These top teachers are class acts: an inside look at our latest rankings

WE CALL THIS THE 2003-2004 GREATEST TEACHERS SURVEY, BUT THE the process really started more than a year ago, before the 2002 PGA Teaching & Coaching Summit in Port St. Lucie, Fla. We queried hundreds of instructors across the country, looking for the names of up-and-coming and just-plain-overlooked teachers to add to our state-by-state ballots for the 2003-'04 ranking. After including 100 more teachers than in our last survey, in March we distributed comprehensive state and national ballots to almost 1,500 instructors. And after sorting and tabulating the nearly 1,000 returned ballots with software designed specifically for this project, we generated the lists you see here.

Just as we did in 2000 and 2001, we used a two-tiered balloting system to identify the best teachers in each state (see pullout booklet, page 80), along with the 50 Greatest Teachers in the country. On the statewide ballots, we asked the teachers to rank their peers on a grading scale. On a state-by-state basis, we identified the number of best teachers in proportion to that state's percentage of the total teaching-professional population--about 20,000 PGA, LPGA and unaffiliated teachers. For example, we named more than 40 teachers in Florida and only one in Wyoming.

We made some modifications to our national balloting process for 2003. After consulting with former USGA handicap guru Dean Knuth, we asked each teacher to pick 25 teachers he or she considered the best--up from 10 in 2001. By recording more comprehensive ballots from each voter, we were able to more clearly measure the difference between the 10th teacher on our list and the 50th.

We believe our new survey is the best way to find the best teachers to help you with your game. For more information on the survey, or to tell us about a teacher you think should be considered for the next rankings, visit www.golfdigest.com.

MIKE McGETRICK

Ladies' man

When it comes to teaching the very best female golfers, Mike McGetrick rules the roost. A short list of the LPGA players he has worked with include Juli Inkster, Meg Mallon, Beth Daniel, Wendy Ward and Beth Bauer. Want to talk hegemony? McGetrick coached five players on the victorious 12-member 2002 Solheim Cup team.

"I've got this reputation as the guru of the ladies tour," McGetrick acknowledges, "but 80 percent of my business comes from teaching men, including male tour players." Among the players he's taught who happen to have a Y chromosome are Brandt Jobe, Scott McCarron, Tom Purtzer and Gary Hallberg. "If I was working with more men tour players I feel like I would be helping them as much as I am the women."

Here's an idea of quality time, according to Golf Digest's No. 8: McGetrick's work with 2002 U.S. Open champion Juli Inkster (above) involves 10 or so checkups a year, either at Inkster's home in California, at the McGetrick Golf Academy in Denver or on the road at LPGA Tour events--not including regular post-round phone calls.

The 1999 PGA Teacher of the Year and five-time Colorado Section PGA Teacher of the Year gained entree into the LPGA inner circle through coaching his wife, Sara Anne, a tour player and friend of Meg Mallon's, who became McGetrick's second tour student 18 years ago. Being geographically desirable also helps: His learning center on the central-east outskirts of Denver is within easy reach of his frequent-flying flock of tour players. "It's funny, but success in teaching has a lot to do with where you are," says McGetrick. And where he is is sitting pretty, the undisputed ladies' man among top golf instructors. Scott Smith

CUTTING-EDGE COACHES

More than mechanics

Nothing makes an unorthodox approach more mainstream than overwhelming success. When Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson (Nos. 44 and 47 on the 50 Greatest Teachers list) started their Coaching for the Future/GOLF54 program in 1999, it was "out there," with its focus on the player's psychological and emotional games as well as swing instruction.

But when Annika Sorenstam credited Nilsson (left), her Swedish National Team coach, for giving her the psychological tools to win 19 times over two seasons--and shoot the first 59 in LPGA history--people started to pay attention.

"We want to integrate the physical, technical, mental and emotional parts of the game," says Marriott (right), who has taught Grace Park and Wendy Ward. "Instead of just teaching people how to swing a club, we want to teach them how to prepare to play, and how to transfer success in practice onto the course."

Marriott and Nilsson conduct a thriving business from a base at The Legacy Golf Resort in Phoenix. Not only do they run dozens of golf schools for players at all levels, but they train other teachers and coaches in "whole golfer" techniques in their COACH54 seminars.

"Annika is really the pinnacle of what we're trying to do," says Nilsson, who was the European Solheim Cup captain in 1998. "That's learning to focus on only the things you can control, and learning both to perform better and develop as a human being." M. R.