction and competition, wherever he could find it. When he began investigating the golf-academy scene, he knew it would work only if he could get transferred to Florida. He did, Paula enrolled and the three relocated, leaving friends and home to make a new life in pursuit of better golf.